A comparative evaluation of the environmental impact assessment legislation of South Africa and Zambia |
| |
| Institution: | 1. African Centre for Disaster Studies, Research Focus Area: Social Transformation, North-West University, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, 2520, South Africa;2. Environmental Assessment Research Group, School of Geo and Spatial Sciences, North-West University, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, 2520, South Africa;1. Department of Civil Engineering, Catholic University of Murcia, 30107 Murcia, Spain;2. Instituto de Ciencias Químicas Aplicadas, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Chile;3. Applied Technology Group to Environmental Health, Faculty of Health Science, Catholic University of Murcia, 30107 Murcia, Spain;4. Geological Survey of Spain, Rios Rosas, 23 28003 Madrid, Spain;5. Nucleus of Environmental Studies, Catholic University of Temuco, Temuco, Chile;1. Dipartimento di Agraria, University of Sassari, Viale Italia, 39, 07100 Sassari, Italy;2. LaSalle Investment Management, One Curzon Street London, UK;1. School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK;2. School of Geo and Spatial Sciences, North-West University, South Africa;3. Integral Sustainability, Australia;4. Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute, Australia;5. Environmental Science, Murdoch University, Australia;6. Department of Geography and Planning and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, Canada |
| |
| Abstract: | This study evaluates the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) legislation of South Africa and Zambia against the modified criteria developed by Wood (1995) to determine the extent to which they follow “good practices” and incorporate emerging environmental issues into EIA. We modified the criteria of Wood due to new environmental issues that have emerged since their formulation. Some of these issues are in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). National Environmental Acts and EIA Regulations for the two countries were reviewed to evaluate the current legislation. We also used telephone interviews to gather additional information that was not in the documents. As a fundamental component of the EIA system, the legislation needs to be clear, concise and inclusive of all the major environmental issues that affect the performance of the EIA system. Literature reveals that the performance of the Zambian EIA system is generally low compared with that of some African countries such as South Africa and Ghana; especially in terms of the quality of EIA reports and substantive environmental protection. Therefore, we hypothesised that the Zambian legislation does not follow the good practice hence the low EIA system performance. Results, however, showed that the two countries are almost on a par in terms of meeting the criteria used in this study. Hence there is more to be done to improve the quality of both countries' EIA legislation. Nevertheless, compared with the previous evaluations by Wood (1999) and Harrison (2005), the results show that there is considerable improvement in the quality of the South African EIA legislation following a series of amendments. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
