Environmental impact assessment has been in use within the British forest sector since 1988 when the Environmental Assessment (Afforestation) Regulations became effective. In Great Britain between 1988 and 1998 a total of 211 applications for grant assistance for afforestation proposals have been subject to environmental impact assessment. Of these 101 had been completed by 1998 and the assessment concluded. This research details the development of environmental impact assessment in international, national and forest sector contexts, and presents a review procedure tailored for use in the British forest sector. Using this procedure, 89 forest sector environmental statements were reviewed. The review highlights the overall poor quality of environmental impact assessments and environmental statements within the British forest sector. The research investigates the efficacy of the Forestry Commission's screening process and its ability to identify projects with potential impacts through the development of a screening protocol for use in the British forest sector, which was used Forest Commission staff to screen a series of case studies. The survey, prediction and assessment techniques employed within forest sector environmental impact assessments are analysed. For a sample of assessments where adequate baseline information was included in the original assessment, a practical audit of impact predictions was carried out, where the actual outcomes of predicted impacts were compared with information derived from field investigation.

1 Vojtěch Kotecký Czech forestry subsides coherence with environmental policy objectives Abstract: Public bodies in the Czech Republic spend on average about CZK 1.2 billion (€ 44 million) a year on subsidy schemes in forestry. Subsidies are an important instrument of public policy; they also have major environmental consequences and may influence ability of forests to contribute towards ecosystem services. Consistency of forestry subsidies with the government's environmental policy goals in the Czech Republic is investigated in this thesis. Almost half of Czech subsidy budget is appropriated to schemes that have got an element of conflict with environmental policy goals incorporated in their design; thus, a range of environmentally harmful subsidies is potentially identified here. However, a number of schemes - and, in 27% of subsidy expenditure, even the same schemes, also contribute towards the same policy objectives. Farmland afforestation payments, contributing to the government's goal of forest expansion but shown in a statistical analysis to be focused primarily on regions with high forest cover, and involving a surplus of Norway spruce with a deficit of both European beech and silver fir, are an illustration of complex nature of forestry subsidies.