S.L. 549.46 ст. 2Interpretation. Aarhus Convention. Cap. 549. Cap. 552. Directive 2011/92/ EU as

In these regulations, unless the context otherwise requires:

"the Aarhus Convention" means the Convention on Access to

Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe;

"the Act" means the Environment Protection Act;

"agent" means a person representing the developer’s interests, and includes the developer’s architect;

"aquifer" means all underground waters in geological formations, and also includes deep fossil waters;

"the Authority" means the Environment and Resources Authority established under the Act, and includes any person delegated or commissioned thereby or otherwise acting lawfully on its behalf;

"baseline" means the existing environmental conditions of the area being assessed, as a reference against which changes and effects are predicted, measured, analysed and evaluated; and "baseline study" means an investigation, identification, clarification or interpretation thereof;

"consequent development" means any additional intervention or change in land use or pressure for further development, that is entailed, rendered necessary, encouraged or otherwise triggered by the project or by its ancillary operations or by the interaction of the project with its surroundings, or with natural or human processes or with other projects;

"construction" includes all site preparation works for the project and its ancillary infrastructure, such as clearing of land, excavation, demolition, dismantling, construction, levelling, installation of underground components and finishing works, and also includes all temporary interventions such as the installation and removal of construction camps, site offices, storage areas, plant and machinery, access arrangements, or other temporary facilities ancillary thereto, as well as any consumption, management or disposal of raw materials and by-products resulting therefrom;

"consultant" means an expert who is sufficiently competent in the relevant environmental field as may be required for the purpose of the environmental impact assessment;

"consultees" means Government entities, local councils or any other person, organisation or entity which the Authority might request the coordinator to consult, or which the Authority might consult;

"coordinator" means the consultant responsible for coordinating the environmental impact assessment;

"cumulative" and "cumulation" mean the combined effects of two or more projects or parts of projects, or of a project and the existing baseline, on the environment, and include:

(a) synergistic and antagonistic effects;

(b) combination with any effects already present in the current baseline; and

(c) the impacts of consequent or ancillary development;

"decommissioning" includes all works connected with the discontinuation or removal of a project and its ancillary infrastructure, such as clearing of land, demolition or dismantling, removal of underground components, and site reinstatement or restoration, and also includes all temporary interventions such as the installation and removal of construction camps, site offices, storage areas, plant and machinery, access arrangements, or other temporary facilities ancillary thereto, as well as any consumption, management or disposal of raw materials and by-products resulting therefrom;

"developer" means the developer seeking development consent or intending to implement the project, and includes both private and public entities;

"development" has the same meaning assigned to it by the

Development Planning Act, provided that:

(a) a project or intervention falling within the scope of these regulations shall still be considered as development requiring screening or assessment as well as consent for the purpose of these regulations;

(b) construction, excavation, demolition, levelling, site engineering, extraction of mineral resources, change in land use or other installations or schemes, as well as other material interventions in the site surroundings and landscape shall be considered as development; and

(c) the continued operation of an existing facility that is duly covered by an existing valid development consent shall not, per se, be considered as development, as long as: (i) there are no alterations, omissions, or additional interventions relative to the current consent; (ii) there is no extension of the lifetime of the facility beyond what has been assessed and permitted; and (iii) the facility does not occupy a larger or different site;

"development consent" or "development permit" means the decision of the permitting authority which entitles the developer to proceed with the project, as well as any equivalent consent arising from a development order or other instrument;

"the Directive" means Directive 2011/92/EU of the European

Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment (codification), as amended by Directive 2014/52/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014;

"effect" means an effect on the environment, and includes:

(a) direct effects on the environment, which are caused by a project or by any related intervention or action;

(b) indirect and secondary effects on the environment, caused by a project or by related interventions or actions, which may be later in time or further removed in distance, or which may arise indirectly as a result of: changes induced by the project or intervention; displacement of other uses; opportunity cost of the proposed use or commitment; or interaction of the project or intervention with natural or anthropogenic forces or with the surrounding environment;

(c) cumulative effects on the environment; and

(d) effects on human health and safety, socio-economic conditions, natural and cultural heritage, and quality of life, resulting from alterations to the environment;

"environmental impact assessment" or "EIA" means the process of identifying, predicting, evaluating, avoiding and mitigating the relevant environmental effects of proposed projects and physical interventions prior to relevant decisions and commitments being made, and includes, as detailed further in these regulations:

(a) the preparation of an EIA report by the developer;

(b) the carrying out of consultations, including consultations with Government entities and the public concerned;

(c) the examination, by the Authority, of the EIA report and any supplementary information provided by, or received from, the developer or through consultations;

(d) the reasoned conclusion by the Authority on the significant effects of the project on the environment, taking into account the results of the examination referred to in point (c) and its own supplementary examination; and

(e) the integration of the Authority's reasoned conclusion into the decision on the project or into any other relevant decision;

"EIA report" means the document in which the results of the consultants’ investigations and evaluations are presented by the consultants in a coordinated manner to the Authority, to decision-makers, to the public, and to the public concerned, as part of the environmental impact assessment;

"the Espoo Convention" or "the Convention" means the

Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context (Espoo Convention) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, including its First and Second Amendments;

"extension" means any addition to a project including but not limited to increases in total area, length, height, depth, volume, capacity, land take, scale or intensity of use;

"geology" means the scientific study of the origin, history, structure, content and composition of the earth including its rocks, minerals, land forms, layers, soils, fossils, and other related features, and the physical, chemical and biological changes and processes that have created, formed, shaped, eroded, or affected them or which may have such effects thereon, and also includes lithology, petrology, stratigraphy, geomorphology, palaeontology, hydrogeology, geological conservation and geotechnical considerations as applied for the purposes of these regulations;

"gross floor area" means the total combined area of all the floors of a building as measured externally without any deduction of internal yards, the spaces overlying them or the thickness of internal or external walls, and also includes all cellars, basements and roofs;

"impact" has the same meaning as "effect";

"landscape" means the overall character of a geographic area and its sense of place, as an overall result of the interaction of natural and/or anthropogenic factors, and includes the environmental characteristics, forms, processes, backgrounds and structures, the physical features and the scenery of the area and its particular combinations of geology, geomorphology, landform, water bodies, soils, vegetation, land uses, field patterns, human settlement, history, local traditions and other related factors;

"local council" and "locality" have the same meaning as assigned in the Local Government Act;

"the Minister" refers to the Minister responsible for the environment;

"operational phase" means the period during which the project is wholly or partly in use or reasonably ready for such use;

"outside development zones" or "ODZ" means land outside the boundary of an area zoned for development in a currently approved planning scheme or a currently approved local plan;

"permitting authority" means any public authority that is responsible for issuing, refusing or otherwise regulating any development consent, and includes any person acting lawfully on behalf of such authority;

"precautionary principle" shall have the same meaning as assigned to it in the Act, and specifically includes the adoption or taking of preventative measures or stances when there are reasonable grounds for concern that threats of potentially significant or potentially irreversible damage to the environment might occur. Furthermore, the lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason or excuse for postponing measures to avoid, reduce, prevent, anticipate, eliminate, control, reverse, repair or otherwise address such threats or damage to the environment as may be relevant to the project and its location;

"project" has the same meaning as "development";

"project description statement" means a structured document containing a description of the site and the proposed project, in sufficient detail to enable an identification of the likely effects and implications on the environment;

"project fragmentation" means the fragmentation or piecemeal splitting of a project into smaller developments, such that the proper comprehensive evaluation of the overall project and its environmental impacts is impeded, impaired, hindered, jeopardised, distorted, circumvented, complicated or rendered ineffective by an understated, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous or late indication of the actual scale, characteristics, context and or real implications of the project;

"protected" means any area, property, building, site, structure, natural resource, natural feature or cultural heritage which is specifically protected, scheduled or designated for protection or conservation under the Act or under any other law, even if on a temporary or provisional basis. Provided that the airport precincts shall not, per se, be considered as a protected area notwithstanding their inclusion in the list of Bird Sanctuaries in the Conservation of Wild Birds Regulations;

"public" means one or more natural or legal persons, as well as any associations, organisations or groups thereof that are in accordance with national law;

"public concerned" means the public affected or likely to be affected by, or having an interest in, the environmental decision-making procedures relevant to these regulations, and also includes non-Governmental organizations that promote environmental protection and that meet the relevant requirements at law;

"public hearing" means a consultation meeting open to the public, organized with the aim of explaining the details of the proposed project or intervention as well as the findings of the EIA report, and to elicit feedback from the public in attendance;

"Register" means the register of consultants established under the provisions of the Act;

"Registration Board" means the Registration Board established under the provisions of the Act;

"screening" means the decision on whether a proposal should be subject to an environmental impact assessment or to any other provisions of these regulations;

"scoping" means the process of defining the scope, extent, and level of detail of the environmental impact assessment, and includes the identification of environmental issues, baselines, geographical areas of influence, methodologies, alternatives and impacts to be considered, and the formulation of terms of reference;

"significant" requires consideration of both context and intensity:

(a) context includes:

(i) the proposed siting and surroundings of the project;

(ii) the public concerned and material interests of relevance to the environment;

(iii) the aspects of the environment likely to be affected;

(iv) the prevailing conditions in, and the state of preservation of, the surrounding environment; and

(v) the existence of any species, habitats or features that are unique, valuable, endangered, rare on a national or localised basis, vulnerable, threatened with extinction, possibly extinct, restricted in distribution on the island, endemic to a threatened site, of unknown status, of unfavourable conservation status, declining, or otherwise at risk of having their integrity jeopardized; whereas

(b) intensity means the severity of impact, and requires a consideration of the following factors:

(i) whether the impact is beneficial, adverse or neutral;

(ii) the degree to which the project affects the quality of the environment, or affects public health or safety as a consequence of its impacts on the environment;

(iii) the vulnerability and resilience of the surrounding environment;

(iv) the degree to which the possible effects on the environment are uncertain, or involve unique, unknown or complicated risks;

(v) the degree to which the project may establish a precedent for future interventions with potentially significant effects, or represents a commitment in principle about a future consideration or intervention;

(vi) whether the project is related to other interventions with individually insignificant but cumulatively significant impacts;

(vii) whether the project may necessitate, entail, trigger, attract, commit, hinder or compromise any other related or unrelated intervention such that the ensuing implications may result in indirect pressures on the environment, near the site or away from it;

(viii) whether the project or its direct or indirect implications pose a threat of violation of any law, plan, or provision for the protection or conservation of the environment, or a threat to any current protective status or to the effectiveness thereof;

(ix) whether the project and its effects are: permanent or temporary (and, in the latter instance, the duration of the effect); reversible or irreversible (and, in the former instance, the ease and feasibility of complete reversal and the confidence with which such reversal can be secured); short-term, medium-term or long-term; and short-range, medium-range or long-range; and

(x) the extent, profoundness and magnitude of the impact on one or more environmental aspects of relevance to the assessment;

"site", "area" or "location" means any geographic area including any land, sea or water body, and also includes its surface, subsurface and underground as well as its seabed and airspace where relevant, and shall also include a single property or more than one property irrespective of who is the owner;

"site area" means the total area of land covered by the project and its ancillary structures and interventions. as well as any tract of land that is likely to be committed, physically altered or taken up in connection with any phase of the project or detached or isolated from its surroundings as a consequence thereof; and includes any land that will be occupied by buildings, structures, yards, gardens, interstices, enclosures, enclaves, spaces between buildings or structures, roads, tracks, artificially surfaced areas, planting and/or landscaping, as well as any other lands that will be similarly affected; but excludes any other land beyond the outermost extent of the project that will not be affected in any way by the project and its ancillary interventions, irrespective of whether or not such other land happens to form part of the developer’s property;

"State" means a country which is a member of the European

Union or a party to the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, and includes any land, sea, water bodies and airspace under such country’s jurisdiction;

"supra-national" means at European Union level, or at the level of any other international, bilateral or multi-lateral convention, protocol, commitment, agreement or obligation which is binding on Malta;

"technical studies" means the studies prepared by the consultants for particular aspects of the environmental impact assessment, and includes baseline studies;

"transboundary impact" means any impact, occurring wholly or partly in a State, that is caused by a project or intervention which is situated wholly or partly in another State;

"Tribunal" means the Tribunal as defined in the Act and in the Environment and Planning Review Tribunal Act; and

"vetting" means the determination of whether a project falls within the scope of these regulations.