Buzzword 4: Proportionate Environmental Impact Assessment

I have a particular aversion to concepts and documents that are used to obtain a permit and then shelved for good without a second look. The concept of the environmental impact assessment is one of those. Now there is the more buzzword-y version: proportionate EIA. It sounds tidy. It gets printed in scoping reports and notes. Then real life happens and reports are filled with hundreds of pages in the sprint for the environmental permit approval. And then silence. Follow through fades. That is why Buzzword no. 4 on The No Nonsense Sustainability Podcast is all about making proportionate EIA a lived practice, not a slogan.

For this episode I invited Josh Fothergill of Fothergill Consulting. He has been deep in the UK’s national EIA processes and has trained practitioners and authorities on what “good” actually looks like. I wanted someone who has seen the system from the inside, and who can talk about skills, practice, and the reality of delivery.

Why this episode

I keep seeing the same pattern. Developers commission an EIA and supporting documents, use them to secure permits, then the machine moves on. The EIA becomes a record of intent rather than a management tool. In my ideal world, permitting is a stage, not the finish line. We assess impacts, set mitigation, implement, monitor, compare outcomes to baseline and prediction, and adjust. With social performance we often get a feedback loop through engagement and grievance handling. On environmental topics, that loop is much weaker. Mitigation measures go in and we assume the job is done.

This episode is my attempt to pull the loop closed.

What we dug into

1) Skills and the “certification effect.”There is a growing market for EIA certifications. That can be good for common language and minimum standards. It can also turn practice into a checklist. We talked about the skills that actually matter on live projects: framing materiality, writing for decision makers, designing monitoring that answers a real question, and knowing when “less” is the right choice.

2) Proportionate does not mean shallow.Proportionate means tuned to the decision at hand, the risk profile, and the sensitivity of receptors. Sometimes that leads to a lean chapter. Sometimes it means a rigorous study on one issue and a light touch on the rest. The point is to spend effort where it changes outcomes.

3) The invisible half of EIA.Scoping and permitting get all the attention. Implementation, monitoring, and course correction are where projects earn or lose trust. We talked through practical ways to make those parts visible and accountable.

The bit that needs more attention

EIAs have become a commodity. You can order “an EIA” like you order a book or a pair of shoes. That market pressure can pull practitioners toward producing documents rather than enabling decisions. Neither of us thinks a badge alone fixes that. Teams need process habits, clear ownership, and a line of sight from promised mitigation to verified outcome.

How to make proportionate EIA real

The big question and perhaps observation I had is that some of this bloating of reports is completely self-induced. Very often we are making our own lives more difficult by justifying our existence with overcrowded documents. As if we had this fear that if we produce just enough content but not enough pages, we are somehow less of an expert. Quantity does not equal quality. We know this so well, yet we often fail to implement this to our own work.

It is our ethical duty to advocate for adequate environmental (and social) management of project level risks beyond the permitting process. Designing mitigation measures with the client and preparing them for implementation is the legacy we should all aim to leave. Yes we usually work a day rate and we have accepted ranges for spending time on deliverables, but the value we create long term should never be contained by the number of days we have available for the project. Surely, technology can help with certain tasks and I am the biggest advocate for that. But this episode is not about that, it is about making impact assessments meaningful and extend their useful life beyond the permit approval.

What I learned from Josh

A good EIA team is part scientist, part editor, part project manager. The science matters, but so does the discipline to remove the noise and the habit of closing the loop. Proportionate practice is built from lots of small choices, not one big framework.

Listen in and tell me what you think

If you care about moving from documents to delivery, this episode is for you. Proportionate EIA is not about doing less. It is about doing what matters, proving it, and adjusting when reality teaches us something new.

I would love to hear how your teams close the loop. What has worked, what fell short, and what you wish you had written into the permit from day one.