Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is one of the most used tools for environmental
management since its introduction in 1970s in the United States of America. Being a
systematic process that examines the environmental consequences of development
actions in advance, it is perceived as one of the tools which can help different nations to
achieve sustainable development because of its capabilities to provide necessary
information for decision-makers in order to balance economical, social and ecological
paradigms of sustainable development in development projects. This research aims to
assess the practice of the EIA processes in Rwanda and specifically seeks to identify the
major challenges faced by environmental officers in this process. Given the nature of this
research, policy review and desktop research methods have been used to study the current
EIA procedures in Rwanda while a quantitative survey method was used to collect data
and assess the practices of EIA process as well as the challenges faced by environmental
officers in Rwanda. All environmental officers (8) who were dealing with EIA in Rwanda
before the transfer of the EIA department to the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) and
all consultant companies which have been approved and which have at least done an EIA
study in Rwanda (19) were targeted and received questionnaires via emails. All the
environmental officers and 12 (63%) of the consultants responded to the questionnaire.
The data was captured in the Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) template after
being coded and has been analysed thematically. The policy review reveals that the
current procedures are being developed given that the EIA process started in 2005. Like
many developing countries, implementation remains a key challenge. Institutional
arrangements remain to be finalised. In terms of the survey findings, even if EIA officers
are more experienced than EIA consultants both have some skill gaps including using
Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing, understanding project
management and customer care skills. Additionally, they receive very little training and
capacity-building opportunities, although they desire these. The main challenges
identified related to insufficient baseline data, funding, shortage of staff, lack of adequate
resources, instilling environmental awareness among developers (developers perceive
EIA as a barrier) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) which is not conducted. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2011.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/5363 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Munyazikwiye, Faustin. |
| Contributors | Bob, Urmilla. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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