Environmental Compliance Webinar 12/14/15
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Webinar Transcript
Environmental Compliance for Feed the Future Research Programs
December 14, 2015
Moderator: Julie MacCartee, Knowledge Management Specialist, USAID/BFS
Speaker: Bill Thomas, Bureau Environmental Officer, USAID/BFS
Moderator:
Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the USAID Bureau for Food
Security, I would like to welcome you to a special training webinar on
environmental compliance. My name is Julie MacCartee and I'm a
Knowledge Management Specialist with the Bureau for Food Security and
I'll be facilitating today, along with my colleague, Zachary Baquet, a
Knowledge Management Adviser with the Bureau for Food Security.
I would like to go ahead and introduce our speaker today, Bill Thomas,
who is our Bureau Environmental Officer here in the USAID Bureau for
Food Security and our trainer for today. Bill, fairly recently, transferred
to the Bureau for Food Security from USDA in March 2015 after 13 years
as a program leader for the Sustainable Systems and Communities
Program at the National Agricultural Library and before that, he was an
Environmental Protection Specialist at EPA for nine years. So he has great
breadth and depth of experience in environmental compliance and
environmental issues, so we're excited to have him today to take on this
training. So I'm gonna go ahead and pass the mic over to Bill and we'll get
started.
Speaker:
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Good afternoon, everyone and I'm happy to be here, I'm glad you're all
here and today we're gonna be talking about environmental compliance at
USAID, but specifically at the Bureau for Food Security and this is basic
information and the whole purpose of this is to ensure everybody is on the
same page. Before we go any farther, we do have a knowledge check. I
know this is difficult, I want y'all to choose the best answer, serious or not,
depending on the kind of mood that you're in. Well, got that chicken and
fried rice, that's good. Okay, so it turns out, sadly, it isn't the Campaign for
Finance Reform Bill by the congressional gang of 216, but you are correct,
22CFR216 is the awesome Code of Federal Regulations, Title 22, part 216
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and we're gonna be going into great depths of this fascinating and most
interesting piece of guidance, regulatory guidance.
So moving forward here, as many of you may recall and if you weren't
around at this time, environmental awareness actually did go viral back in
the 1960s, driven primarily by this book, Silent Spring, written by Rachel
Carson who lived in the Washington, D.C. area and it was a book about
pesticides and the overuse of pesticides. This kind of spurred greater
awareness across America of environmental issues and what came from
that was a demand on Congress and the government to do more about
environmental issues. A number of laws were passed back in 1960s, early
70s, but probably the most important one was the National Environmental
Policy Act, NEPA, and it continues to guide government environmental
policy today and President Nixon did sign NEPA back in 1970 but that's
not all he did, of course. So what NEPA does is it requires all federal
agencies to look at the environmental impact of federal programs before
they start and this is a process that's transparent and it's open to the public
and this had never happened before so now all the federal agencies were
required to look at their programs, their policies, whatever kind of
activities they were engaging in and before they started, take a look and
see what kind of environmental issues could come from that.
Unfortunately, the United States Agency for International Development
did not do that and in 1975, USAID gave Pakistan technical grade
pesticide, Malathion, without any kind of training, without any kind of
guidance or personal protection equipment and it ended up being misused,
accident during application, five people died and hundreds were sickened.
Because of that, there was a group of U.S. environmental groups that came
together and sued USAID to implement NEPA and what happened was
that USAID was forced to comply with NEPA and ended up settling out of
court with these environmental groups. Finally, after five years, in 1980,
USAID published Title 22, Code of Federal Regulations, part 216, which
we call Reg 216 or 22CFR216 and these are now the environmental
compliance procedures here at AID and we may have another poll. Okay,
so just a little quick review, make sure everybody's paying attention, it's
actually number one, of course. No, actually, it's sadly the last one but
Elvis Presley could have had some impact on that. Thank you.
So there are other relevant environmental legislation that affects AID but
our focus today is 22CFR216 and let's take a closer look at it. As with all
NEPA implementations, Reg 216 requires USAID to look carefully at
potential environmental impacts from its projects, from its programs, from
its activities. Look carefully at the environment of where that project's
gonna take place and then work with a host country in an environmental
capacity strengthening and the key thing, here is this all has to be done
before funds are committed to the project, before the project starts. So
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going quickly through what's inside of Reg 216, when the project is
looked at, a determination is made, some activities have no impact on the
environment and those are given a categorical exclusion and we'll talk
more about that in just a bit. An initial environmental assessment is done
to take a look and see, really, what kind of impact the project or activity
may have. If it looks like it's no significant impacts or the impacts can be
mitigated, it's a negative determination and the activity can commence.
Significant impacts, and we'll get deeply into this, require to get a positive
determination which requires an environmental assessment. So we're
gonna move in, talk about all of these. You don't have to memorize this
slide.
So the IEE is key that USAID in key and BFS to really take an initial look
and see what the possible environmental impacts are of a project. So the
first look at potential environmental impact, it's drafted, oftentimes by the
COR working with an activity team and then once it's signed by myself,
the BEO, it becomes a legally binding document. Whatever conditions are
in that document are required by the implementing partners. Again, it has
to be done before the project can start. It's key that the implementing
partners have a copy of this so that they can develop and EMMP and we'll
be talking about environmental mitigation and monitoring plants more in a
little bit. So we'll move forward here. Okay a couple questions have come
up and we'll go back to this.
Right so, 22CFR216, if you remembered nothing else from today,
although you'll probably remember a whole lot more is the USAID
Environmental Compliance Guidance and it does require that we consider
environmental consequences before proceeding and it is not, shockingly,
USAID's version of a full environmental impact assessment, that is
considered to be an environmental assessment. The IEE is done pretty
quickly to give an overview of what could come about from the project.
So I see a few answers are changing there, which is fine. Okay, good. So
Reg 216 has a number of determinations. As I said earlier, if there's no
significant adverse environmental impact, it's a categorical exclusion. If
there's specified mitigation and monitoring with those, there's no
significant environmental impacts, it's considered a negative determination
with conditions. Those conditions are spelled out in the IEEE that will
then go into the EMMP and the project can move forward. Significant
environmental impacts, positive determination, pretty rare. I have yet to
see one, but I've only been here for about nine months. The deferral is not
recommended. It's a whole lot better to do an amendment to an IEEE
rather than a deferral and the exemption is very, very rare.
What I see mostly, so far, are categorical exclusions and a negative
determination with conditions. Looking closely at the categorical
exclusion, there's a number of things listed in the yellow box that just don't
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have a negative environmental impact. Education, technical assistance or
technical programs, doing documents or transferring documents and
analysis of study, some type of a research workshop or academic
workshop or a meeting, do not have negative environmental impacts in
general. Nutrition, health, family planning, we don't really do that much in
BFS, we do some but rarely is there anything where medical waste is
generated. If that's the case, then that ends up being a positive
determination. In the black box, no categorical exclusions are possible
when an activity involves pesticides and we'll get more into pesticides a
little bit further in this presentation but I'll keep that in mind.
So there's a number of things that you may do in your programs that are
categorical exclusions. If you're having a meeting, if you're doing an
analysis or a study, those are categorical exclusions and once that's
determined then nothing else needs to be done. Negative determination
with conditions, that means that the proposed action could have minor
environmental impacts but these can be mitigated and controlled. Really,
this applies only to small scale projects, ag research, doing some
renovation refurbishment of a lab, for example, some health projects,
again, not impacting the environment, some small scale water or sanitation
or road improvements. If it's a positive determination, you'll know because
these actions usually do have a significant effect on the environment. We
really don't get into these too much in BFS. Any kind of large scale river
basin development or irrigation schemes, land leveling, doing large scale
drainage, mechanization, developing new lands will definitely bring about
an environmental assessment. Any kind of resettlement, no matter how
small, any kind of road building into an area that's never had roads before
and of course power industrial building large-scale water sewage.
If there's logging of _____ my team kicks in, as well as anything _____
problems in national parks with exotic plants or animals. So a negative
determination with conditions require the implementers, the implementing
partners to incorporate whatever kind of requirements come out of IEE
into the budget and wok plan and those are usually manifested into an
environmental mitigation and monitoring plant. Then the next thing is to
make sure that the EMMPs are adequate, suitable and are actually done
out in the field and then to report back on these. Positive determination,
again, pretty rare with BFS projects but that environmental assessment
must be done before the project can be started and it's gotta be worked into
the budget and work plans. This is something that I would work directly
with you on and it would have to be cleared by me before the project can
proceed.
So pesticides. Because of the beginnings of 22CFR216, pesticides are a
big part of it. Again, AID wants to make sure that if pesticides are used in
a project, they're properly selected and they're safely used. Key part of
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this. And why care about pesticides? Again, remember the origins
of 22CFR216, we wanna make sure that if U.S dollars are spent, the
pesticides are used correctly. We don't contribute to resistance and we
certainly don't cause any type of health problems, poisoning, chronic
sickness, birth defects, anything else that stems from our use of pesticides.
So we wanna be very careful with that. Not to say you can't use them but
again, they need to be used very carefully and used in a situation that is
integrated pest management to make sure that pesticides are only used
when needed, not as a scheduled activity but when the pest populations are
high enough and that particular pesticide is warranted. As we'll get into a
little bit further down in this presentation, it's critical to look at nonpesticide management options or whatever the least toxic option may be.
Says the USAID policy, that IPM framework be done for every activity,
whether it be agriculture or health or anything else that uses pesticides. So
this is a really important part of this. When USAID funds are used to
purchase pesticides, that is considered to be pesticide procurement or if
there's any type of payments that are going into pesticides being used by
farmers, even credit use facilitating the sale, U.S. funds are used to handle
or transport or store, U.S. funds are used to mix, load or apply or dispose
or U.S. funds are used to buy fuel to transport the pesticides. And this is a
key one here; this is not a categorical exclusion even though it is for other
things, technical assistance, when it's specifically for pesticide training it
is considered pesticide use. Okay, do we have another poll? Exciting,
okay. Okay, the PERSUAP. Pesticide Evaluation Report and Safer Use
Action Plan. Even though some of those are exciting and it was very hard
to find an acronym for PERSUAP other than the Pesticide Evaluation
Report and Safer Use Action Plan.
So we'll move forward now into the strange and exotic land of the
PERSUAP, which again, Pesticide Evaluation Report and Safer Use
Action Plan, two parts of it. One is the pesticide evaluation report which
directly responds to 22CFR216, Pesticide Procedures Requirement. The
second part of the PERSUAP is safer use action plan which identifies
actions from mitigating, monitoring and complying with host country
procedures. We're gonna get more deeply into these. So these are directly
from the Reg 216 so whenever pesticides are going to be used, it's critical
to know what the U.S. EPA status of the recommended pesticide is. If it's
not registered in the U.S., then we cannot use U.S. funds to provide it to
another country even though it may be registered there but not here. So it's
gotta be actively registered here in the U.S. Part of this is to really
understand the basis for selection for pesticide.
So you can't just go out and say, 'oh, we'll just use this one, but I have a
good reason.' So there's gotta be a good reason for using the pesticide and
then how does that pesticide fit into an IPM plan? How available is it and
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how is that pesticide gonna be applied? From a truck? From a hand
sprayer? From an aircraft? What are the toxics of that particular pesticide?
What are the issues with toxicity? And then a key part of this is really,
what's the effectiveness of that pesticide for the proposed use? The
compatibility of the pesticide with local ecosystems means where it's
gonna be used, how does it fit into the ecosystem that it's gonna be used in
and what kind of environmental conditions will there be where the
pesticide's being used? Are there other controls? Are there other pesticides
that are less toxic? Are there non-toxic controls?
And then, what does the host country have as far as regulating the
requested pesticides on their books and what kind of capacity do they
have? Key part of this is number 11, that there be training for users,
applicators and those that are involved in whatever kind of activities the
pesticides may be and then monitoring. Monitoring the use and monitoring
the effectiveness of the pesticide. And we have a couple other questions or
polls.
Moderator:
Actually, we had just a quick question from Britta Hampton. She asked
where are these 12 factors outlined in the 216. Can you supply page
numbers?
Speaker:
I can. I'm so glad you asked 'cause it's always such an exciting part of this
and if you have your pencils ready, it's 216.3B1 and they're listed there,
ABC all the way down to L. So these are the pesticide procedures. Okay,
so the Safer Use Action Plan, monitoring, reporting, training to make sure
that the appropriate information is distributed, make sure the appropriate
education is done and it's communicated appropriately. What are the
quality standards and control procedures? To ensure that that pesticide is
in good package with clear and adequate labeling, in other words, so it
doesn't get transferred to water bottles or something where people
wouldn't know it's a pesticide. Working with the people on the field to
find, really, what it means to use pesticides safely. How is that pesticide
gonna be handled? How is going to be stored? Transported? Used? And if
necessary, disposed of? Then, to ensure that whoever's using that pesticide
has access to protective clothing, whatever kind of equipment they need
and all of this is discussed. Proper handling, use, disposal of pesticides and
then who does what, when, what the responsibilities are and again, this
stems from the 1975 Pakistan accident where people who didn't know how
to use the pesticide were given a highly toxic grade of the pesticide and
the result was very tragic. So this is all to make sure that that does not
happen again.
PERSUAP requires that the implementing partner address a number of
issues to make sure that the information in that PERSUAP is accurate on
an annual basis. For registration changes, then that's gotta be reflected in
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the PERSUAP that there is a provision for training and protective
equipment and things will get monitored and then what happens to the
pesticide containers once the project is done? And then really, what are the
IPM methods that are gonna be used? So this is, again, to make sure that
there's no issues or accidents that happen. Okay and we're gonna do some
more polls here.
Moderator:
Sure. We have just a few polls that I just wanted to get a better idea of the
participants' experience so far with using pesticides or PERSUAP in a
project. So please let us know, do you have an up-to-date PERSUAP for
your project? Have you ever wanted to use pesticide in a project but did
not because of PERSUAP requirements or have you been involved in
implementation of a PERSUAP at the field level? This will just help us get
an idea of your experience. Great, you all are very quick at answering
these polls, have good polling skills. Is this useful information for you,
Bill?
Speaker:
Okay. So moving forward and I'll be happy to answer any other questions
on the PERSUAP or pesticides but trying to get through all the issues here
on environmental compliance, climate change is a huge part of this and
certainly, the Paris meetings just finished so there's gonna be additional
information coming out on this but suffice to say that AID is actively
working to ensure that climate change issues are integrated into projects.
Reg 216 supports this significantly to ensure, again, that our projects are
sustainable and that they don't cause any kind of damage through
implementation. And the key part of this, again, is that through Reg 16,
the project becomes more sustainable because these issues are looked at,
not contributing to climate change through emission of greenhouse gases
or making people more vulnerable to climate change and to build a
sustainable project that can deliver results in the face of climate impacts.
So a quick summary here on environmental considerations in the programs
is that we wanna facilitate state-of-the-art development, achieve optimal
programming results, economic social development, sustainability and
avoid kind of issues, cost, setbacks that may come about from negative
environmental impact from a project and of course, avoid harming people.
And what this really does is promote civil society and democracy through
transparency and public participation, 'cause this is all an open dialogue
and of course, the last thing you want is diplomatic problems or lack of
trust because of environmental issues that come from a project. And of
course, it's the law. So that's a good part of Reg 16, but wait, we're not
done yet. Do we have anymore polls coming up?
Moderator:
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I think this is a good quiz question. What is the title of the USA official
who must improve environmental scoping statements, such as the IAE? It
might be a bit trickier than some of the previous poll questions.
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Speaker:
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Okay, well we find out as we move forward into roles and responsibilities.
Lots of people involved doing a lot of different things and you're probably
wondering, 'gosh, I wonder who does what when.' Well, you have to
wonder no more, 'cause we're gonna go through each of these.
Implementing partners who are out there, you really do need to address the
environmental compliance requirements that come out at IEE and work
that into the budget, whatever kind of environmental compliance
requirements plans should be in the work plan. Pairing the environmental
scope of work and EA, if necessary, other environmental reports and
really important, record of compliance. Initially, you may be collecting
environmental baseline information. You will be preparing Environmental
Mitigation Monitoring Plans if it's a negative determination with
conditions and then monitor the project to make sure that there's
compliance and make sure that the mitigation measures are working and
then report progress over time.
And failure to comply is very sad for everyone, so we don't want that and
it's a contractual issue as well. It's very important that all implementing
partners have a copy of the IEE because that's what's gonna guide what
kind of conditions there are and what kind of monitoring there is. If it does
result in a positive determination, then the environmental assessment will
have to be prepared. If they're compliance requirements, then you really
do need to budget for that and you can contact the contracting officer on
that. But only an approved IEE amendment followed by a contract
modification can change anything having to do with environmental
compliance in the IEE.
On the mission level, there is Mission Environmental Officer at all
emissions and this is the level of support for what's happening in that
particular country and for BFS, we work with a mission environmental
officer but not quite as much as a geographic piro does. Of course, the
contract officers representative or agreement officer's representative play a
huge role in this, ensuring that the environmental compliance requirements
are incorporated into the appropriate procurement documents, making sure
that preparation of any kind of 216 documentation, usually just an IEE and
amendments gets done and then to ensure that the documentation is in
place and the Environmental Mitigation and Monitoring Plan is developed
and is workable and then to monitor, to make sure that all of this happens.
Similar to emission environmental officers, regional environmental
adviser and these are used primarily in geographic but they have great
expertise of their particular region and provides a lot of advice and works
for that particular region on environmental expertise and then there's me.
The Bureau Environmental Officer, there's a Bureau Environmental
Officer in Washington D.C. at each geographic and pillar bureau and
oversees compliance for their respective bureau and there's my number
and email should you wish to contact me directly, but I work primarily
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with AOR and COR and I will concur with recommendations from the
program teams, emission director, office director for the threshold
decisions, whether it be categorical exclusion or negative determination
with conditions.
There's also an agency, environmental coordinator that primarily
coordinates all USAID environmental compliance issues, works with the
Counsel for Environmental Quality at the White House and also with the
administrator on any kind of issues that come up having to do with
environmental compliance and of course, you can't go anywhere without
general counsel who provide advice on legal issues and any kind of
readings as to the applicability of the various applications of Reg 216 or
the other environmental regulations. So clearances, an answer to that
question, it's the COR that kind of pulls the documentation together,
whether it be categorical exclusion or an IEE, mission director or office
director signs it. Sometimes the Mission Environmental Officer will sign it
and then the BEO concurs by signature. So this is the final signature, the
last one to be signed. Once I sign then the project can move forward and it
is, indeed, approved.
Do we have another poll, perhaps? What is an EMMP? It's like everybody
knows exactly what it is. Have you developed one? Okay, some people
have, some people haven't. Okay so moving forward here, environmental
monitoring is really important. Once we've determined what the
conditions are, then it's important that they be monitored and the two key
parts of environmental monitoring, is it happening? Is it actually being
implemented out in the field? And secondly, is it effective? If it's being
implemented but it's not effective, then it needs to be looked at. So
environmental monitoring is key to ensure that it's a project that works, it's
not causing environmental problems and it's sustainable. So it's really
critical to have cost-effective, clear mitigation and monitoring. So what
are those environmental indicators? What are the mitigation
implementation indicators? It doesn't have to be a huge, gigantic effort but
just clear enough to know ist it happening or not and if it is happening, is
it effective?
So the EMMP takes those specific mitigation conditions from the IEE and
works them into the Environmental Mitigation and Monitoring Plan, the
EMMP. It describes what those indicators are and then it establishes really
clearly how often that information's gonna be collected, how often it's
gonna be reported and who's doing it. It sounds pretty simple but once
you're out in the field, it's really important to know who does what when.
Okay, here again, the implementing partner is a key partner, a key part of
all this to make sure that the monitoring is actually happening, whether it
be daily, weekly or monthly and then sending those reports in to BFS as
required and then I will review those annually. But I also, on occasion,
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come out to the field to do a due diligence check. And we finally come to
end of this exciting webinar so I'm open to whatever questions you may
have.
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