In Namibia, where I started my career as an environmental economist, there was a Strategic EIA approach. In other words the government would do one on an area in advance - and then produce a list of conditions for anybody operating in that area. It achieves the same outcome except with massively more certainty.
e.g. You could say - 'you can built on a brownfield site without any further environmental assessment as long as you make a £10,000 per hectare contribution to this biodiversity fund'
In Namibia, where I started my career as an environmental economist, there was a Strategic EIA approach. In other words the government would do one on an area in advance - and then produce a list of conditions for anybody operating in that area. It achieves the same outcome except with massively more certainty.
e.g. You could say - 'you can built on a brownfield site without any further environmental assessment as long as you make a £10,000 per hectare contribution to this biodiversity fund'