A Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) is a per­mit from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), giv­ing per­mis­sion for cer­tain types of projects and ac­tiv­i­ties. The EMA is the body which has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to co-or­di­nate, fa­cil­i­tate and over­see ex­e­cu­tion of an ef­fec­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­to­ry pro­gramme, and to pro­mote pub­lic aware­ness of the en­vi­ron­ment and the im­pact of cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties on its sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Act, Chap 35:05, out­lines a "des­ig­nat­ed list of ac­tiv­i­ties" which re­quire a CEC. These ac­tiv­i­ties are con­sid­ered to have the po­ten­tial for sig­nif­i­cant ad­verse ef­fects, or risks to the en­vi­ron­ment, whether in the phase of es­tab­lish­ment, ex­pan­sion, op­er­a­tion, de­com­mis­sion­ing or aban­don­ment. Ac­tiv­i­ties for which CECs are re­quired are wide-rang­ing. They may be cat­e­gorised broad­ly as be­ing re­lat­ed to:

Agri­cul­ture: eg fruit or veg­etable farm; an­i­mal farms; heavy and light man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dus­try; civ­il works; nat­ur­al re­source/min­er­al ex­trac­tion and pro­cess­ing, eg oil and gas; con­struc­tion works over a cer­tain lev­el, in­clu­sive of clear­ing, ex­ca­vat­ing and grad­ing of land; trans­port op­er­a­tions and con­struc­tion of as­so­ci­at­ed in­fra­struc­ture; oth­er ser­vice-ori­ent­ed in­dus­tries, eg. au­to­mo­tive re­pair garage, au­to­body shops or laun­dries.

Al­though a CEC is on­ly one of the many ap­provals re­quired be­fore a project ac­tiv­i­ty can com­mence, it is of some sig­nif­i­cance, since no con­struc­tion for which a CEC is re­quired can be­gin with­out the re­quired ap­proval hav­ing been ob­tained. On­ly mi­nor works that are re­quired to in­ves­ti­gate the site will be al­lowed. The im­pli­ca­tion is that where project con­trac­tors be­gin de­vel­op­ing a project site with­out ad­her­ing to these re­quire­ments and with­out ob­tain­ing the nec­es­sary en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance, they are op­er­at­ing out­side the law, and may be pe­nalised. In mak­ing an ap­pli­ca­tion for a CEC, the ap­pli­cant must dis­close cer­tain in­for­ma­tion to the EMA.

This in­for­ma­tion in­cludes the pur­pose and ob­jec­tive of the ac­tiv­i­ty; a de­scrip­tion of the site and the ar­eas like­ly to be af­fect­ed by the pro­posed ac­tiv­i­ty; the size and scale of the ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing ca­pac­i­ty, through­put, land space and cov­ered ar­eas; a de­scrip­tion of the ac­tiv­i­ty; the ex­pect­ed life of the ac­tiv­i­ty; the pro­posed sched­ule of ac­tions from prepara­to­ry work to start-up and op­er­a­tion; such maps, plans, di­a­grams, pho­tographs, charts and oth­er il­lus­tra­tive or graph­ic ma­te­r­i­al as may fa­cil­i­tate un­der­stand­ing of the in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed and the na­ture of the site.

How­ev­er, where any of the in­for­ma­tion re­quired is a trade se­cret or con­fi­den­tial busi­ness in­for­ma­tion, the ap­pli­cant may re­quest that such in­for­ma­tion be omit­ted from the Reg­is­ter. This is nec­es­sary, as the Reg­is­ter is a pub­lic doc­u­ment, open to in­spec­tion by mem­bers of the pub­lic. In mak­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mer­its of the ap­pli­ca­tion for a CEC, the EMA will give con­sid­er­a­tion to the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

-The ef­fect of noise

-Dust and fumes

-Wa­ter above and be­low ground lev­el

-Waste

-Flood­ing

-Land­slides

-Beach de­struc­tion

-Dam­age to homes

-Whether the neg­a­tive ef­fects of the project can be re­duced to ac­cept­able lev­els

-The ef­fect on an­i­mals and plants

-The ef­fect on ser­vices such as drink­ing wa­ter, roads and traf­fic and elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply

Is­sues that af­fect the com­mu­ni­ty such as health, wealth, ed­u­ca­tion, cus­tom and tra­di­tions that can be made bet­ter or worse by the project and can af­fect the en­vi­ron­ment. Al­though the EMA con­sid­ers a very wide scope of fac­tors in mak­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion of whether to grant the CEC, there are cer­tain oth­er fac­tors that the EMA does not have the pow­er to con­sid­er. These in­clude the health and safe­ty of per­sons when work­ing on a project dur­ing con­struc­tion or op­er­a­tion, whether the project is zoned for agri­cul­tur­al, com­mer­cial, res­i­den­tial or in­dus­tri­al use, and whether the project is the most ben­e­fi­cial use of the coun­try's en­er­gy re­sources.

The EMA may re­quire the ap­pli­cant to con­duct an En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment (EIA) be­fore a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion is made as to whether the CEC should be award­ed. An EIA is a study that is used to iden­ti­fy the en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of any de­vel­op­ment project. The EIA en­sures that any po­ten­tial prob­lems are fore­seen and dealt with at an ear­ly stage in the project's plan­ning and de­sign.

The pub­lic can par­tic­i­pate in the EIA process through di­rect con­tact with the EMA or de­vel­op­er's staff, sub­mit­ting writ­ten com­ments or at­tend­ing and voic­ing their con­cerns at pub­lic or com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings.

Giselle Al­isa Lan­deau and West­min James

This ar­ti­cle sets out gen­er­al guide­lines. All le­gal rules have ex­cep­tions and vari­a­tions. How the law ap­plies to you de­pends on the facts of your case.