Regional Consultation on Commonalities of Environmental Impact Assessment in ASEAN Member States

The ‘Regional Consultation on Commonalities of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in ASEAN Member States and Advancing a Harmonized and Rights-Based Approach to EIA in ASEAN’ is co-organized by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC) of Myanmar in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The consultation follows three workshops organized by the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) in 2014, September 2015, and October 2017 to address the link between human rights, environment and climate change. The most recent workshop focused on the benefits and feasibility of having a regional approach for environmental assessment that could address environmental, social, economic and human rights issues as part of ASEAN’s management of environmental impacts.

Objectives

• Review existing approaches, experiences from other regions, gaps and rationale/opportunities for a harmonized approach and present a draft compendium of existing national EIA procedures and commonalities in ASEAN Member States;
• Provide a forum for the consideration of next steps for the development of a regional instrument on a rights-based framework for effective EIA in ASEAN Member States, transboundary EIA and Strategic Environmental Assessment; and
• Examine how to assemble and engage the rights stakeholders and mobilize the necessary resources to advance the proposal.

Programme