From Romania to Romford and from Portugal to Perth, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive is a crucial tool in the protection of Europe’s environment. Since I last blogged on the proposals to review the directive in December (see here), we’ve been cracking on with understanding what it means for nature and people, and proposing further measures to strengthen it.
We’ve had some very productive conversations with MEPs who are considering the proposals in the European Parliament, and yesterday I spoke at a CIWEM conference in London, alongside representatives from the European Commission, the UK Government and a range of EIA practitioners.
While in the UK we have a fairly effective planning system (systems, I should say), this is not the case in many parts of Europe and our BirdLife partners have highlighted quite a few horror stories to us. Some of these may be the subject of future blogs.
Here are some headlines of our thoughts:
We welcome more explicit reference to biodiversity, but we would like to see a stronger emphasis on avoiding loss and strengthening the mitigation hierarchy – in other words you should first of all avoid loss, then mitigate it and only compensate for loss as a last resort.
Having said that, we don’t think mitigation measures should be counted when deciding to ‘screen in’ a project for EIA, otherwise we’ll see untested measures being put forward to get round the need for a rigorous assessment.
Effective screening is an issue. We don’t believe that the ‘competent authority’ (usually the local authority) should have to give a screening opinion on each and every planning application, but we do believe that the public should be involved, and that the competent authority should only decide not to require EIA if it is convinced that there are no likely significant effects on the environment.
Public participation is vital for a transparent and robust process. Although it generally works well in the UK, it should be extended to the pre-application screening and scoping stages.
We support the mandatory assessment of ‘reasonable alternatives’, including the alternative which has least environmental impact. The European Commission has already published guidance on the sorts of things that would be considered reasonable alternatives (see p36, here).
We welcome the proposal for the use of accredited and technically competent experts, but we think that more could be done to secure their independence and professionalism. We’d also like a national EIA commission to review environmental statements.
Proposals for monitoring impacts are very important, but there needs to be a requirement for the developer to take corrective action where monitoring shows that mitigation or compensation measures are not working or there are significant adverse environmental impacts.
We support in principle the proposal to have an EIA 'one-stop shop', to co-ordinate different assessment procedures, but it's crucial that the determination of different requirements are discrete, as very different legal tests are involved. It is particularly important to respect the requirements of the Habitats Directive.
And finally, unconventional gas extraction operations, including shale gas, should always be subject to EIA.