Investigation of the impact of environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes on decision-making processess in Turkey in terms of waste management projects

The general purpose of the study is to determine the impact of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) processes and decisions taken on environmental degradation in Turkey and to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the process that are open to development. At the same time, it is aimed to determine the aspects that are open to development in the content of EIA reports through waste management projects.In this study, the twenty-eight-year EIA practices of Turkey, which has been carrying out EIA processes since 1993, are examined. In this context, the process in the EIA Regulation, which has been changed seven times, has been expressed with flow diagrams, and the changes in the regulations have been examined comparatively. The amended EIA Regulations have been revised sixteen times in the process with the "Regulation on Amendments to the Regulation".In the study, all EIA decisions taken in Turkey in the years 1993-2021 were evaluated according to years, sectors, decision results and regions, and the trend in project investments in Turkey was considered through EIA statistics. According to this, it was seen that 87% of the applications for EIA were not required by EIA and 13% were decided to apply for EIA. The investment permit of 99% of the projects that received an EIA Approval decision was approved by an EIA Positive decision. It has been seen that the most invested sector is the "Energy" sector and the most invested region is the "Marmara Region".Within the scope of the study, thirty-five EIA projects related to the waste sector selected as the application area were examined. In order to determine the effectiveness and efficiency of these reports, forty-three criteria were determined under four main headings in scoring according to the criteria adapted from the Lee-Colley Review Package.In the evaluation conducted over one hundred points, points were given according to the level of impact and importance of each criterion in the reports. It was found that 63% of the examined reports lacked a strong, detailed description of the main impacts and public participation studies of aspects such as project and environmental definition, transmission of report results. As a result of the study, the aspects that need to be developed in the EIA process in Turkey have been revealed by SWOT analysis.