Abstract This study evaluates the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) legislation of South Africa and Zambia against the modified criteria developed by Wood (1995) to determine the extent to which they follow “good practices” and incorporate emerging environmental issues into EIA. We modified the criteria of Wood due to new environmental issues that have emerged since their formulation. Some of these issues are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). National Environmental Acts and EIA Regulations for the two countries were reviewed to evaluate the current legislation. We also used telephone interviews to gather additional information that was not in the documents. As a fundamental component of the EIA system, the legislation needs to be clear, concise and inclusive of all the major environmental issues that affect the performance of the EIA system. Literature reveals that the performance of the Zambian EIA system is generally low compared with that of some African countries such as South Africa and Ghana; especially in terms of the quality of EIA reports and substantive environmental protection. Therefore, we hypothesised that the Zambian legislation does not follow the good practice hence the low EIA system performance. Results, however, showed that the two countries are almost on a par in terms of meeting the criteria used in this study. Hence there is more to be done to improve the quality of both countries' EIA legislation. Nevertheless, compared with the previous evaluations by Wood (1999) and Harrison (2005) , the results show that there is considerable improvement in the quality of the South African EIA legislation following a series of amendments.

中文翻译：

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南非与赞比亚环境影响评价立法对比评价

摘要 本研究根据 Wood (1995) 制定的修改后的标准评估南非和赞比亚的环境影响评估 (EIA) 立法，以确定他们遵循“良好做法”并将新出现的环境问题纳入 EIA 的程度。由于自制定以来出现的新环境问题，我们修改了木材的标准。其中一些问题符合可持续发展目标 (SDG)。审查了两国的国家环境法和环境影响评估条例，以评估现行立法。我们还使用电话采访来收集文件中没有的其他信息。作为环评体系的基本组成部分，立法需要明确，简明并包含影响环评系统性能的所有主要环境问题。文献显示，与南非、加纳等一些非洲国家相比，赞比亚环评体系的绩效普遍较低；尤其是在环评报告质量和实质性环境保护方面。因此，我们假设赞比亚立法不遵循良好实践，因此环评系统性能较低。然而，结果表明，就满足本研究中使用的标准而言，这两个国家几乎不相上下。因此，要提高两国环评立法的质量，还有很多工作要做。尽管如此，与 Wood (1999) 和 Harrison (2005) 之前的评估相比，