What are they Screening y Scoping? The term Screening refers to the process for deciding which projects require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and what type it will be and the Scoping indicates what information must be included to know if a plan will affect the Environment.
General Guidelines: What are Screening and Scoping?
The processes feed each other, since, to decide whether it is appropriate to prepare a semi-detailed EIA or a detailed EIA (Screening), it is important to know if the project will present moderate or high impacts and this requires an assessment of the threats and fragility of the areas of influence (scoping).
Environmental Consultants are based on this reasoning and when faced with an EIA they try to know several things: the ministry where it will be presented, the standards to be taken into account, the authorities that could have binding opinions in the review of the EIA, etc
These data are part of the “screening” and allow them to recognize which will be the competent authority and, therefore, the sectoral legal framework to apply. The visualization of the project lines, their impact on the Environment and its components, is already part of the “scoping”.
Practical case: What are Screening and Scoping?
An Environmental Consultant receives a project from a company that intends to plant a certain amount of products in a protected area, which, however, allows in certain areas to be grown in a natural, ecological and sustainable way.
The first step is to know which ministry has jurisdiction over the project, in this case Mapama (Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment) to evaluate the general regulations, which will be what will give a legal framework to the project.
Then the authorities that exercise direct control over said protected area must be consulted. This will allow them to know what the legal and technical specifications are required to carry out said crops in that particular space.
These two fundamental steps are the basis of the “screening” of this plan, since they will allow the Consultant to know whether or not it is necessary to prepare a EIA and if so, the scope that this should have can be assessed.
Once all the laws and regulations that will govern the achievement of the project are known and assuming that an EIA is necessary, the “scoping“, that is, the real assessment of the existence of some type of impact on the surrounding environment, if the planned plantations are carried out.