환경영향평가절차상 주민참여 : 미국과 우리나라의 경우에 관한 비교법적 고찰을 중심으로

The usefulness of public participation in environmental decision-making is that it gives the parties concerned the opportunities to tell their own opinions. They can offer helpful informations to the executives and have more confidence in the decision making process and its results. Another usefulness is that it makes the public and courts review the relevant factors when the government makes records of environmental decision making. Besides, the opening of the process to the public causes the political and administrative decision-makers to consider more carefully and to deal with various problems resulted from the decisions. On the other hand, there is some skeptical views about public participation, which are attributed to the excessive expense, the chaos from a number of participants, the flood of wrong informations from ill-informed participants, the delay of exercising the policies, and so on. If the public participation process is well-planned and managed, however, its merits excel the demerits mentioned earlier. Especially, public participation is very important in that it meets the request of democratic ideology. A set of processes such as deciding the direction and goals of environmental policies, identifying their effectiveness and then reflecting it in the prospective administration, should not be operated by the executives only but be cooperated by public participation. Above all, if the administrative set up the enforcement of environmental rights as the goal of environmental administration, public participation is essentially required whether there is a provision or not. Consequently, the public and the business have to take part in the planning, making policies, managing and controlling on the environmental administration. Environmental Impact Assessment(hereinafter “EIA”) which is a effective means for predicting and assessing the environmental risks and finding ways of prior prevention and mitigation, requires for public participation. This article is aimed at reviewing EIA in U.S. and Korea comparatively, focusing on the public participation in EIA process. For this purpose, I will analyze the actual conditions of the EIA operation in both countries, such as the EIA paper writing and judicial review, and make clear the meaning of public participation by the degree of participation and its influence on environmental lawsuit. Part Ⅰ begins with the view that public participation in environmental administration should be structurally systematized because the environmental decision making has a substantial effect on the lives of the public and an ecosystem. In Part Ⅱ, I will explore the significance of public participation through reviewing the variety and methods of public participation in EIA process. Part Ⅲ deals with the details of the two countries' EIA, such as the legal basis, writing procedure, the subject and the judicial review. And then, I will compare the degree of public participation in EIA process and its influence on the environmental lawsuit. Through these comparative analysis of EIA between two countries, I will clarify the meaningfulness of public participation in EIA.