Policy and Institutional Reforms for an Effective Eia System in Sudan

Abstract

Assessing the potential impact of development projects in the Sudan dates back to the study of the Equatorial Nile Project conducted in the last century during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies commenced in the early eighties of the last century with the establishment of the Institute of Environmental Studies in the University of Khartoum. The practice gathered momentum with the recent activities in the oil and roads sectors. Although the practice of (EIA) has only recently been legalized by the passing of the Environment Protection Act of 2001, the performance of EIA is often poor due to flaws in legislative, administrative, institutional and procedural frameworks. Effective implementation of the EIA process in the Sudan requires the institutionalization of the process within the legislative, administrative, political and education system in the country. Special emphasis is needed for the federal system of governance. Other issues include accreditation, sectoral regulations, establishing of a National Centre of EIA for advising the government and for training of human capacities. The paper calls for more involvement of stakeholders via effective popular participation in all steps of EIA. The expected influx of foreign investors following the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2005 and the concentration of oil reserves in the ecologically rich and sensitive regions, call for an urgent improvement in the legislative, institutional and procedural aspects of the process.

Fifteen Years of Environmental Impact Assessment System in Bangladesh: Current Practice, Challenges and Future Directions

“…In other developing countries, including China, Brazil, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Sudan and India the EIA legislation also had various deficiencies when first introduced. The legislations in these countries were amended after a decade of their introduction to make the EIA system more effective (Ali, 2007;Glasson and Salvador, 2000;Jou and Liaw, 2006;Paliwal and Srivastava, 2012;Vidyratne, 2006;Wang et al, 2003).…”

The contribution of capacities and context to EIA system performance and effectiveness in developing countries: towards a better understanding

“…The purpose of these evaluations is to improve EIA system performance. Examples are an evaluation of EIA system performance in Sudan by Ali (2007), in Cameroun by Alemagi et al (2007), in Nigeria by Ogunba (2004), in eight EU countries by Barker and Wood (1999), for Germany by Wende (2002), for Denmark by Christensen (2003) and in Greece by Androulakis and Karakassis (2006). These studies focus primarily on EIA report quality and assume that an EIA has influence when the report quality is good.…”

“…The shortcomings of a weak EIA system in developing countries are often identical. The findings of an evaluation of the EIA system in Sudan by Ali (2007) can be considered as indicative for many developing countries. The EIA regulatory framework is incomplete, and scoping, for example, is not obligatory.…”

“…Once an EIA report is adopted, no follow-up is undertaken and inspection and enforcement are almost absent. Ali (2007) concluded that, because of these findings, EIA system performance in Sudan is weak, and identified the following recommendations: improve the EIA regulatory framework, train EIA stakeholders, allow for public participation in the EIA process and install a system to secure funding of EIA. Evaluations of EIA system performance in, for example, Nigeria by Ogunba (2004) and in Cameroun by Alemagi et al (2007) came to similar conclusions and recommendations.…”

Evaluation of the environmental impact assessment system in Egypt

“…There are no legal requirements for assessing and monitoring the EIA system in Egypt or in other developing countries such as Uganda and Sudan (Ali, 2007). For instance, there is no follow-up monitoring for either environmental consequences or mitigation measures in implementation, especially during construction.…”