What is the difference between a RAP and an ESIA?
The ESIA identifies impacts across the whole project. The RAP deals with one of them — displacement — for named people.
An ESIA assesses all of a project's environmental and social impacts. A RAP deals with one of them — displacement — and does it for named people with individual entitlements. The ESIA identifies that a road will displace four hundred households; the RAP establishes who those households are, what each one is owed, and proves it was delivered.
Different questions
- The ESIA asks what will happen — to water, air, biodiversity, health, communities, cultural heritage and livelihoods — and what should be done about it. Its output is an assessment and a management plan.
- The RAP asks who loses what, and what they get. Its output is a register of individuals, an entitlement matrix, a budget and an implementation programme.[1]
One is an assessment document. The other is an operational programme with a payment schedule attached.
The dependency between them
The RAP depends on the ESIA and is usually procured alongside it, which causes the most common sequencing failure in the field.
A census cannot start until the footprint is known, and the footprint is an ESIA output — arrived at partly through the alternatives assessment, where the number of people displaced should be one of the criteria for choosing a route.[2] Where the two run in parallel, the RAP team enumerates against assumptions, and every assumption that turns out wrong means re-surveying and re-valuing.
Displacement counts are an input to choosing the alignment, not a consequence to be measured after it is fixed.
Do you need both?
Almost always, if the project takes land. The ESIA is triggered by environmental and social impact generally; the RAP is triggered by displacement specifically. A project can need an ESIA and no RAP — if it takes no land from anyone — but a project that displaces people and prepares only an ESIA has not discharged the resettlement requirement.[3]
Where they must agree
Reviewers compare the two documents, and contradictions between them are the easiest finding available: different affected-population figures, different baselines, different footprints, different consultation records.
The practical fix is one socioeconomic baseline instrument serving both purposes rather than two teams surveying the same communities weeks apart, and one consultation programme rather than two.[4] That is a decision made at procurement, before either team mobilises.
Sources
- [1]Performance Standard 5: Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement — International Finance Corporation, 2012.
- [2]ESF Guidance Note 5: Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement — World Bank, 2018.
- [3]Good Practice Handbook: Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement — International Finance Corporation, 2023.
- [4]The Equator Principles (EP4) — Equator Principles Association, 2020.
Olule Solomon
Lead Consultant, ValueSpace
Olule Solomon is Lead Consultant at ValueSpace, where he works on land acquisition and resettlement systems for donor-financed infrastructure in East Africa. He writes about the practical gap between what the safeguard standards require and what a project can actually evidence at completion audit.
Related reading
- ESIA and RAP sequencing: why the order these are done in decides the costThe RAP depends on ESIA outputs it is usually procured in parallel with. What that costs, and how to sequence it properly.
- What is a Resettlement Action Plan? A practitioner's guideWhat a RAP is, when a lender requires one, what it must contain, and why most are judged on evidence rather than intent.
- How do you know whether your project needs a RAP?One test decides it: does the project take land, assets or access from anyone. Scale then decides which instrument, not whether.
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