Environmental management practices for the sustainable development of a new city in Mozambique
Careful urban planning is of extreme importance in Mozambique, a developing country with a fast-growing population. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) are environmental management tools that can greatly benefit the planning process of sustainable urban spaces. This paper presents the contribution of SEA and ESIA to the environmental management of a new city in Mozambique, south of the Capital, Maputo, in the Katembe District. Katembe City’s environmental impact assessment process highlighted the particularities of this territory and identified the critical constraints for urban development and the requirements for minimization and monitorization of adverse impacts. The assessment process was developed sequentially, from a regional level to a local urban section level. In the preliminary assessment, major potential negative impacts were avoided and specific environmental and social detailed studies were defined, to be addressed in detailed urban plans. Following this, the detailed plans included all the necessary environmental requirements to avoid and mitigate several negative impacts, such as flooding, coastal erosion, biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation. This case study emphasized the importance of SEA and ESIA in the planning process of the new city, resulting in a more sound and sustainable urban project.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors must have a written permission from any third-party materials used in the article, such as figures and graphics. The permission must explicitly allow authors to use the materials. The permission should be submitted with the article, as a supplementary file.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after BJO&PM publishes it (See The Effect of Open Access).