Title: Evaluation of the EIA process in Zanzibar: The participation of stakeholders in public and private projects

Abstract

Background & Aim: Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an anticipatory tool for environmental management and decision making in projects, which success depends on the participation level of stakeholders 1. The study assessed the relationship between participation-satisfaction of stakeholders in the EIA process based on 30 projects in Zanzibar. Methods: Semi-structured questionnaires (n=470) were employed to assess the core function, interest-influence, participation and satisfaction of stakeholders in the EIA process. MLR and OLS were used to identify key determinants that affect stakeholders’ satisfaction. Results & Discussion: 55% of stakeholders were involved in the EIA process mainly dominated by government institutions (Fig. 1b). However, NGOs are the stakeholders having a poor influence on the EIA (Fig. 1a) and weak social networking with core stakeholders, which is non-consistent with the role they play to increase the EIA legitimacy to overcome barriers to participatory practice 2. Moreover, the overall satisfaction of the stakeholders was basic (Ms=3.14), due to the lack of participatory approach appliance and the top to down decision making taken by the government 3. Finally, detailed and informative project knowledge, as well as the use of the participatory approach, have a positive impact on satisfaction with public project success, and this is consistent with other recent findings that see them as major satisfaction drivers 4-5. Conclusion: The study suggests increasing public participation in decision-making is likely to improve all the stakeholders’ satisfaction in the EIA process thus project success.