Why ESIA approvals slip — and how to keep yours on schedule

In our experience the single largest contributor to permitting delay is seasonality. Baseline ecology, hydrology and air quality data all have windows, and a study that misses one is either resubmitted or padded with assumptions a reviewer will challenge.

The second contributor is documentation of public participation. Meetings are usually held; what is often missing is the register, the disclosure evidence and a functioning grievance mechanism that shows how each concern was addressed.

Booking baseline fieldwork against the seasonal calendar before design is frozen, and treating stakeholder records as a deliverable in their own right, removes most of the avoidable delay from the process.