The Commission for Coordination and Regional Development (CCDR) Algarve has announced the start of the public consultation period for the Environmental Impact Assessment of IKEA's plans to build its Algarve retail centre.
Not content with letting the public make its mind up about the impact of the major retail site, the notice published on RegiaoSul puts a clearly positive spin on the Swedish stores’ inevitable destruction of the local natural environment.
The report is available at Loulé council and from snippets released in the media today such as ‘according to current technical and scientific knowledge we do not identify environmental or social impacts that raise doubts about the sustainability of the project that significantly would influence its implementation," the non-technical summary is almost entirely pro-developement which is no surprise as it is presented from the council and developer's viewpoint. The summary of the study can be perused until 27 May.
While all of this is going on, IKEA Portugal is still stuck in various legal battles and despite much public support has been forced to waste time and effort in claim and counter-claim with a group of local business interests including, bizarrely the Algarve’s Hotels and Resorts Association which could better spend its time and money in promoting the Algarve's hotels and resorts. The opening of the IKEA store was due to be this year but it is blocked by these local legal moves.
The authors of the environmental study believe that "the negative impacts identified are not, as a whole, significant and it is anticipated that the project can provide, especially in the socioeconomic area, important benefits."
Most of the negative impacts of the project were assessed as "low significance," and only during the construction period, "particularly those emerging from the modification of the landscape and visual disfigurement. Then nuisance and environmental degradation that will occur."
The one-sided study, normally paid for by the applicant, in this case IKEA, indicates happily that during construction of the store about 2,800 direct and indirect jobs will be created, later on when the commercial centre is built the Swedes estimate that 9,900 jobs in the construction phase and about 11,500 jobs all together will have been filled.
The non-technical summary shows that IKEA claims that the project stands as 'a major commercial complex at a regional level that will serve the Algarve, Alentejo and the southern part of Spain,' which not many doubt.
