Evaluation of environmental impact assessment report preparation and public participation in landfill projects in Nepal

Abstract

Abstract:This study examined the effectiveness of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in landfill development projects for Kathmandu Valley municipalities in Nepal using a survey, focus group interviews, expert interviews, and observations. The study found that EIA reports are often prepared by incompetent contractors that are not accredited and the reports are poor in quality, too technical, mostly published in the English language, cluttered with irrelevant materials, too long, and frequently contain information copied from other documents. The survey results showed that 66% of the respondents were unaware of any public meetings conducted for EIA in the current landfill location, 69% of them were uninformed of any alternate landfill locations, 91% were unsatisfied with the governmental services provided, and only 14% were happy with the public participation conducted. Findings from other proposed landfill locations and an old landfill site corroborated that the government fell short in conducting EIA or upholding Nepal's environmental law, thus undercutting public support in such projects. In some cases, retroactive EIA was being conducted to create the appearance that the required procedures were followed, which clearly violated the spirit and elemental principle of the apparatus. In other cases, political parties endorsed EIA in place of public hearings. To rectify flaws in EIA and maintain quality and accepted rigor of EIA in solid waste management (SWM), it is suggested that Nepal devise EIA guidelines for the SWM sector that are more appropriate for local conditions, build institutional capacity, accredit EIA drafters, use alternate methods to notify people about proposed activities, and seek public participation and ownership in the project from the beginning.

Foreign aid in waste management: A case of Kathmandu, Nepal

“…Similar methods were used in two other studies (Dangi, Urynowicz, & Belbase, 2013;Dangi, Fernandez, Bom, Belbase, & Kaphle, 2015). The 336 households selected come from 20 of the 35 Kathmandu city wards using threestage cluster sampling techniques representing four socioeconomic strata (Scheaffer, Mendenhall, & Ott, 2006).…”

Integrating Multilevel Adaptive Models to Develop Systematic, Transparent, and Participatory EIA Practice

“…EIA influences decision-making at local, national and transboundary levels, with the following overall objectives: potentially screen out environmentally harmful projects, predict significant adverse impacts, suggest measures to reduce or prevent major impacts, identify feasible alternatives, and engage communities or individuals potentially affected by the implementation of the project. Developing countries tend to have weak EIA performance [3][4][5] and low scientific productivity in the EIA field [6], highlighting the necessity of improving the process and integrating it with planning and policy-making at multiple scales [7]. Moreover, poorly implemented EIA often led to environmental conflicts, lack of confidence in the system and infringement procedures against EU countries.…”

“…Although the core EIA procedures are comparable worldwide, the quality of implementation varies from country to country and sometimes from project to project [10]. However, several issues obstructing the proper implementation of the EIA process are common in developing countries: low quality of assessment reports, lack of public participation, insufficient equipment and trained staff, inadequate institutional framework, low cooperation between policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders [4,[11][12][13]. High quality and streamlined EIA process [14] requires efforts from all involved EIA actors [15].…”

“…Identifying technical solutions to the problems of a single category of actors is not enough to develop sustainable projects, as this may neglect others' interests, generating conflicts [16]. Current approaches to question EIA process use case studies to discuss the quality of EIA reports, describe or compare stages or the whole procedure, review the performance of EIA within a specific domain of activities, analyse perceptions of EIA practitioners through surveys or evaluate public participation [4,5]. The number of research studies focused on the investigation of EIA collaboration process through network analysis/multilevel adaptive models [17] is worryingly limited [10], the implementation of EIA procedures is deficient in most developing countries [6], and the contribution of science that envisages the collaboration between the actors involved to the process is minor at best.…”

Avaliação da qualidade do diagnóstico do meio biótico de EIAs do Estado de São Paulo

“…EIAs brasileiros, apontando as deficiências mais representativas em cada etapa desses estudos (MPF, 2004), sendo que muitas dessas insuficiências se sobrepõem em estudos de qualidade de diferentes jurisdições. Dessa forma, a tabela 2 apresenta uma síntese das deficiências encontradas em EIAs por MPF (2004) Tabela 2 -Deficiências em estudos de impacto ambiental (MPF, 2004 Canelas et al, 2005;Peterson, 2010Entrevistas Caldas, 2006Nadeem, Hameed, 2008;Kruopiene, Zidoniene, Dvarioniene, 2009;Almeida et al, 2015;Dangi et al, 2015…”