A reading of all of Part 4 on EIAs was completed during informal-informals on 2 March 2023 and delegations made great progress on cleaning up the text. Only one major issue remains concerning decision making and who should decide if an activity can proceed after an EIA has been conducted. Also linked to this is questions around whether there should be a call in mechanism for parties that have concerns about a particular activity and whether that call in mechanism should be applicable during the decision making stage. Delegations were able to resolve the contentious issue of the impact vs activity approach in Article 22, Obligation to conduct EIAs, and decided to adopt the threshold found in UNCLOS 206 with respect to planned activities with national jurisdiction that may impact ABNJ. Article 22 now refers to activities that “may cause substantial pollution or significant and harmful changes to the marine environment”. A significant achievement regarding Article 23 on the relationship between the BBNJ Agreement and other IFBs was made, with delegations agreeing to accept equivalent without any further qualifiers as the standard for comparing assessments and other IFBs with the requirements of EIAs. Delegations had another major breakthrough on EIA thresholds (Article 24), agreeing to a two-tiered approach for EIA thresholds.
