Environment and Social Impact Assessment - ESIA

Environment and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) is a crucial process for evaluating the potential environmental and social impacts of proposed projects or activities in the country. ESIA is extensively legislated under the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, the National Environment Act, Cap 181, and other associated regulations including National Environment (Environmental and Social Assessment) Regulations, 2020. It’s important to note that the ESIA process is designed to promote sustainable development by identifying and mitigating potential adverse impacts, safeguarding the environment, and ensuring that the concerns of affected communities are addressed. This process helps strike a balance between development and environmental and social protection.

Since NEMA’s establishment, it has been providing guidance to developers in all sectors including; manufacturing, agriculture, construction, extractives, and others in implementing projects/enterprises that comply with environment regulations. The Authority does this role by requiring projects that have potential negative impacts on the environment to carry out Environment Social Impact Assessments.  In the past four years, FY2020/2021 to 2023/2024, the Authority has carried out a robust assessment of enterprises in the country for environment compliance. In all the Financial Years, the Authority targeted to review and process 90% of ESIA documents (TORs and reports) submitted to NEMA for review and guidance on investment to avoid environment degradation and pollution.

The analysis of ESIA documents processing shows that in FY2020/2021, 1,743 ESIA documents were targeted to be processed and 84% was achieved, similarly in FY2023/2024, 3,319 documents were targeted and 86% were processed. The increase of the target in FY2023/2024 shows an increase in number of ESIA documents submitted to NEMA for processing, this is as a result of strengthened environment enforcement, compliance inspection and monitoring and awareness about environment protection. The trend of performance across the four financial years, demonstrates a good performance of ESIA documents processing, in all the FYs at least 80% targeted documents to processed was achieved. The over performance of 103% in FY2022/2023 was associated with focus on completing the backlog of documents that were carried forward from previous financial years. Figure 2 shows the performance trend across the four financial years.

Figure 2: Trends of ESIA documents processing; FY2020/2021 to 2023/2024

ESIA Baseline Verifications Inspections

Baseline inspection involves gathering comprehensive information such as social conditions of the projects submitted to the Authority, sensitivity of location, ground-truthing of the location, levels of stakeholder engagement, and land ownership verification to guide the Authority on informed decision making about the project. The baseline information serves as a reference point to evaluate the potential impacts of the project and to monitor changes over time and informs the final decision on the project.

In FY2020/2021, out of 1,478 ESIA documents processed, 893 were inspected, for FY2021/2022, 829 were inspected out of the 2,600 processed. In addition, in FY2023/24, out of 1,000 project that were targeted to be inspected, 920 were inspected as illustrated in figure 3.

Figure 3: ESIA baseline verification inspections

Chemicals Safety, Radiation, and Pollution Prevention

The Authority develops and implements plans, strategies, and initiatives to enhance chemical safety radiation and pollution prevention and management in Uganda and carries out compliance monitoring and inspection to ensure proper use of chemicals. It also designs and implements mechanisms for pollution prevention control and management and supports public awareness and education on chemical safety radiation and pollution prevention and management in the country. According to section 73 of the NEA Cap. 181, the Authority is mandated to issue licences to persons dealing with waste management.

In the past three financial years, NEMA has issued 189 licences for waste management, 65 were issued in FY2021/22, 35 in FY2022/23 and 89 in FY2023/24. The licences issued are for both hazardous and non-hazardous waste.

NEMA has created a Technical Committee on Pollution Control (TCPC) to review and provide guidance on application made for acquisition of waste management licence. In the FY2023/2024, 144 applications for licence of waste management (transport, store, and treat wastes) were received. All the 144 applications submitted were reviewed and concluded, 91 applications were approved and 53 were rejected/differed pending TCPC decision as shown in the table 5 below.

Table 5: Waste Management Applications Handled

The Authority has put in place strategies to improve management of chemicals in the country. These include, among others:

  1. Stakeholder needs assessment on sound chemical managemen
  2. Engagement with regulatory agencies to popularise the chemicals management requirement under the NEA, Cap. 181.
  3. In-house information sharing and capacity building to enhance compliance assistance for indu
  4. Formulation of information sharing platform on chemical, waste and radiation management and pollution preven
  5. Enrolling of aspects of chemicals and waste onto the single window platfor
  6. Developing a road map for the popularisation and implementation of the Chemicals Regula
  7. Undertaking baseline assessment of the potential radiation and chemical pollution source
  8. Training of the licensed waste handlers on the waste licensing requirements and conditions of lice
  9. Developing proposals for funds to support local research in relation to chemicals and environmental safety to inform specific policie

In FY2023/2024, the Authority carried out Chemical Inventory of chemicals used in batteries, paint, ceramic tiles and cement production processes to assess the use and management of chemicals and related waste. It was also meant to obtain data on the list of chemicals used in the selected industrial processes, the chemicals management strategies at the facilities and the prohibition status of the chemicals used. This is done to support the obligation of the Authority in enforcing sound chemicals management strategies. The inventory was carried out in the districts of Kampala, Wakiso, Mukono, Buikwe, Jinja and Tororo.  The inventory was undertaken to obtain information to support the ongoing process of popularizing the chemicals regulations as well as informing the development of the guidelines to operationalize the regulations. This also involved obtaining industrial and consumer chemicals information for national database to facilitate reporting to the secretariat on international Multilateral Environmental Agreements related to sound chemicals management. This will further inform the designing of training and awareness programs for industrial sector on sound chemicals management.

Automation of Environment Assessment and Compliance Monitoring

The Authority has automated the environment assessment and compliance system by rolling out the ELMIS, the system was officially rolled out on 1st March 2024.  ELMIS is expected to improve efficiency in the application, processing and issuance of licenses and generation of ESIA reports. The system started with two operational modules namely; ESIA and practitioners. Other modules such as environment audits, permits, audit certification, incident reporting and management are being programmed. In a period of three months, (March-May 2024) 1,327 projects had been submitted through the system and 434 practitioners had registered into the system.

It is important to note that key stakeholders were consulted and contributed to the development process of the system. This was intended to ensure that concerns of developers, practitioners and lead agencies are fully considered. Among other objectives, ELMIS will:

  1. Integrate NEMA’s systems with other institutions of government such as URA, UIA and URSB.
  2. Reduce human to human interactions hence improving the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery by NEMA.
  3. Improve online service for application, submission, processing, and issuance of environment certificate.