ENVIRON IMPACT ASSESS REV 1985; 5:109-110 1 0 9

EDITORIAL

COMMENTS AND CONTENTS

The second issue of Volume 5 includes a diverse group of articles rettecting a wide range of theories and applications in EIA. In the Viewpoint, attorney Bruce E. Barnes, one of the original group of mediators trained for the nationally known Neighborhood Justice Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, suggests a model for the application of mediation/facilitation to international environmental disputes. He includes plans for the organization, staffing, and training for such a mediation system, which he has called "the Pacific Way" in recognition of its regional origin and nonconflictual nature.

The first feature is by William B. Tye, a Director of Putnam, Hayes & Bartlett, Inc. He suggests a microeconomic framework for defining social costs of en- vironmental regulations and for measuring those costs in a simple analytical approach. In the second feature, Gill-Chin Lim of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discusses EIA implementation in three developing countries. He focuses on the institutional and procedural aspects of EIA as they influence its performance outcome. Based on an analysis of the relationship between EIA and the comprehensive planning process, Professor Lim develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the effectiveness of EIA in different governmental and political contexts.

In AGENDA, Senior Editor Lawrence Susskind, a codirector of the Program on Negotiation at the Harvard Law School, identifies five factors that may assist decision makers to reach "fairer, wiser, and more efficient" agreements in the siting of hazardous facilities. Professor Susskind sees citizens potentially affected by a facility falling into four groups, according to their stance toward the siting issue: boosters, preservationists, guardians, and nonparticipants.

In the Social Impact Assessment department, Catherine C. Ross, Assistant Professor of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, offers her study

© 1985 Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

0195-9255/85/$3.30

110 CONTENTS AND COMME/Crs

of the influence of race and gender on residents" perceptions of the impact of a rapid transit system on a neighborhood in Atlanta. The results of Professor Ross's study suggest that race and gender may explain more about attitudes toward community impact of a transit system than do the levels of user satisfaction with the system.

This issue's International Perspective is provided by Irving Schiffman, Pro- fessor of Political Science at California State University, Chico. He reports on how EIA became a policy-making element in the government of Israel in 1982 and the ways in which the Environmental Protection Service, formed in 1973, must work to promote environmental awareness and informed decision making among public agencies and private developers.

In the Book Review section, Constance M. Boris, Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Resources of the University of Michigan comments on Eco- nomic Approaches to Natural Resource and Environmental Quality Analysis edited by Maynard M. Hufschmidt and Eric L. Hyman (1982). The 17 papers in this volume are derived from a conference held to consider whether the enviromental impact valuation techniques developed almost entirely in the United States are transferable to developing countries. Professor Boris summarizes the socioeconomic, cultural, institutional, theoretical, and operational barriers to the application of these techniques suggested in the papers and concludes that though these approaches might not be adequate to the needs of developing countries analysts should continue to apply available techniques while developing new ones.

Readers will note that tWO of the pieces in this issue deal with .problems of implementing EIA in the developing world. A number of readers and contributors to the Review have expressed a special interest in those areas, in which social and natural environments in many cases are being rapidly altered by econo- mic development and other stresses of modernization. Volume 5, Number 3 will be devoted to EIA in developing countries, regions with unique problems and opportunities for the construction and application of environmental impact assessment.

Teresa Hill Editor