This paper reports on a study of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on briefings under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act. The study covered 119 EIA procedures for which the deadline for public comments was set between March 2020 and June 14, 2021. As a result, 37 were either not held or were cancelled. Of those that did hold briefings, at least 14 did not inform the public of their policies on infection control. Even under these circumstances, the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) have not released their opinions on how the briefing should be held, and have admitted that no briefing has been held even a year after the pandemic, citing unforeseen circumstances. MOE is also reluctant to hold briefings using online conference systems, saying that they do not fit in with EIA.

In addition, this paper presents the guidelines for EIA briefings under COVID-19 published by Thailand and Kenya, Indonesia, and the author's experiments in organizing methodological briefings using online conference systems and 3DVR technology. Communication in EIA should not be set back due to COVID-19.

In order to make the assessment procedure of wind power plant efficient, the way of evaluation of impacts on the landscape is discussed. The viewpoint and the view subject are classified by values from the social viewpoint and combined to create a measure on the importance of the view. Using this measure, we analyzed assessment projects already implemented. As a result, the introduction of importance of the view was presumed to be helpful in checking the overlooking of important evaluation points. This measure should be useful for communication with the local stakeholders, in advancing the environment impact assessment on the landscape of the wind power plant project.