Secondary data-associated challenges for environmental assessment in developing countries; case of Egypt

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Elsherouk City

2 The British University in Egypt

Abstract

 Assessing environmental major development projects requires using advanced
levels of environmental secondary data (ESD). This is particularly challenging in
developing countries. Hence, a systemic literature review was performed. Along
with structured interviews and online questionnaire designed for professional
planners and researchers were used to investigate the factors affecting secondary
data collection and processing for environmental assessment systems in Egypt as
an example of developing countries revealing potentials and challenges. The
results pinpointed critical problems for ESD associated with poor sufficiency,
availability, relevance, and accuracy of data. Thus, using these four defined criteria,
an assessment framework was developed to evaluate the status of ESD for
development projects. This provides guidelines for establishing an integrated data
collection and management system to support the environmental assessment
process. This is further applied to ‘Elqattara depression national development
project’ to investigate the environmental impact of various desalination
development scenarios. This case study project pinpointed problems for the ESD
used related to both relevance and sufficiency.

Keywords

Main Subjects