Environmental Impact Assessment - Mining and the Environment: From Ore to Metal - page 89

TABLE 2.3
Steps that should be included in any EIA

1. Screening the proposal to determine whether an EIA should be conducted;

2. Scoping the proposal to determine the scope of environmental assessment, the scope of factors to be considered, the parties involved and their

interests and concerns, the appropriate level of effort and analysis, and to prepare guidelines for the conduct of the EIA;

3. Description of the proposal and of relevant alternatives, including doing nothing at all;

4. Description of the environmental baseline, including changes without the proposed project;

5. Identifi cation and prediction of the nature and magnitude of key environmental effects, both positive and negative, for each of the alternatives studied,

over both short and longer term periods;

6. Assessment of how such effects are valued by representative sections of society;

7. Testing of impact indicators as well as the methods used to determine their scales of magnitude and relative weights;

8. Prediction of the magnitude of these impact indicators and of the total impact of the proposed project and relevant alternatives;

9. Proposal of mitigation measures including identifi cation of critical thresholds;

10. EIA presentation, public consultation and participation, including feedback;

11. Recommendations for project rejection, or acceptance plus advice on how to reduce or remove the most serious impacts as measured and as socially

valued, or adoption of the most suitable alternative scheme;

12. Decision-making;

13. Post-decision monitoring and auditing both during project construction and after project completion to ensure that environmental effects are

minimized, and to compare actual with predicted impacts;

14. Amelioration if thresholds are exceeded or unacceptable impacts are identifi ed, and

15. Longer period reviews (5 years, 10 years, 20-25 years), requiring comprehensive assessment and adaptive management. A period of 25 years is a

common limit for licence periods - 'in perpetuity' arrangements should be avoided.

Source: Conacher, 2000, drawn mainly from O'Riordan and Turner 1983, Wood 2003, and Harvey 1998

Scoping should be regarded as an early part of the decision process. Two aspects of scop-
ing are particularly important. Scoping provides an excellent opportunity to identify project
alternatives before mine planning has proceeded too far to allow radical changes. Secondly,
scoping offers an opportunity to identify the key stakeholders in the mine project and to ini-
tiate their participation in the environmental assessment process at an early stage.
To a certain extent, scoping can be done as a desk study through a critical review of
existing data. However, a scoping study is incomplete without a site visit (see Chapter
Eight). The site visit provides important contacts with the people affected by the mine at
an early stage of planning, enabling the incorporation of feedback from the local commu-
nity into mine development. Also, the site visit frequently reveals important environmen-
tal issues that would not necessarily be apparent from a desk study.

A scoping study is incomplete
without a site visit.

Review the Project Design

It seems odd if the EIA team for a mining project does not include a mining specialist.
And yet this is often the norm, not the exception. In spite of all the complexities of mining,