Environmental Assessment Sectoral Guidelines, Bhutan

August 16, 2022

The environmental assessment process endeavors to mitigate and prevent undesirable impacts of developmental activities. It is in no way intended to hamper socio-economic development in Bhutan but to guide project proponents and sector agencies in making right investments in land, manpower, technology and mitigation measures to ensure that their projects have the least possible impacts on the environment. Thus, the National Environment Commission has published six sectoral environmental assessment guidelines for the mining, roads, industries, hydropower, power transmission lines and forestry sectors. These guidelines were intended to guide different project proponents through the process of acquiring an environmental clearance for their projects. Later, NEC, with an objective to make these guidelines more practical and relevant to Bhutanese context and also to streamline with the provisions of the Environmental Assessment Act 2000 and its Regulation 2002, requested CSE to assist them in updating these guidelines.

CSE, along with NEC has reworked and updated twelve sectoral environmental assessment guidelines. These guidelines are for sectors such as Industries, roads and highways, forestry activities, hydropower projects, power transmission lines, tourism activities, vehicle washing facility etc. The revised guidelines will be more useful documents and will facilitate and expedite the environmental clearance process.