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Environmental Mitigation, Monitoring and Management Plan

Chapter 5 of the course on Environmental Impact Assessment focuses on impact mitigation, monitoring, and auditing, outlining strategies to minimize environmental and social impacts during project design, construction, and operation. It emphasizes a hierarchy of actions for mitigation, including avoidance, minimization, and compensation, while also highlighting the importance of monitoring and auditing to ensure effective implementation and continuous improvement. The chapter concludes with the necessity of environmental audits to assess the accuracy of impact predictions and the effectiveness of mitigation measures throughout the project lifecycle.

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45 views25 pages

Environmental Mitigation, Monitoring and Management Plan

Chapter 5 of the course on Environmental Impact Assessment focuses on impact mitigation, monitoring, and auditing, outlining strategies to minimize environmental and social impacts during project design, construction, and operation. It emphasizes a hierarchy of actions for mitigation, including avoidance, minimization, and compensation, while also highlighting the importance of monitoring and auditing to ensure effective implementation and continuous improvement. The chapter concludes with the necessity of environmental audits to assess the accuracy of impact predictions and the effectiveness of mitigation measures throughout the project lifecycle.

Uploaded by

Abishe
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Program: BSc in Water Resources Engineering

Course: Environmental Impact Assessment (WREN5201)

Chapter 5

Impact Mitigation, Monitoring and Auditing

By Andinet Kebede (PhD)


Dec. 2024
Definition

– Actions during design, construction & operation to


minimize or Internalize environmental & social impacts
of the project.

– In practice, mitigation emphasised in EIA process


following impact identification & prediction.

– Less desirable approach, less commonly practiced.


 Objectives
 To find better ways of doing things
 Enhance environmental & social benefits
 Avoid & minimize or remedy adverse impacts
 Ensure that residual impacts are within acceptable levels

 Thus, considering the –ve impacts, it aims to


 prevent adverse impacts from happening
 keep those that occur within acceptable level.
Structural Non-structural
Measures Measures

Design or location
Economic incentives
changes

Engineering Legal, institutional &


modifications policy instrument

Landscape or site Provision of


treatment community services

Training & capacity


building
Elements of Mitigation
o Mitigation organised into a hierarchy of actions:

1) Avoid adverse impacts as far as possible by use of


preventative measures;

2) Minimise or reduce adverse impacts to ‘as low as


practicable’ levels;

3) Remedy or compensate for adverse residual impacts,


which are unavoidable & can’t be reduced further.
Elements of Mitigation
Impact Avoidance
 Avoidance
 Alternative sites or technology to eliminate habitat loss.
 Can be achieved by
 Not undertaking certain projects or elements
 Avoiding environmentally sensitive areas
 Measures to prevent impacts from occurring
 Site remediation bonds
 Resettlement plans
 In kind measures and offsets
Impact Minimization
 Can be achieved by:

 Scaling down or relocating the project

 Redesigning elements of the project

 Measures to manage the impacts


Impact Compensation
 Can be achieved by:

 Rehabilitation of resource or environmental


components

 Restoration of the site to its previous state

 Replacement of the environmental values lost at


another location
 Depending on timing of the project cycle & impacts nature:
 Compensate for impacts by:
– Monetary payment - for loss of land or amenity resulting
from a proposal, e.g. to make way for roads
– Site remediation bonds - As insurance, to ensure
sufficient funds will be available for the required mitigation
– Resettlement plans - such as reservoirs & irrigation
schemes
– In kind measures - offsetting CO2 emissions by planting
forests.
Summary of key principles in impact mitigation
 Give preference to avoidance & prevention measures
 Consider feasible alternatives to the proposed activity
 Identify customized measures to minimize each major
impact
 Ensure they are appropriate & cost effective
 Use compensation as a last resort
Responsibility of Proponents
 To avoid, minimize and remedy adverse impacts

 Internalize environmental & social costs of project

 Prepare plans for managing impacts

 Repair or make amends for environmental damages


Influencing factors of mitigation options
1) Cost

 Recommendations should take into account on the


ground ‘realities’:

• E.g. A small business will not be able to install an


elaborate wastewater treatment facility.

 Hence, challenge is to find mitigation options that meet


environmental req’ts, while being economically feasible
for the business operator.
2) Social Norms

 Even if feasible economically & sound environmentally,


some recommendations may not be acceptable socially.

• E.g. Some de-fluoridation techniques for drinking water


from groundwater sources were not successful because
they were not acceptable socially (take bone char).
 Major projects have life cycle with many key stages with
long period, for planning, construction, operation &
decommissioning.
 EIA relates primarily to period before the decision.

 There is danger of 'build it & forget it' approach; EIA


should not stop at the decision.
 It should be more than back-up to obtain planning permit;
should be way to obtain good environ mng’t over project
life.
 This means including monitoring & auditing fully into EIA.
 ESIA should maximize potential for continuous impv’t.

 Resources spent on baseline studies & predictions of little


value unless testing predictions & determining if mitigation
& enhancement measures appropriately applied.

 M&A should
 reduce time & resource invested to ESIA by allowing all
participants to learn from past experience;
 contribute to general enhancing of credibility of
proponents, regulatory agencies & EIA processes.
 Systematic collection of a potentially large quantity of info
over long period of time (indicators + casual underlining).
 Measuring & recording of physical, social & economic
variables associated with dev’t impacts (e.g. air quality,
noise & employment levels).
 Provides info on x-tics & functioning of variables in time &
space, particularly on occurrence & magnitude of impacts.
 Can improve project mng’t. It can help to identify &
correct unanticipated impacts.
 E.g. early warning sy., to identify harmful trends in a locality
before it is too late to take remedial action.
 Info collected stored, analysed & communicated to relevant
participants in EIA process.
 It can also provide accepted database,  can be useful in
mediation b/n interested parties.
 Essential for successful environ impact auditing & can be one
of the most effective guarantees of commitment to undertak-
ings & to mitigation and enhancement measures.
 Primary req’t- to focus monitoring activity only on 'parameter
expected to experience significant impact, along with those
parameters for which assessment method or basic data were
not so well established as desired'
 Baseline data, project descriptions, impact predictions &
mitigation measures – all developed with monitoring in mind.
 EIS should include monitoring programme - that has
 clear objectives,
 temporal & spatial controls,
 adequate duration (e.g. covering main stages of project),
 practical methodologies,
 clear responsibilities,
 open & regular reporting.

 Ideally, monitoring activity should include partnership b/n


parties involved; e.g., collection of info could involve
developer, local authority & local community.
 Assessment of certain type of performance.
 In the context of EIA, audit refers to:
1. Organization of monitoring data to record change associated with
a project and
2. Comparison of actual & predicted impacts to assess whether the
impact prediction performs satisfactorily.
 It assesses:
 actual environmental impact,
 accuracy of prediction (how close to actual impact),
 effectiveness of environmental impact mitigation measures,
 functioning of monitoring mechanisms.
 Audit serves as a useful feedback & learning function.
 Environmental Audit - last stage of EIA, with purpose to
capitalize on experience & knowledge gained.
 Usually done by separate team of specialists.
 It includes analysis of 3 aspects of EIA.
 Technical aspects: adequacy of baseline studies, accuracy
of predictions & suitability of mitigation measures.
 Procedural aspects: efficiency of procedure, fairness of
public involvement measures & degree of coordination of
roles and responsibilities.
 Decision-making aspects: utility of the process for decision
making & implications for dev’t.
 Audit should be undertaken while project in operation, for some time,
& usually performed once or twice in the entire project cycle.

 Audit recommended for use in different phases of EIA process:

 At project approval stage, both project proponent & authorizing


agency should consider audit technique.

 likely results in new info or improvement in mng’t practices.


 Environmental auditing should compare monitoring results with
info generated during the pre-project period.

 Comparisons can be made with similar projects or against


standard norms.

 Since EIA concept is relatively recent, use of environ audits plays


significant role in evolving systematic approach of the application
of EIA.

 For example: Relating actual impacts with predicted impacts, help


in evaluating accuracy & adequacy of EIA predictions.

 Lessons learnt & formally described in audit can greatly assist in


future EIAs & build up the expertise.
Examples of auditing of environmental impact predictions

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