BAD EIA REPORTS = BAD ENVIRONMENTAL DECISIONS

THE IMPORTANCE OF QUALITY CONTROL IN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT

A Basic Assessment, Scoping or Environmental Impact Report must be fit for purpose. This means that it must be:

a)    Procedurally compliant with the regulatory requirements (such as the EIA Regulations, NEMA etc.);

b)    Factually correct, and thus contain information that pertains specifically to the proposed site or activity and does not contain irrelevant, false or misleading information;

c)     Readable and make sense to the ordinary person. EIA reports are public documents and therefore need to be able to be read and understood by a wide spectrum of people.  

A poorly written EIA report is a sign that the EIA process was not carried out correctly, and/or that the Environmental Assessment Practitioner (EAP) has struggled to accurately and professionally report on:

a)    the EIA process embarked on;

b)    details of the proposed development;

c)     details of the associated environmental impacts;

d)    the various issues associated with the proposed development/activity

e)    key recommendations to remediate or mitigate those impacts.

EIA reports, like any other report or output, requires a quality control mechanism to ensure that the final output/report is of a very high standard, and acceptable to the client as well as the competent authority who will be relying on the contents of the report to base their decision to authorise or refuse the environmental authorisation.

EIA review is an important form of quality control. This is where an independent party who has not been involved in the EIA process or the drafting of the environmental reports, reads through and critically analyses the report.

This outsider (the reviewer), proceeds to verify and corroborate the factual statements within the EIA reports, and also checks for legal compliance.  The results of the external review can be used to improve on the report if any shortcomings have been identified.

Poorly written reports can only mean trouble for an EAP and their client. For the client, it could mean forking out more money to rectify the reports, or worse, negative publicity, including having the environmental authorisation refused, the decision appealed, or taken on review to the high court.

For the EAP, this almost always results in negative publicity, which is not good for business.

If you are an EAP who is struggling with quality control issues, or want to improve the quality of your EIA reporting, get in contact with me. I can assist in independently reviewing your reports and providing you with specific recommendations on how to improve them.