NAUTILOS D11.6 - Environmental Impact Assessment

The purpose of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is to examine in advance the consequences of the development of an activity on the natural environment. The main objective is to prevent possible significant impacts by assessing the activities predicted in a systematically, holistic and multidisciplinary way, and providing alternatives to reduce or eliminate the undesired effects. The developer of a project must provide to the authority responsible for approving it a report that must include at least a minimum level of information prescribed by the Directive 2011/92/EU, which consists of a description of the project such as location, design and size, as well as features of the project and measures to avoid, prevent, reduce or offset significant adverse effects. It is also seen as a good practice in scientific projects to conduct an EIA to reduce the impact to the minimum levels possible. The first stage of an EIA is the Screening, where an initial identification of the adverse environmental impacts is performed by screening all the possible impacts, including those that are not fully known. In the NAUTILOS project, the Screening phase was carried out by the means of a questionnaire sent to the partners responsible for the development of each sensor. The responses to this survey provided information about the characteristics of the sensors, location, possible emissions, deployment and recovery procedures. This information was essential to identify the most significant impacts, which special attention should be given. This is the basis for the Scoping phase, where the impacts that have greater concern are investigated in detail and mitigation measures are provided. Briefly, the main impacts identified from the development of the NAUTILOS activities are toxic materials used in the manufacturing of the sensors, the end of life of these devices, possibly loss in the sea, issues associated with the batteries, antifouling strategies, eventual noise pollution, and potential disturbing of wild animals during the animal-borne tag attachment. These impacts are not expected in all the sensors, also when present they may be expected to different levels in each sensor and sampler. The respective mitigation measures recommended are the use of biodegradable materials, adoption of circular economy principles, having a backup strategy to recover the sensors from the marine environment, collecting and recycling the used batteries, choosing more sustainable alternatives of antifouling, reducing noise pollution close to sensitive areas, and evaluate empirically the effects of this new animal-borne devices on the tagged animals. In conclusion, the impacts expected from the development and demonstration phases of the NAUTILOS project are of small magnitude. When compared to the benefits that the improved acquaintance of data and integration to large-scale observatory systems will bring to ocean conservation, and the effectiveness of the mitigation measures, the normal continuation of the project without major restrictions is recommended. Nevertheless, recommendations on how to in improve products from and environmental impact reducing point of view were shared with all WP3 and WP4