The EIA process in South Africa, explained

The requirement comes from the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 (NEMA) and the 2014 Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations. It is not triggered by the kind of business you run, but by whether your project matches a listed activity in one of three schedules published under the regulations.

• Listing Notice 1 covers lower-impact activities and follows the shorter basic assessment route.
• Listing Notice 2 covers higher-impact activities and requires the full scoping and environmental impact reporting route.
• Listing Notice 3 covers activities that are only listed in specific provinces or in sensitive geographic areas, and normally follows basic assessment.

Common triggers for commercial and industrial clients include clearing indigenous vegetation above a threshold area, infrastructure within a watercourse or within 32 metres of one, fuel or dangerous goods storage above certain volumes, expansion of existing facilities, filling stations, and electricity generation and transmission infrastructure above stated capacities.

Two projects on the same site can fall on different routes, and a single project often triggers several listed activities at once. The activity list determines the route, the specialist studies and therefore the entire budget, so the listing exercise is the first thing worth getting right.

Basic assessment is the shorter route. An environmental assessment practitioner prepares a basic assessment report with the specialist input the activity calls for, runs public participation, and submits it to the competent authority for decision.

Scoping and environmental impact reporting is the long route, used where impacts are significant. It runs in two stages: a scoping report and plan of study that the authority must accept, and only then the environmental impact assessment report with the full suite of specialist studies and an environmental management programme.

For either route the same non-negotiable pieces have to be in place: an independent practitioner, a site sensitivity verification, public participation with registered interested and affected parties, comment from the relevant state departments, and an environmental management programme that becomes an enforceable condition of the authorisation.

The regulations set outer limits for the authority's decision, not for the work leading up to it. As a practical planning rule:

• Basic assessment: roughly 3 to 5 months of preparation and public participation, with the authority allowed up to 107 days from a compliant submission to decide.
• Scoping and EIR: roughly 9 to 15 months in total, with the authority allowed up to 300 days across both stages from a compliant submission.
• Appeals: a further 20 days to lodge an appeal after the decision, and the authorisation is suspended while an appeal is pending.

Where projects actually lose time is seasonal specialist studies. Aquatic, avifaunal and botanical surveys often have to be done in a particular season, and a single missed window can add six months no matter how efficiently everything else is run. Waiting for comment from a state department is the second most common delay.

There is no application fee for most environmental authorisations. The cost is professional: the practitioner, the legal work, the specialist studies and public participation. The specialists are usually the largest line item and the least predictable one, because the activity list dictates which studies are compulsory.

We quote our legal and coordination scope as one all-in fixed fee, agreed in writing before any work starts, so the only variable left in your budget is the specialist scope. Our environmental authorisation mandate runs at R145,000 all-in, and a regulatory readiness review, which tells you which route and which studies apply before you commit to anything, runs at R35,000 all-in.

The competent authority depends on the activity and the sector. For most commercial and industrial projects it is the provincial environmental department. National government decides where it is the applicant or where the activity crosses provincial borders, and the mineral resources department decides for activities tied to prospecting or mining.

Environmental authorisation is also not the only approval a project needs. A water use licence, a waste management licence, an atmospheric emission licence, municipal land-use and building approvals and, for generation projects, energy registration or licensing frequently run alongside it. Sequencing those applications together is what keeps a project from stalling at the last step.

Commencing a listed activity without authorisation is an offence, and stopping work does not undo it. The remedy is a Section 24G rectification application, which carries an administrative fine in addition to the full assessment work. If this describes your site, deal with it before an inspector does.