Strategic environmental assessment of the Masasi district council’s interim land use plan

Masasi District Council in collaboration with the Ministry of Land and Human Settlements Development has prepared a 10 years Masasi Interim Land Use Plan starting 2006 to 2016. The plan has been prepared as an intervention measure to curb currently experienced rapid and haphazard growth of the town. According to this plan there will be a very large change to the state of land use in Masasi town. Although the plan shows large changes to land use, it does not show clearly the associated negative impacts and their mitigations. This is an obstacle to the plan's aim of promoting a sustainable land use of the town and facilitating the provision of adequate and affordable shelter to all income groups of Masasi residents. In order to attain the plan's aim, this study has opted to incorporate Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to the plan; where by researcher together with key stakeholders identified activities related to the proposed land use patterns and then predicted the associated key potential impact characteristics. The result of analysis of impact characteristics showed that, all impacts were most significant to land use changes planned at Masasi Town, and therefore recommended impacts mitigations. This study has also recommended that; Masasi District Council accept and approve the findings of this research to be incorporated into Interim Land Use Plan; the incorporation of SEA is to be done to all other plans and programmes of Masasi District Council which are seem to be in need of SEA; and that, critical study should be done on the population dynamics in Masasi Town.