GDAL 3.4.0 not working with Python (error: USE_PATH_FOR_GDAL_PYTHON=YES)

Question

I am trying to run gdal in python using a script like this:

import os
gdal_path = r'"C:/Program Files/QGIS 3.22.1/apps/Python39/Scripts"'
gdal_calc_path = os.path.join(gdal_path, 'gdal_calc.py')
#commands come after

However, I am getting the error ```ImportError: DLL load failed while importing _gdal: The specified module could not be found.

On Windows, with Python >= 3.8, DLLs are no longer imported from the PATH.
If gdalXXX.dll is in the PATH, then set the USE_PATH_FOR_GDAL_PYTHON=YES environment variable
to feed the PATH into os.add_dll_directory().

what does this mean?

Answer 1

I was struggling badly with the same problem for the last couple of days. Using conda, I've tried everything I found on the internet such as:

conda update gdal 
conda update -n base -c defaults conda

Creating new environments (over and over again).

Despite it's not recommended I even tried it with pip install... but no results.

At the end what worked for me was to create a new environment with Python version 3.6

conda create -n env python=3.6 gdal spyder 

Let me know if it worked.

Answer 2

Install anaconda or miniconda

making a new enviroment

for example:

conda create --name name_env python=3.8 anaconda

then install packages

conda install -c conda-forge gdal, rasterio, geopandas