Participatory Rural Appraisal Approaches for Public Participation in EIA: Lessons from South Africa

Sandham Sandham,Spaling Spaling,Chabalala Chabalala

doi:10.3390/land8100150

Sandham Sandham, Spaling Spaling + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/land8100150

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Journal: Land	Publication Date: Oct 12, 2019
Citations: 14	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: North-West University, King's University College

Abstract

: Public participation in environmental impact assessment (EIA) often falls short of the requirements of best practice in the move towards sustainable development, particularly for disadvantaged and marginalized communities. This paper explores the value of a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) approach for improved public participation in a sample of EIA’s for photovoltaic projects in South Africa. PRA was conducted post facto making use of selected PRA tools. Findings show that a great deal more information was obtained by the PRA approach, confirming the perceived weakness of traditional PP for vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. It is concluded that a PRA approach has considerable potential for improving meaningful public participation, which should improve EIA, build capacity in those communities, and enhance livelihoods and sustainable resource use.

Highlights

Introduction to environmental impact assessment (EIA) in South AfricaEnvironmental impact assessment (EIA) aims to predict, assess and mitigate changes in the environment attributable to proposed projects before their final approval
Since public participation (PP) is regarded as a key attribute of EIA, to allow interested and affected parties to participate in environmental decision making, PP is encouraged in all of these main phases, and ideally should take place as early as possible in the EIA
Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) emerged during the early 1990s from its predecessor rapid rural appraisal (RRA) and spawned a later offshoot participatory learning and action (PLA)

Summary

Introduction

Introduction to EIA in South AfricaEnvironmental impact assessment (EIA) aims to predict, assess and mitigate changes in the environment attributable to proposed projects before their final approval. After the origin of EIA in the USA in 1970 and its spread through the world, it was practiced voluntarily in South Africa until it became mandatory in 1997 under the Environment Conservation Act (ECA). The main phases of the EIA process are: Screening and application for authorization, scoping of key impacts, impact assessment to determine significant impacts and suggest alternatives and mitigation, review of the submission for decision-making, environmental authorization, and post-decision follow up and monitoring [1]. Since public participation (PP) is regarded as a key attribute of EIA, to allow interested and affected parties to participate in environmental decision making, PP is encouraged in all of these main phases, and ideally should take place as early as possible in the EIA process, but is usually mandated from the time that the application for authorization commences. In South Africa it is mandatory in the application, scoping, and impact assessment phases. PRA advanced using a highly participatory methodology that actively integrated local values and knowledge for decentralized planning and democratic decision making [5,8,11,12], Conceptually, PRA is rooted in

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