Coastal ecosystems provide essential environmental services, including biodiversity conservation, climate regulation, coastal protection, and support for tourism and fisheries. Along the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast, ecologically important habitats such as dunes, estuaries, wetlands, and coastal forests play a critical role in protecting shorelines, supporting biodiversity, and sustaining local livelihoods. However, these systems are increasingly threatened by coastal erosion, sea-level rise, storm surges, habitat degradation, illegal sand mining, and poorly planned development. Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs) therefore play an important role in assessing climate-related risks and ensuring that Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) consider shoreline stability, flood vulnerability, sea-level rise projections, ecosystem sensitivity, and cumulative development impacts. Conference contributions exploring coastal resilience, climate adaptation, human impacts on coastal systems, and sustainable management approaches for protecting the Wild Coast are highly encouraged.

Environmental justice has become a critical focus within environmental governance, particularly in communities disproportionately affected by pollution, illegal dumping, and poorly managed waste disposal systems. Across South Africa, including the Eastern Cape, inadequate waste collection services, limited municipal infrastructure, and increasing illegal dumping continue to degrade environmental quality and threaten public health. In many areas, communities resort to burning waste, further contributing to air pollution and associated health risks. Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs) play an important role in identifying environmental health risks, assessing community impacts during development planning, and ensuring that affected communities are included in decision-making through meaningful public participation processes. By connecting environmental governance with public health and social equity, this theme emphasises the need to integrate environmental justice principles into environmental assessment practice. Abstract submissions may explore policy and governance frameworks, the health and social impacts of waste mismanagement, case studies from the Eastern Cape, and the role of EAPs in promoting environmental justice through inclusive and participatory assessment processes.

Sustainable urban development and industrialisation in South Africa and other developing countries are major drivers of increasing waste generation and pollution. Rapid urbanisation, changing consumption patterns, and expanding industrial activities are placing significant pressure on municipal waste management systems, resulting in rising volumes of solid and hazardous waste, air emissions, and water pollution. Fast-growing cities such as Mthatha in the Eastern Cape are already experiencing environmental challenges, including water contamination, air pollution from waste burning, and associated public health risks due to inadequate waste infrastructure. Through Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and related planning processes, Environmental Assessment Practitioners (EAPs) play a key role in assessing waste management systems, pollution risks, and environmental health impacts of development projects. This conference theme invites abstracts on sustainable urban planning, integrated waste management, circular economy approaches, and improved environmental governance, with a focus on urbanisation- driven waste challenges, industrial and municipal pollution impacts, public health risks, and the role of EAPs in strengthening waste and pollution management systems.

Integrated Environmental Management (IEM) plays a key role in promoting policy and governance harmonisation within the SADC region, particularly through Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes where Public Participation (PP) ensures inclusive, transparent, and accountable decision-making. The harmonisation of IEM, PP, and environmental assessment tools offers an opportunity to standardise policies, guidelines, methodologies, and implementation approaches across member states, thereby strengthening regional consistency and sustainability. In this context, Digital Environmental Systems (DESs)—including GIS, environmental screening tools, and web based platforms such as SAHRIS, SAMRAD, e-Wulaas, and NEAS—enhance data-driven decision-making, transparency, and regulatory efficiency. Overall, these developments support improved environmental governance, while enabling regional collaboration, standardised approaches, and shared strategies for addressing cross-border environmental challenges in the SADC region.

The SADC region is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, experiencing increasing frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, cyclones, and heatwaves, which place significant pressure on infrastructure, agriculture, housing, tourism, and human livelihoods, particularly in rural and vulnerable communities. Disaster management is therefore a critical priority, focusing on reducing risk and strengthening resilience through early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure and agriculture, and effective adaptation strategies that support long- term sustainability. Submissions are encouraged that examine climate change impacts on vulnerable populations and explore disaster risk reduction, resilience- building measures, and the intersection of climate science, disaster management, and social equity within the SADC context.

The inclusion of professionalisation as a core theme of the EAPASA Regional Conference is both timely and strategic, aligning with South Africa’s commitment to building a capable and professionalised state. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), as a key decision-support tool, relies on the competence, ethics, and accountability of practitioners across the public sector, private consulting, and academia. Strengthening the professionalisation of environmental practice is therefore essential to enhancing the credibility, defensibility, and effectiveness of environmental governance systems. By foregrounding this theme, the conference contributes to a broader national and regional discourse on building a capable environmental sector equipped to address complex sustainability challenges with integrity and excellence. Globally, strong EIA systems are underpinned by certification and licensing, continuing professional development (CPD), codes of ethics, and peer review mechanisms. In this regard, abstracts exploring professionalisation frameworks, ethics, accountability, capacity building, and global best practices are encouraged, particularly those demonstrating how these approaches strengthen EIA practice and support a more capable and professionalised environmental sector in South Africa and the region.