The Civil Engineering Contractor June 2019 | Page 6

POLICYMAKERS
Look before you leap
By Eamonn Ryan
While many project champions conduct detailed environmental impact assessments (EIAs)
when a project investigation is well advanced, most are unaware that an earlier – and more
modest – strategic environmental assessment (SEA) may considerably reduce risk and
costs by guiding policy decisions.
4 | CEC June 2019
A
ccording to Philippa Burmeister, principal
environmental scientist in SRK’s Durban office, the
practical usefulness of an SEA is demonstrated by
Transnet’s Long-Term Planning Framework.
“It was the most incredible example of good governance
because there was no legal need or practice requirement.
It looked at creating a framework of sustainability criteria
against which any policy could be assessed. We then took
spatial long-term plans and overlaid them with a set of
environmental constraints, and this process identified areas
where development was likely to be delayed by the need
to offset and mitigate impacts and in some instances where
development would never have been approved. Without an
SEA, Transnet would have proposed and banked on expansions
on land that they couldn’t feasibly develop or obtain approval
for without investing in significant and costly offsets.”
Burmeister adds, even though South Africa’s environmental
legislation is on a par with the best in the world, the country
has been slow to recognise the value of SEAs because they
are not legislated but are popular planning tools in many
parts of the world.
“The logic of an SEA is to prevent time and resources being
expended on detailed planning, only to discover that the
natural and social environment cannot support an initiative
– or that the project will have an unacceptable impact on its
environment, also known as fatal flaw identification,” says
Burmeister. “There is often also an unfortunate preconception
that SEAs are lengthy and expensive undertakings; in fact,
they can be conducted quickly and simply, and still deliver
significant value.”
She highlights the two-way impact that companies need to
consider when planning projects: while the focus is usually
on the impact of the project on its environment, it is also
vital for projects to consider how their environments will
affect their own viability or sustainability.
“It is more likely that a project becomes stalled or even
halted by environmental impacts acting on that project,
rather than the project’s ‘outward’ impacts – as the selection
of appropriate alternatives can mitigate the latter,” she says.
An SEA is not dissimilar to a planning process, she
explains, which requires that the current situation facing a
developer or planner must be comprehended, as well as the
changes proposed and any alternatives to these that exist.
Philippa Burmeister, principal environmental scientist in SRK’s
Durban office.
The environmental impact of the options need to be assessed
and the outcome will inform the way forward based on
sustainability implications.
“The SEA could be described as an early-warning tool,
at the policy development or planning phase, that draws
attention to aspects of the policy or plan, which have
the potential to undermine its successful implementation.
Hence its strategic importance to investors and promoters,”
she says. “For instance, we could identify significant waste
disposal or resource requirements that cannot be met –
giving the client input at a stage where they still have time
to consider other options such as renewable technologies or
waste recovery, or a site alternative where requirements can
more easily be met.”
Unlike the better-known practice of EIA, the performance
of an SEA is not a legal requirement for private sector
project developers, she notes; with South Africa at the
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