ranging from dedicated country guidelines for port development to the general guidelines of international development banks. Our aim was to find a benchmark that would succinctly combine the important standards in all these guidelines. We selected the Equator Principles as the basis for the benchmark, but augmented it with a number of criteria listed in the IFC’s EHS guidelines on ports, harbours and terminals and with aspects derived from the OECD guidelines on fair competition, taxation and corruption. Analysis The benchmark was then used to analyse the ESIAs: first, to identify the issues they had covered, then the issues they had ignored and finally to arrive at recommendations that would further enhance port ESIAs. Where possible we indicated ESIAs that could be regarded as exemplary in their treatment of specific issues, to serve as inspiration for the quality of future ESIAs. We deliberately refrained from mentioning the bad examples as the purpose of this study was to improve and inspire, not to name and shame. The good, the bad and the ugly We found that most of the ESIAs did indeed include many issues and process elements one would expect in a good practice ESIA. Among these were employment and economic opportunities, loss of income, effects of dredging, impacts on ecoystems and encroachment on communities. Surprisingly, however, many important environmental and social issues were not assessed: indeed, for some of these, such as climate change, impact on workers and the financial justification of the port investment, none of the ESIAs could be regarded as exemplary. This is particularly surprising as all eleven ESIAs had been developed under one or more of the safeguarding systems of the financing institutions. 20 The NCEA’s Views and Experiences 2018
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