NEPA and the curious evolution of environmental impact assessment in the United States

The first major statutory enactment of America’s ‘environmental decade’ of the 1970s, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)2 launched the most widely emulated environmental policy innovation of the twentieth century: environmental impact assessment (EIA).3 From inauspicious beginnings as an obscure procedural device appended as afterthought to a broader environmental policy statute, EIA has grown to become a ubiquitous tool of environmental policy at the international, national, and sub-national levels.4