092-i. Advisory review: ESIA for dredging and coal transportation

The NCEA reviewed an ESIA report for dredging of and coal transportation on a section of the Zambezi river. It found three important shortcomings and recommended that these should be remedied in a supplement to the ESIA report.

Advisory reports and other documents

Significant details

Dredging of the Zambezi river is necessary to facilitate coal transportation from a mine to an offload point. An Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) was undertaken for this project, including the dredging works as well as the coal transportation itself. The Environmental Ministry of Mozambique (MICOA) asked the NCEA to review this ESIA and agreed to follow a shortened procedure due to time constraints. This shortened procedure means that no site visit and stakeholder consultations were undertaken, and no relevant documents other than the ESIA and its annexes were reviewed. The resulting technical desk review assesses the quality of the ESIA on the basis of Mozambican regulations as well as professional good practice. The advisory review contains general and more specific observations. Some of the general observations are:

• The ESIA report is well written, but uncertainties on some issues arise due to a lack of information on specific issues;
• No alternative transport modalities (railway, pipeline, road transport) are discussed - this should certainly be done in the planned SEA for the Multi-Sector Plan;
• The ESIA lacks a justification of several chosen water elevation and discharge levels;
• There is no sensitivity analysis of assessed impacts in light of uncertainties of amounts of materials that need to be dredged;
• There is no detailed description of the monitoring programme to deal with these uncertainties.

The NCEA has recommended to remedy the latter three shortcomings in a supplement to the ESIA report before the start of the licensing process.

Parties involved

Members of the working group

Chair: Rudy Rabbinge
Technical secretary: Corrie Smit

Further details

Country: Mozambique; Zambezi

Last modified: 02 Sep 2014