What needs to be considered when providing documents
When making documents available on the portal, several aspects need to be taken into account to ensure that the documents are available in a user-friendly manner.
- All documents relating to ongoing EIAs will be published.
- Documents are available in easily accessible formats (e.g. pdf).
- Documents have meaningful titles.
- Documents are organised in as standardised a filing system as possible.
- There is a non-technical summary for each EIA procedure so that the proposed project can be quickly and easily understood by all citizens without prior knowledge.
- In addition, minutes and video recordings (where participants have consented) of public meetings can be uploaded, which can be helpful to interested parties who were unable to attend the meeting.
In most EIA portals, document management is very confusing. As a result, citizens are left in the dark about a planned project or have to spend a lot of time trying to find the information that is relevant to them. This makes effective public participation much more difficult. For example, for many EIA projects in Germany, more than 500 files are uploaded to the portals.
In addition, some of the documents have incomprehensible titles or contain abbreviations that are unfamiliar to laypersons. Uploaded documents are often not available as pdf files, but as .docx files or as data-rich zip folders that have to be downloaded. In many projects, the number of documents is so large that it takes a long time for users to click through them. In addition, users cannot determine whether the uploaded documents are actually complete.
Clarity is further hampered by the fact that some public authority websites only publish the EIA notification, i.e. the decision to initiate an EIA for a project, while the EIA documents themselves are published on a different website. For effective participation, however, it would be necessary for all documents to be available in a standardised and clearly structured portal.
We have not found an EIA portal that organises the EIA documents in a satisfactory manner. However, there are some noteworthy approaches in Estonia and Canada.
Good practice examples
Estonia
Estonia does not have a centralised EIA portal. EIA documents are published on the websites of various ministries, various local authorities and a portal for environmental permits (KOTKAS). The following good practice examples were identified in the KOTKAS portal:
In addition to the legally required content, the KOTKAS portal provides an overview of the purpose of the EIA procedure, the various stages of this procedure and the current status of the procedure. A diagram of the EIA procedure is included to make the process easier to understand. The overview makes the procedure clearer and more accessible for citizens.
Source: Screenshot Estonian KOTKAS portal
EIA documents are also published on the website of the Estonian Environmental Protection Agency. In some cases, minutes and recordings of the consultation meetings are also published here, which can also be seen as an example of good practice, as this allows citizens who were unable to attend the consultation meeting to obtain information.
Canada
In the Canadian portal (Canadian impact assessment registry), particularly important documents (key documents) can be found directly on the project page in the portal and can be downloaded.
Source: Screenshot of the Canadian impact assessment registry
