Ineke Steinhauer
Senior Advisor Environmental and Social Assessment
The Coastal protection project aims to create a high level of long-term security against coastal flooding, including increased climate resilience for the City of Beira. The proposed activities consist of site-specific interventions for four contiguous coastal stretches. Invest International is funding the development of the Feasibility Study and Environmental Scoping report (EPDA). Based upon the outcomes of these studies, it will be decided whether to proceed with the detailed design, full ESIA, and project construction. Invest International requested the NCEA to carry out an independent quality review of the EPDA and ToR for the ESIA.
Significant details
In 2018, the NCEA advised on the ToR for the tender for this project, checking amongst others whether Mozambican ESIA requirements had been properly integrated.
In November 2021, Invest International requested that the NCEA independently review the scoping study/ToR.
The NCEA issued its advisory report in December 2021, concluding that essential shortcomings remain. The most important ones are:
- There are no details on stakeholder consultations held
- A description of the responsibilities and mandate of the Beira Municipality is lacking
- Off-site activities such as sand dredging, rock quarrying and clay mining and their impacts have not or insufficiently been described.
- Information is missing on the longshore currents, sediment transport rates along the coast and patterns of coastal erosion/accretion.
- The project seems to focus too much on the engineering interventions and less so on the community involvement component which is required for a sustainable project.
- Currently lacking are in particular impacts of and on potential conflicting other projects under development, impacts on the fisheries sector and impacts related to labor requirements. Finally potential impacts of gender based violence and women’s harassment remain unaddressed.
- Since the ToR is based on the results of the EPDA one would expect that all important issues raised in the ToR are also discussed in the EPDA and the other way aroud. This is currently not the case.