Projects in which the requirement for an EIA needs to be ascertained, should be subjected to an Initial Environmental Examination (IEE). IEE is carried out to determine whether potentially adverse environmental effects are significant or whether mitigation measures can be adopted to reduce or eliminate these adverse effects. IEE requires more indepth analysis than applied in the screening procedure. Consequently, an IEE involves more time and resources. IEE also requires expert advice and technical input from environmental specialists so that potential environmental problems can be clearly defined. When an IEE is able to provide a definite solution to environmental problems, an EIA is not necessary.

To prepare an IEE, it is necessary to initially make a checklist that briefly describes the project activities to be implemented and natural resources to be affected.

Typical activities such as siting of the project, resource demand, waste production and regulation, policies and guidelines are required to be include in IEE process. For any particular project only a few of these may be significant and therefore the first step is to narrow the list of activities likely to be produce significant effects on the environment. The interaction matrix shown (Box 6) illustrates the process of identifying significant impacts. The horizontal column in the matrix describes the proposed project activities, and the vertical column lists the environmental parameters that might be affected. The response of each environmental parameter to each project action is represented by an interaction cell and should be checked by a rating number ranging from 1 to 3, 1 represent no significant impact, 2 moderate impact and 3 major impact.