| Summary: | Strategic Environmental Impact Assessments (SEIA) sets the scene for environmental considerations before a political decision to open offshore areas for oil exploration in Greenland. The SEIA describes the potential impacts as well as the uncertainties and knowledge gaps. If the Greenland Government decides to grant licensees for oil exploration the operators have to develop specific EIAs for all major activities. The activities shall be based on BEP (Best Environmental Practice) and BAT (Best Environmental Technology) principles, and operators shall conduct supplementary environmental studies as needed, before each activity can be approved. The EIA is the key tool for environmental protection in the approval process. However, the authorities have in some cases to deal with large uncertainties due to lack of basic knowledge. Focusing on two case studies, (seismic surveys in Baffin Bay 2012 and discharges of drilling waste), it will be discussed in this paper how research and monitoring facilitates a regulation, which deals with uncertainty in an adaptive manner.
|
|---|