The NCEA issued an advisory review of the EIA for a tourist harbour in the Baía da Murdeira. It concluded that the EIA is of insufficient quality and needs to be completed before a decision on environmental licensing can be taken.
Significant details
After receiving permission to start a tourism development project in the Baía da Murdeira, the initiator of this project also asked for permission to build a tourist harbour on that location. The Baía da Murdeira is a marine nature reserve, and therefore all infrastructural developments in the area require EIA. The Environmental Ministry of Cape Verde asked the NCEA to review the quality of the EIA report that was prepared for this project.
In its advisory review, the NCEA concluded that there are some important omissions in the EIA report. Some of these are:
- The EIA report assesses impacts of the harbour in isolation from impacts of the planned beach resort, without assessing cumulative impacts;
- The report does not describe methodologies or criteria used to assess the significance of impacts;
- The level of detail in the report is insufficient, the list of identified impacts is incomplete, and the assessment is limited to the geographical area directly affected by the construction;
- The report does not present or analyze alternatives from an environmental perspective.
For these reasons, the NCEA concluded that the EIA cannot form the basis of good decision-making on environmental licensing for the proposed project. It recommended to improve the EIA report, based on comments presented in its advice, before a decision is taken.