1. Skills Portfolio

DUE: FRIDAY 07^th JULY midnight

This is your major assessment and worth 50% overall.

There are five tasks spread across the winter workshops.

Each workshop will start with some information delivery and then you will be broken into groups to workshop and learn the skills in impact assessment. You can then use the information developed in class as the starting point for your individual reports.

Task 1: Watch this video and answer the following questions:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5_m2ZDviYQLinks to an external site.

· What are some of the benefits of these developments?

· What are some of the disadvantages?

· If you were the decision maker, how would you weight these? Would you approve it?

· If you were the affected stakeholder, how would you weight these?

· Write a reflection on the utility of generic EIA processes (based on this clip) and incorporate some of the answers to the question above

Task 2: Doing a referral

In this task you are asked to do a real-life exercise: write a referral document/response.

You need to go to this site – All referrals  · EPBC Act Public Portal (awe.gov.au)Links to an external site.

Choose a project you wish to comment on.

Then write a submission on this referral – and at the end recommend whether in your opinion, the Minister should refer this to an EIA- and why or why not.

Use the template below for your answer.

Structure of Referral Document

EPBC Referral number and title

To: Minister X

Date:

· Dear Minister…..

· I write in relation to:

· Discussion of key issues

· Your conclusion – should it be a controlled action?

· If so at what level (PER – EIA etc)

· Any key elements you would suggest that must be in the Terms of Reference for controlled action?

· Name and contact number (you can make this up if you wish)

· References used

Task 3

Different Types of assessment

Once you have been advised that for the proposal to proceed, you must undertake an impact assessment, the decision then is to determine, what kind and form actual assessment will be undertaken.

Generally, assessments will be undertaken within (i) economic, (ii) social, (iii) cultural and (iv) environmental domains. But as discussed within each of these there may be additional assessments such as soil, water, air quality assessments, biodiversity assessments, health, noise, visual impact assessments and climate change impact assessments.

In this task, (and for all the others), you will use the case studies at the end of this section.

You will be asked to workshop a range of different types of assessment that you think will be needed per case study.

For each type of assessment, you choose for the case study, you need to:

(a) Describe the assessment - what is it, how do you do it

(b) Explain how it fits into EIA processes and why it is important for the EIA for this case study

(c) Find and the describe at least one other case study (equivalent) that has used that type of assessment, and how useful it was, what it brought to the process (TIP this is where you can use a peer reviewed source)

(d) on the basis of whether or not you demonstrate understanding of what should be in an EIS.

Task 4: Identifying Environmental Impacts - Using check lists

An essential part of identifying environmental impacts is via the use of a check list. Using one of the case studies provided below, develop a check list of likely environmental impacts. Fill in the following check list table – or develop one of your own. You can check out other models of check lists here - https://unece.org/environmental-impacts-checklistLinks to an external site.

EPBC Act Significant Impacts: Matters of National Environmental Significance

Category		Comment
	Listed threatened species and communities
	Listed migratory species
	Ramsar wetlands of international importance
	Commonwealth marine environment
	World heritage properties
	National heritage places
	The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
	Nuclear actions
	A water resource, in relation to coal seam gas development and large coal mining development

Environmental Impacts

Category		Comment/Description
	Air quality (including odours)
	Climate
	Dust
	Heritage – Aboriginal heritage (listed state or local heritage places)
	Heritage – Non-Aboriginal heritage (listed state or local heritage places)
	Human health and safety
	Fauna
	Flora
	Landscape
	Socio-economy
	Soil
	Sound/Noise
	Visual
	Waste disposal
	Water quality

Task 5: Ranking Impacts

· Using one of the case studies provided for the portfolio – or find a new one – workshop and work out a rage of impacts and then try to rank them.

· Fill in the table below. As part of the process, do some research and identify some mitigations or alternatives that may be suggested that may help reduce the severity of the impact.

Impact – description (this is drawn from the previous tables)	Negligible	Minor	Moderate	Major	Extreme	Are there any mitigation measures/alternatives? Describe	Final Ranking
Eg. Environmental
Eg.Social
Eg.Economic
Eg. Cultural