Joyce Kortlandt
Technical secretary
Environmental and social impact assessment in Burkina Faso: focus on mining and improving the assessment system.
Significant details
The Ministry of Energy, Mines and Quarries (MEMC) is updating the Social and Environmental Strategic Assessment (SESA) of the mining sector in Burkina Faso. The ministry has asked the NCEA for technical support. As a first step, the CNEE gave a process advice on the methodological note for updating the SESA.
At the request of ANEVE, the Environmental Assessment agency in Burkina Faso, the NCEA reviewed the scoping report for the ESIA for the Niou mine. This is a satellite project of the Bissa mine, located in the centre of the country. The request is a spin-off of the workshop on social aspects of mining ESIA's, organised in November 2022.
Social impacts are very important in the mining sector, but ESIAs for mining tend to focus primarily on environmental issues. Together with the MEMC in Burkina Faso, the NCEA organised a workshop to address this gap. Participants included representatives of ministries, mining companies and civil society. They underlined the importance of dialogue and respecting agreements made during the ESIA process to prevent conflict in the mining sector.
The workshop was a follow-up to the 'ESIA for mining MAP' held in July 2022. The July workshop assessed strengths and weakness of environmental assessment in relation to mining. Participants concluded that environmental and social impact assessments for mining need to pay more attention to closure and rehabilitation and to social impacts. The National Office for Environmental Assessments (ANEVE), MEMC and NCEA are now discussing possible ways forwards, involving other actors where adding value.