lecture 5

Question 1

Mitigation

Answer 1

• Aims to prevent adverse impacts from happening and to keep those that do occur within an
  acceptable level.
  ✔ find better alternatives and ways of doing things;
  ✔ enhance the environmental and social benefits of a proposal;
  ✔ avoid, minimize or remedy adverse impacts; and
  ✔ ensure that residual adverse impacts are kept within acceptable levels.
• These measures will be incorporated into the terms and conditions of project approval and
  implemented during the impact management stage of the EIA process

Question 2

Objectives of impact management

Answer 2

✔ ensure that mitigation measures are implemented;
✔ establish systems and procedures for this purpose;
✔monitor the effectiveness of mitigation measures; and
✔ take any necessary action when unforeseen impacts occur

Question 3

Stricter requirements imposed on proponents

Answer 3

✔mitigate impacts through good project design and environmental management;
✔ provide benefits to the community affected by the proposal;
✔ prepare plans for managing impacts so these are kept within acceptable levels; and
✔make good any residual environmental damage

Question 4

Elements of Mitigation

Answer 4

The elements of mitigation are organized into a hierarchy of actions:
* first, avoid adverse impacts as far as possible by use of preventative measures;
* second, minimize or reduce adverse impacts to ‘as low as practicable’ levels; and
* third, remedy or compensate for adverse residual impacts, which are unavoidable and cannot be
reduced further.

Question 5

How mitigation is carried out

Answer 5

• structural measures, such as design or location changes, engineering modifications and
  landscape or site treatment; and
• non-structural measures, such as economic incentives, legal, institutional and policy
  instruments, provision of community services and training and capacity building

Question 6

Costs and Benefit

Answer 6

• Although there are costs associated with undertaking EIA, experience has shown that the
  potential savings over the life of a project can repay the investment many times over.
• The savings can be economic (e.g. identification of least cost alternative) as well as
  environmental (e.g. impact reduction, maintaining other resource use opportunities).
• EIA is integrated into the project preparation phase, environmental design considerations
  can be introduced in the first place rather than the proposal having to be modified later.

Question 7

Benefits of EIA

Answer 7

• Better environmental planning and design of a proposal.
• EIA entails an analysis of alternatives in the design and location of projects.
• lowers waste outputs or an environmentally optimum location for a project.
• A well-designed project can minimize risks and impacts on the environment and people, and
  thereby avoid associated costs of remedial treatment or compensation for damage.
• Compliance with environmental standards reduces damage to the environment and
  disruption to communities.
• avoids the of penalties, fines and loss of trust and credibility.
• An ‘anticipate and avoid’ approach is much cheaper than ‘react and cure’. Generally,
  changes which must be made late in the project cycle are the most expensive.
• Reduced time and costs of approvals of development applications.
• If all environmental concerns have been taken into account properly before submission for
  project approval, then it is unlikely that delays will occur as a result of decision-makers
  asking for additional information or alterations to mitigation measures.
• Increased project acceptance by the public.

Question 8

Extra cost of EIA

Answer 8

• It can be difficult to determine the exact costs of an EIA because major projects typically
  require a large number of investigations and reports, often for closely related purposes (e.g.
  engineering feasibility studies of hydrology and surface materials).
• The World Bank notes that the cost of preparing an EIA rarely exceeds one per cent of the
  project costs and this percentage can be reduced further if local personnel are used to do
  most of the work.
• For Bank projects, the relative cost of an EIA typically ranges from only 0.06 per cent to 0.10
  per cent of total project costs.
• The total cost of an EIA on complexity of project, which has a significant environmental
  impact and requires extensive data collection and analysis