Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment is a type of activ­i­ty aimed at iden­ti­fy­ing, ana­lyz­ing, and account­ing for direct, indi­rect, and oth­er con­se­quences of the impact of planned activ­i­ties (in our case, sub­soil use) in order to make a deci­sion on the pos­si­bil­i­ty or impos­si­bil­i­ty of their imple­men­ta­tion. Con­duct­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment (EIA) pro­ce­dure is a key ele­ment in prepar­ing envi­ron­men­tal­ly safe sub­soil use.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment pro­ce­dure is a process that facil­i­tates the adop­tion of an envi­ron­men­tal­ly ori­ent­ed deci­sion on the imple­men­ta­tion of planned sub­soil use activ­i­ties by iden­ti­fy­ing neg­a­tive impacts, assess­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences, tak­ing pub­lic opin­ion into account, and devel­op­ing mea­sures to reduce and pre­vent impacts. The process of con­duct­ing an EIA for planned activ­i­ties and prepar­ing rel­e­vant mate­ri­als, which form the basis for the devel­op­ment of sub­stan­ti­at­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion for objects of state envi­ron­men­tal exper­tise, is reg­u­lat­ed by the Law of Ukraine “On Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment”.

The pur­pose of impact assess­ment is to reflect the over­all sit­u­a­tion of the state of all ele­ments of the envi­ron­ment in the pro­ject­ed area of imple­men­ta­tion of the planned sub­soil use activ­i­ty and to devel­op mea­sures to reduce or mit­i­gate the impact of this activ­i­ty on the envi­ron­ment and the relat­ed social or eco­nom­ic con­se­quences.

What is the time­frame for con­duct­ing an EIA? The over­all dura­tion of an EIA in Ukraine may vary. Typ­i­cal­ly, the EIA pro­ce­dure includes the fol­low­ing stages: prepa­ra­tion of tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion, pub­lic dis­cus­sion, data col­lec­tion and analy­sis, addi­tion­al stud­ies, expert reviews, prepa­ra­tion of the report, and issuance of the EIA deci­sion. Accord­ing to the Law on Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment, the EIA time­lines in Ukraine may be as fol­lows:

• A project requir­ing an EIA must gen­er­al­ly under­go EIA pri­or to the com­mence­ment of con­struc­tion or recon­struc­tion. The EIA dura­tion may be up to 60 days from the date of sub­mis­sion of a com­plete EIA appli­ca­tion.
• If addi­tion­al stud­ies or expert involve­ment are required, the EIA dura­tion may be extend­ed to up to 90 days.
• In cas­es where the EIA involves a large scope of work or is of a com­plex nature, the time­frame may be extend­ed to up to 120 days.

• Gen­er­al infor­ma­tion;
• A list of doc­u­men­ta­tion sub­stan­ti­at­ing the need for assess­ment;
• The pur­pose and neces­si­ty of imple­ment­ing the planned activ­i­ty;
• A list of alter­na­tive options for achiev­ing the objec­tives of the planned activ­i­ty (dif­fer­ent loca­tions of the facil­i­ty, tech­nolo­gies, and oth­er alter­na­tives with­in the customer’s author­i­ty), includ­ing the pro­posed option and the option of отказ from activ­i­ty;
• A list of pos­si­ble types of envi­ron­men­tal impact from the planned eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty for alter­na­tive options;
• A descrip­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment that may be affect­ed by the planned eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty as a result of its imple­men­ta­tion;

The fol­low­ing must also be devel­oped:

• Strate­gic envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment of the planned eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty under alter­na­tive options, includ­ing assess­ment of the reli­a­bil­i­ty of fore­cast­ed con­se­quences of the planned invest­ment activ­i­ty;
• Mea­sures to reduce the neg­a­tive impact of the planned eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty;
• A mon­i­tor­ing pro­gram and post-project analy­sis;
• Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the selec­tion of the planned sub­soil use activ­i­ty option from all con­sid­ered alter­na­tives;
• Mate­ri­als of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions approved dur­ing the con­duct of stud­ies and prepa­ra­tion of mate­ri­als for the envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment of the planned eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty.

Mate­ri­als from con­duct­ed assess­ments are manda­to­ri­ly entered into the Uni­fied Reg­is­ter for Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment.

Who carries out the Environmental Impact Assessment?

Accord­ing to Arti­cle 23 of the Law of Ukraine “On Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment”, EIAs are con­duct­ed by orga­ni­za­tions that pos­sess pro­fes­sion­al and tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence in the field of envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment and meet the require­ments estab­lished by leg­is­la­tion. Orga­ni­za­tions con­duct­ing EIAs are typ­i­cal­ly pri­vate con­sult­ing firms, sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tions, or envi­ron­men­tal com­pa­nies. They have teams of spe­cial­ists from var­i­ous fields, such as ecol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, hydrol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, soci­ol­o­gy, and oth­ers, who are capa­ble of assess­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact of projects from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives.

Orga­ni­za­tions engaged in EIA must adhere to pro­fes­sion­al ethics and stan­dards estab­lished by rel­e­vant author­i­ties. They are capa­ble of car­ry­ing out nec­es­sary stud­ies, col­lect­ing and ana­lyz­ing data, con­duct­ing pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions, and prepar­ing EIA reports. One such orga­ni­za­tion is the Insti­tute of Geol­o­gy; our spe­cial­ists will be pleased to per­form Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment works for you in the short­est pos­si­ble time and in full com­pli­ance with all reg­u­la­to­ry doc­u­ments. For more detailed infor­ma­tion on this or oth­er ser­vices, please con­tact us by phone at +38(044) 465–75-86, +38(067) 286–84-14, or email us at insgeoua@gmail.com.