Costa Rica: Procedures for Environmental Permits to be Simplified
The Setena plans to amend regulations in order to reduce the timescale for ruling on studies for projects with high environmental impact, to 5 months.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
At the moment the National Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA) is takes between 6 months and a year to analyze and decide whether or not to grant permission for construction projects with high environmental impacts.
Its director, Marco Arroyo, explained to Nacion.com that"... In the second half of this year changes will be made to the rules of operation in order to simplify the process for determining environmental viability which he himself described as 'complex'. The goal is to decrease the time it takes to rule on high-impact studies to just five months instead of the 6 to 12 months it takes today."
"...According to the head, the reform included the concept of "environmental thresholds" that would define a number of categories or criteria to differentiate and group together analysis of projects.'Evaluating a well is not the same as evaluating a telecommunications tower or a pigsty.We aim to create a number of categories of evaluation activities but which, depending on their impacts, can receive different evaluations in order to give more backing to projects with the greatest impact'."
"...According to the Costa Rican Chamber of Construction, environmental impact management is key but it is also one of the most complicated processes faced by a developers because of the insecurity of not knowing when a project might start while Setena makes its decision."
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In order to resolve the problem of delays in approving environmental impact permits, in Costa Rica industrial sector employers support a proposal for the National Technical Secretariat to intervene.
Arguing that "it affects them negatively", the Chamber of Industries of Costa Rica (ICRC), supports the intervention of the National Technical Secretariat (Setena) requested last Wednesday by the Christian Social Unity Party (PUSC).
An announcement has been made that rulings on environmental feasibility will be given within 24 hours, environmental permits categories 1 and 2 will take two months, and for projects the period is three to four months.
Taking into account the demands of the business sector the government has announced it is changing the procedures for submission of environmental permits in order to reduce the waiting times and streamline the process.
About 25 construction projects are stalled because the Environmental Technical Secretariat does not have enough personnel to carry out environmental studies.
These projects have been lodged with the Environmental Technical Secretariat (Setena) since the first half of this year "... without having been even given a the green light to go ahead with the study on environmental impact," noted an article in Elfinancierocr.com.
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