CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The approach of ?pollute first, then clean up?, has been understood to be hard both technologically and economically. Therefore, the necessity of adopting another strategy, which is anticipate-and-prevent, has risen and consequently the Environmental Impact Assessment has emerged as a tool. Screening is one of the earliest steps of every EIA process and it is characterized as the determination of whether or not an environmental assessment must be prepared for a particular project. The aim of this paper is to identify, analyse and compare the methodological models regulating the screening process of industrial activity in Argentina, a federal country without a national directive concerning this particular matter and where each of the 24 districts are autonomous in this matter.This research was followed through employing a comparative method, which was implemented based on secondary data analysis. 3 guiding questions and 3 criteria were used to compare the 24 districts. 6 different screening process models were described (both qualitative and quantitative). The 6 chosen models were integrated into 3 great groups. The group of districts that present ?Preliminary study? + ?Case by Case? approaches prevail while in second place comes the ?Threshold? + ?Case by Case? approaches. Finally, the more complete screening model, with specific legislation for EIA in industries and a quantitative environmental complexity index, turned out to be the least applied in Argentina.

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