Knowledge and capacity building need of local government officials on environmental and health impact assessment in Khon Kaen province

Abstract

      This cross-sectional descriptive research aimed to study knowledge and the need on capacity building of environmental and health impact assessment (EHIA) of Khon Kaen local government officials, according to their legitimated roles and mandates. The data collection tool used a self-administered questionnaire, while after corrected and improved its content recommended by relevant experts, the questionnaire was posted to those 224 official correspondents of municipalities and sub-district administrative organizations (SAOs) during January-April 2012. The respondents were 120 local governments (53.6%) consisting of 41 municipalities and 79 SAOs. In-depth interview was also made with 8 municipalities and 6 SAOs officials with a total of 14 persons.

      When exploring existing knowledge on the EHIA of all respondents, the highest score was 95% while the lowest was 10%, with an average of 66.8%. When classifying ranges of score achieved, it was found 39.2% of respondents falling into 80-100%, 33.3% were of 60-79%, 16.7% were of 40-59%, and 10.8% were less than 40%. When quantifying the need on HIA training for local government officials, 92.5% needed it. The local government administrators required the training and learning EHIA activities for exchanging knowledge of among them.