EIA report quality in protected areas in South Africa – a SANParks longitudinal study

Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a tool used internationally to avoid or mitigate negative environmental impacts that are associated with development projects. EIA is mandatory in South Africa for certain development activities, including projects that have the potential to negatively affect protected areas, which provide for the conservation and management of the country's rich biodiversity. Several categories of protected areas exist, including national parks, which are managed by a leading conservation organisation known as South African National Parks (SANParks). In order to ensure that the purpose of EIA is achieved, it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the EIA system. Since there are various aspects of EIA effectiveness, there are also various methods to determine the effectiveness of this system, one of these being the quality review of Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs). EIRs are submitted to the authorities who then use the information in the reports to determine whether development projects should be authorised. The authorisation of certain development activities in protected areas (SANParks) are based primarily on the quality of the information in the EIR. However, the report quality of SANParks projects has not yet been determined. Therefore, an adapted version of the Lee and Colley review package was used to review the quality of a sample of 24 EIRs of SANParks development projects. Overall, 92% of the reports were graded as satisfactory, with the descriptive and presentational parts (Review Areas 1 and 4) of the EIRs more satisfactorily addressed than the more analytical parts (Review Area 2 and 3). These results appear to correspond with international EIR quality review findings. Additionally, since the South African EIA system has changed over the past 20 years, from the Environment Conservation Act (ECA) 1997 regime to the fourth National Environmental Management Act (NEMA) regime of 2017, it can be expected that EIR quality (and effectiveness) has improved over time. The SANParks EIRs were grouped according to the EIA regime under which the EIA was conducted. Three broad regimes, ECA 1997, NEMA 2006/10 co-regime and NEMA 2014/17 co-regime were used and the report quality of each was determined, in order to conduct a longitudinal study and identify temporal trends. The results revealed that EIR quality has improved from the ECA 1997 regime to the NEMA 2014/17 co-regime. However, areas in need of improvement were still noticeable, such as the duration of different development phases, the significance of impacts in terms of national and international quality standards, and the methods of obtaining quantities of wastes. The observed high satisfactory ratings and improvement of report quality can likely be attributed to several factors, i.e. biological importance of the areas, higher environmental literacy of tourists, education and specialist diversity of the park officials, the enhancement of the EIA regulations and the increase of the level of experience of the Environmental Assessment Practitioners.