Why this study? In 2016 the NCEA carried out a study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to identify possible measures for enhancing the quality of ESIA for port development in emerging and developing countries. The Ministry had started a ‘multi-stakeholder dialogue on land governance’ (hereafter ‘the dialogue’) to determine how best to help improve land governance in emerging and developing countries. It was initiated since the land rights of indigenous peoples are often violated during the implementation of large-scale agricultural, infrastructural or residential projects. The dialogue aims to identify lessons learnt and best practices supporting propoor land governance. Its primary focus is on land governance in the context of infrastructure development, starting with a pilot on port infrastructure, as projects of this type may affect large areas and thus large numbers of people. The NCEA was asked to contribute to the goals of the dialogue by scrutinising past environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) for harbours and ports. The study was originally to focus on land governance, but to take full advantage of the initiative it was decided to look at wider issues too. Our approach Expert working group The NCEA is a secretariat operating through ad hoc expert working groups tailored to the advice or support requested. For this port study we assembled a group of six experts covering fields of expertise such as hydraulics, ecology, demography, port planning, socio-cultural and gender issues, and natural resource management. Suitable port ESIAs We then identified suitable port ESIAs to be studied. We did so using criteria such as ‘should be recent, i.e. 2008 or later’, ‘focus on new onshore developments as these have the biggest land use consequences’, ‘spread of ESIAs over multiple countries worldwide’ and ‘make reference to good practice standards for ESIA such as IFC, etc.’. This led to eleven ESIAs being selected, most of which dealt with coastal ports to be extended or constructed for the transhipment of containers or bulk materials and which were to be achieved with the financial and technical support of international development banks. Benchmark Next, the expert group developed a benchmark for what they regarded as ‘good practice’ port development ESIA. For this, various guidelines were analysed, 19
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