The treatment of landscape in a Swedish EIA process

Landscape is partly a social matter and has long been one of many aspects investigated in environmental impact work in road and railway planning. The focus on landscape has recently strengthened as Sweden is on its way to ratifying the European Landscape Convention (ELC). It is timely to examine how landscape is handled in environmental impact statement (EIS) preparation in everyday practice, a process involving many actors. This study examines the environmental impact assessment process for a large road project, More Efficient North–South Communications in Greater Stockholm, in terms of the behaviour of three actors, the developer, practitioner, and reviewer. In many respects, the results were rather far removed from several ELC intentions. The deficiencies primarily concerned public participation, comprehensive overview, competence, and stakeholder coordination. These deficiencies originated both inside and outside the environmental impact assessment process of the studied road-building project and cannot be attributed any single stakeholder.