One of the primary goals of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is to encourage meaningful public input and involvement in the process of evaluating the environmental impacts of proposed federal actions.
This once innovative feature of the 1970 landmark legislation has become routine practice for some NEPA review processes. However, the full potential for more actively identifying and engaging other Federal, Tribal, State and local agencies, affected and interested parties, and the public at large in collaborative environmental analysis and federal decision-making is rarely realized.
The purpose of this handbook is to assist those within Federal agencies who are responsible for conducting environmental reviews in expanding the effective use of collaboration as part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. Among its many conclusions, the NEPA Task Force found that collaborative approaches to engaging the public and assessing the impacts of federal actions under NEPA can improve the quality of decision-making and increase public trust and confidence in agency decisions. Agencies responsible for preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or an Environmental Assessment (EA) will find this handbook helpful in identifying and realizing opportunities to collaborate throughout the NEPA process.
This handbook focuses on collaboration directly in the context of NEPA and more specifically on that form of collaboration that engages a balanced set of affected and interested parties in seeking agreement at one or more stages of the NEPA process by cultivating shared vision, trust, and communication.
Council on Environmental Quality, October 2007
