Deep Sea Minerals - Vol 2 - Manganese Nodules

3.2

General Environmental Manage- ment Approaches and Principles

Responsible environmental management objectives involve bal- ancing resource use with the maintenance of deep-ocean ecosys- tem biodiversity. Thus, management should include consideration of any functional linkages between the ecosystem and the subsur- face biosphere, thewater column, the atmosphere, and the coasts. Consideration should also be given to the full range of goods and services that the ecosystem provides (Armstrong et al . 2010).

The 1992 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity de- fines the EcosystemApproach as: “Ecosystemand natural hab- itatsmanagement…tomeet human requirements to use natural resources, whilst maintaining the biological richness and eco- logical processes necessary to sustain the composition, struc- ture and function of the habitats or ecosystems concerned.”

Environmental Impact Assessment and Environmental Permitting Process Considerations: An example from Papua New Guinea

One approach to determining whether a project requires an environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a phased system of licences. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the Environment Act 2000 outlines three levels of activity based on impact severi- ty. Each has different permitting requirements. Level 1 includes activities such as exploration, which may be similar in some cases to scientific research. Exploration in- cludes drilling to a cumulative depth of up to 2 500 m. Level 2 includes activities such as drilling greater than a cumulative depth of 2 500 m. Mining is a Level 3 activity. A Level 1 activ- ity does not require an EIA or an environment permit. A Level 2 activity requires an environment permit, which involves an application process, but not an EIA. Any Level 3 activity re- quires an EIA, which culminates in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that must be approved in order to obtain an environment permit. The permit, in turn, must be in place before development proceeds. In PNG, the environmental permitting responsibilities lie with the Department of Envi- ronment and Conservation (DEC), while the mining licensing It is generally a legal requirement (e.g. UNCLOS Article 206) for a process of prior environmental impact assessment (‘EIA’) and a resulting report to be undertaken before any activities likely to cause significant harm to the environ- ment are permitted to proceed. An EIA should identify the likely environmental and social impacts of an activity, and how these would be monitored, prevented, mitigated and/ or compensated for, to enable the relevant Government to decide whether or not to permit the activity to proceed.

responsibilities are separate, falling to the Mineral Resourc- es Authority (MRA).

Key stages of work involved in obtaining an Environment Per- mit in PNG potentially serve as a useful guide for more general application within the Southwest Pacific. These are described, in sequence, below: 1. Environmental Inception Report (EIR): The completion of an EIR is the first step in developing an Environmental Impact Statement. The EIR outlines the Project description and the studies that will be conducted during the Environmental Impact Assessment process. 2. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): The International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) defines an EIA as “the process of identifying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social, and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commit- ments made.” The EIA process will involve conducting various studies (see below). 3. Environmental Impact Statement (EIS): The EIS is the report that compiles all the information gathered during the EIA process and forms the statutory basis for environmental assessment of the Project. The EIS usually sets out a development proposal in- tended to enable engineering, cost, environmental, and commer- cial implications to be assessed by the Project proponent, the public, and relevant government agencies. The EIS characterises the Project’s beneficial and adverse impacts and risks, based, where necessary, on external scientific studies, and sets out measures to mitigate and monitor those impacts and risks. The

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