PULP MILLS (JUDGMENT) 82 (a) Environmental Impact Assessment 203. The Court will now turn to the relationship between the need for an environmental impact assessment, where the planned activity is liable to cause harm to a shared resource and transboundary harm, and the obligations of the Parties under Article 41 (a) and (b) of the 1975 Statute. The Parties agree on the necessity of conducting an environmental impact assessment. Argentina maintains that the obligations under the 1975 Statute viewed together impose an obligation to conduct an environmental impact assessment prior to authorizing Botnia to construct the plant. Uruguay also accepts that it is under such an obligation. The Parties disagree, however, with regard to the scope and content of the environmental impact assessment that Uruguay should have carried out with respect to the Orion (Botnia) mill project. Argentina maintains in the first place that Uruguay failed to ensure that “full environmental assessments [had been] produced, prior to its decision to authorize the construction . . .” ; and in the second place that “Uruguay’s decisions [were] . . . based on unsatisfactory environmental assessments”, in particular because Uruguay failed to take account of all potential impacts from the mill, even though international law and practice require it, and refers in this context to the 1991 Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (hereinafter the “Espoo Convention”) (UNTS, Vol. 1989, p. 309), and the 1987 Goals and Principles of Environmental Impact Assessment of the United Nations Environment Programme (hereinafter the “UNEP Goals and Principles”) (UNEP/ WG.152/4 Annex (1987), document adopted by UNEP Governing Council at its 14th Session (Dec. 14/25 (1987)). Uruguay accepts that, in accordance with international practice, an environmental impact assessment of the Orion (Botnia) mill was necessary, but argues that international law does not impose any conditions upon the content of such an assessment, the preparation of which being a national, not international, procedure, at least where the project in question is not one common to several States. According to Uruguay, the only requirements international law imposes on it are that there must be assessments of the project’s potential harmful transboundary effects on people, property and the environment of other States, as required by State practice and the International Law Commission 2001 draft Articles on Prevention of Transboundary Harm from Hazardous Activities, without there being any need to assess remote or purely speculative risks. 204. It is the opinion of the Court that in order for the Parties properly to comply with their obligations under Article 41 (a) and (b) of the 1975 Statute, they must, for the purposes of protecting and preserving the 72