The Custodian Project

The primary purpose of EIA in South Africa is to serve as a key implementing instrument in ensuring sustainable development. In order to achieve this, the objective of EIA is to anticipate and avoid, minimise or mitigate (including offset) significant negative impacts on the environment.

The criteria used to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of EIA processes:

Category 1: Substantive (outcomes) criteria:

• Extent to which negative impacts were avoided or minimised;
• extent to which positive impacts were maximised;
• extent of contribution to sustainable development;
• extent of contribution to environmental policy objectives.

Category 2: Procedural (processes and products) criteria:

• Extent to which legal procedures were followed correctly;
• quality of the EIA report;
• quality of the authority evaluation;
• quality of decision-making and setting of conditions;
• extent of compliance monitoring and enforcement;

Category 3: Execution (efficient use of time1) criteria:

• Time it takes to produce EIA applications and documents; and
• time it takes to evaluate EIA applications and documents.

Note that 502 cases were evaluated.

The following questionnaires were developed to evaluate different perceptions. Sadly the response to the questionnaires was poor.

• An officials questionnaire;
• a practitioners questionnaire;
• an applicants questionnaire; and
• a stakeholders questionnaire.