- Guidance
Preparing Environmental Impact Assessments: General guidelines for offshore mining and drilling with particular reference to New Zealand
These guidelines have contributed to development of EIA template and guidance by the International Seabed Authority
The guidance is not intended to be exhaustive or prescriptive. Each resource and each location will have its own set of circumstances that are best described and assessed in a particular way.
However, the document covers aspects that should be in every EIA, and provides general guidance to the content in each section of the template. It includes:
- A background to the project and the purpose of this guidance document
- Outlines (and appends in full) the EIA template
- Provides general advice on how to prepare an EIA
- Details specific guidance on template sections
- A list of references to help users access important sources of information
- A glossary of key terms and abbreviations
- A table containing useful websites for further information
This document focuses on guidance for environmental and ecological assessment of impacts. The template includes sections and subsections on social, economic, and cultural issues, following the EIA template produced by the ISA. These issues are often treated separately, and how that is addressed can be evaluated for each specific case. Their inclusion here attempts to progress the concept of a more integrated impacts assessment, even though provision of advice on them was beyond the scope of the existing study.
