TITLE:
Legal and Institutional Challenges Facing the Somali Regional State in the Implementation of Environmental Impact Assessment
AUTHORS:
Melaku Gezahegn Mekonnin
KEYWORDS:
Environmental Impact Assessment, Horizontal Coordination, Public Participation
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.10 No.3,
June
3,
2019
ABSTRACT: Ethiopia is a federal country wherein all regional states making the federation are required to establish an independent regional environmental agency or designate an existing agency to carry out environmental protection and management duties. In line with this, the Ethiopian Somali Regional state (one among of the federating states) has enacted legislations and established institutions designated for the implementation of Environmental Impact Assessment. This research mainly aims to show whether the required legal and institutional frameworks related with EIA are established in the region through systematic analysis of legal documents. Moreover, interviews were conducted with the concerned regional authorities and data gathered were qualitatively described to show implementation of EIA in the region. Accordingly, the proper analysis of legislations and interviews conducted reveals the fact that beyond the positive progress achieved, there are legal and institutional gaps affecting the implementation of EIA in the region. Lack of a directive listing projects requiring EIA and those that do not and a guideline that determines categories of public instruments to be initiated by the regional organs are among the major challenges facing the region in the implementation of EIA. Institutionally too, the regional environmental authority is not staffed with required EIA experts and is not cascaded down to other major towns of the region as is required by the law. Lack of coordination among the regional institutions, unavailability of qualified environmental experts, consultants and meaningful participation of the public during EIA preparation are also the basic challenges affecting the implementation of EIA. Hence, so as to properly integrate environmental concerns into developmental aspiration of the region, it is argued in this paper that challenges related with legislations and institutional gaps need to be properly addressed by the concerned regional authorities.