ABSTRACT
Environmental scoping, also referred to as rapid environmental and social appraisal or briefl y, rapid assessment, is the process of determining the context and extent of matters which should be covered in the environmental assessment. While scoping is not always a mandatory requirement, it is important. The outcome of the scoping process defi nes the ‘scope’ of environmental information to be prepared for the environmental impact assessment study, and outlines the extent and detail of baseline surveys to be undertaken to compile that information. Since scoping is designed to provide a concise but brief picture of the environment as well as an initial understanding of expected interactions between mine and environment it must fulfi l two apparently contradictory requirements: it must be comprehensive and complete, but, as the alternative name rapid assessment suggests, scoping is conducted within a short time frame and often with limited resources. As such environmental scoping requires considerable expertise.
