Gwen van Boven
Technical sectretary
The Facility for Infrastructure Development (ORIO) requested the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) to perform a quick scan of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) report on the construction of two hospitals in the districts of Vumbi and Busoni, in the province of Kirundo, Burundi. The aim of this quick review was quality assurance.
Significant details
The NCEA checked whether the ESIA was in line with the national regulations and verified whether the ESIA report contained adequate, accurate and sufficient information needed for decision making. The NCEA observed that some important elements were missing. These include, among others, a proper description of the project, a description of alternatives to the project, a summary of public participation, and the identification of gaps in information relevant for decision making. In addition, the NCEA recommended the authors to comply with Burundese procedures for ESIA, and to restructure the ESIA accordingly, in order to overcome the gaps in the current ESIA report,