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

Abstract

Assessing environmental major development projects requires using advancedlevels of environmental secondary data (ESD). This is particularly challenging indeveloping countries. Hence, a systemic literature review was performed. Alongwith structured interviews and online questionnaire designed for professionalplanners and researchers were used to investigate the factors affecting secondarydata collection and processing for environmental assessment systems in Egypt asan example of developing countries revealing potentials and challenges. Theresults 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 fordevelopment projects. This provides guidelines for establishing an integrated datacollection and management system to support the environmental assessmentprocess. This is further applied to ‘Elqattara depression national developmentproject’ to investigate the environmental impact of various desalinationdevelopment scenarios. This case study project pinpointed problems for the ESDused related to both relevance and sufficiency.