Abstract
This research evaluates Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report quality for a selected sample of development projects in South African national parks. It applies an adapted version of an international EIA report quality review package to 24 developments within 10 national parks, across three EIA regimes. The results suggest good EIA report quality across all four quality review areas, with improvement over time, but also highlight particular weaknesses in terms of dealing with waste and, to a lesser extent, with significance and mitigation. To build on this research, the development of a sector-specific EIA report quality review package is recommended, with more emphasis on the strategic context, waste and water-related aspects. The conclusion is that EIA is well positioned to remain an important decision support instrument for developments within national parks. Conservation implications: The results show that EIA reports for developments in South African national parks are generally of sufficient quality for decision-making that benefits conservation. However, weaker performance regarding waste, significance determination, water-related impacts and a lack of consideration of strategic context requires a conservation-specific EIA report quality review package to improve report quality in the areas of weakness and thereby increase the value of EIA as an instrument for environmental governance and sustainable development in conservation areas.
Highlights
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been conducted internationally and in South Africa since the 1970s and is recognised as one of the most successful environmental policy interventions of the 20th century (Kidd, Retief & Alberts 2018; Morgan 2012; Roos et al 2020)
The analysis found weak performance with respect to the description of the types and quantities of waste, treatment, disposal and disposal routes, and description of methods to obtain types and quantities of waste. These results suggest that EIAs for national parks need to significantly strengthen the consideration of waste-related aspects, in order to align with international trends of emphasising and promoting best practice waste management in protected areas (Dunjić et al 2017; Hockings et al 2006)
While the use of the particular review package is fully justified as it allowed for comparative analysis with previous research, it is limited in terms of its lack of a sector-specific focus
Summary
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been conducted internationally and in South Africa since the 1970s and is recognised as one of the most successful environmental policy interventions of the 20th century (Kidd, Retief & Alberts 2018; Morgan 2012; Roos et al 2020). Today over 200 countries have some form of mandatory impact assessment system (Bond et al 2020; Yang 2019). The overall aim of EIA is to inform decision-making by pro-actively considering and predicting consequences of actions on the environment before decisions are made (International Association for Impact Assessment and Institute of Environmental Assessment [IAIA] 1999). The actions for which mandatory EIA is required differ between countries. In South Africa, EIA is required for the so-called listed activities described in the EIA Regulations (most recently amended in 2017). Once an activity is listed, it means that actions in relation to that legally defined activity are subject to government authorisation and must undergo an EIA process to inform the eventual authorisation decision. 4.3.3 Opinion as to whether activity should/should not be authorised
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