Quality Evaluation of İskele/TRNC Projects’ Environmental Impact Assessment Reports and their Compliance with European Union EIA Report Standards

Any construction project can negatively affect the surrounding environment, biodiversity, and human beings. Their effects can be identified, mitigated, and eliminated. Thus, it is clear how crucial the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) procedure is. As it defines a project, the EIA Report is an important step in the process of EIA. It assesses environmental and social impacts, applies mitigation measures, management, monitoring plans and alternative solutions. Consequently, in order to fulfill all the above-mentioned factors, the EIA reports prepared for construction projects in İskele/TRNC district must have qualified EIA reports in order to provide sustainability for the environment and biodiversity. The EU EIA process, being a legitimate procedure, has determined the aim of this study to evaluate the quality of selected five projects’ EIA reports from İskele/TRNC district and compare their quality with the EU EIA Report standards. Both the overall and section qualities for the selected reports have been identified and compared to EU EIA Report standards by the selection of review checklist questions given in EU EIA Report guidance and by using the “Quality Index” (QI). The findings showed that the overall and each section’s quality within the selected EIA reports did not comply with EU EIA Report Standards indicating that improvement is inevitable for EIA reports. It has been recommended that certain improvements can be made by authorities creating an updated checklist influenced from the EU EIA Report Standards and applying it to local EIA reports. This process could positively affect the quality of İskele/TRNC Projects’ EIA reports to sustain the environment and biodiversity for a better future. Keywords: Environmental Impact Assessment, Environmental Impact Assessment Report, European Union EIA Report Standards, Review Checklist Questions, Quality Index, Overall and Section Quality