Biodiversity component of the Environmental Impact Assessment screening tool

Abstract

The Department of Environmental Affairs is in the process of developing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening tool. The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is supporting the development of the EIA screening tool by providing the relevant biodiversity layers for inclusion in the tool. These biodiversity layers would serve as sensitive biodiversity that need to be taken into account during the environmental authorisation process. SANBI has developed a list of spatial biodiversity priority and feature layers, including both ecosystem and species level datasets that will be used during screening. In addition to the biodiversity layers provided, SANBI will support the development of protocols for all the biodiversity layers, which will guide the appropriate development that can take place at the site assessment level. This presentation focuses on the layers identified and the framework that will be used to draft the protocol for the relevant layers across a range of development activity types.