STRATEGIC IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Strategic Environmental Assessment
Strategic
environmental assessment (SEA) is a systematic
decision support process, aiming to ensure that environmental and possibly
other sustainability aspects are considered effectively in policy, plan and
programme making. In this context, following Fischer (2007)[1] SEA may be seen as:
·
a structured, rigorous,
participative, open and transparent environmental impact assessment (EIA) based
process, applied particularly to plans and programmes, prepared by public
planning authorities and at times private bodies,
·
a participative, open and
transparent,possibly non-EIA-based process, applied in a more flexible manner
to policies, prepared by public planning authorities and at times private
bodies, or
·
a flexible non-EIA based
process,applied to legislative proposals and other policies, plans and
programmes in political/cabinet decision-making.
Effective
SEA works within a structured and tiered decision framework,aiming to support
more effective and efficient decision-making for sustainable development and
improved governance by providing for a substantive focus regarding questions,
issues and alternatives to be considered in policy, plan and programme(PPP)
making.
SEA is
an evidence-based instrument, aiming to add scientific rigour to PPP making, by
using suitable assessment methods and techniques. Ahmed and Sanchez Triana
(2008) developed an approach to the design and implementation of public
policies that follows a continuous process rather than as a discrete
intervention.discrete[
Relationship with environmental impact assessment
For
the most part, an SEA is conducted before a corresponding EIA is undertaken.
This means that information on the environmental impact of a plan can cascade
down through the tiers of decision making and can be used in an EIA at a later
stage. This should reduce the amount of work that needs to be undertaken. A
handover procedure is foreseen.
Aims and structure of SEA
The
SEA Directive only applies to plans and programmes, not policies, although
policies within plans are likely to be assessed and SEA can be applied to
policies if needed and in the UK certainly, very often is.
The
structure of SEA (under the Directive) is based on the following phases:
·
"Screening",
investigation of whether the plan or programme falls under the SEA legislation,
·
"Scoping",
defining the boundaries of investigation, assessment and assumptions required,
·
"Documentation of the
state of the environment", effectively a baseline on which to base judgments,
·
"Determination of the
likely (non-marginal) environmental impacts", usually in terms of
Direction of Change rather than firm figures,
·
Informing and consulting
the public,
·
Influencing "Decision
taking" based on the assessment and,
·
Monitoring of the effects
of plans and programmes after their implementation.
The EU
directive also includes other impacts besides the environmental, such as
material assets and archaeological sites. In most western European states this
has been broadened further to include economic and social aspects of sustainability.
SEA should ensure that plans and programmes take into
consideration the environmental effects they cause. If those environmental
effects are part of the overall decision taking it is calledStrategic Impact
Assessment.
The SEA Directive
applies to a wide range of public plans and programmes (e.g. on land
use, transport, energy, waste, agriculture, etc). The SEA Directive does not
refer to policies. The SEA Directive is in force since 2001 and should have
been transposed by July 2004.
Plans and programmes
in the sense of the SEA Directive must be prepared or adopted by an authority (at national, regional or local level)
and be required by legislative, regulatory or
administrative provisions.
The SEA Directive
does not have a list of
plans/programmes similar to the EIA.
An SEA is mandatory for plans/programmes which are:
·
are prepared for agriculture, forestry, fisheries,
energy, industry, transport, waste/ water management, telecommunications,
tourism, town & country planning or land use and which set the framework for future development consent of
projects listed in the EIA Directive.
Broadly speaking, for
the plans/programmes not included above, the Member States have to carry out a
screening procedure to determine whether the plans/programmes are likely to
have significant environmental effects. If there are significant effects, an
SEA is needed. The screening procedure is based on criteria set out in Annex II
of the Directive.
The SEA procedure can
be summarized as follows: an environmental report is prepared in which the
likely significant effects on the environment and the reasonable alternatives
of the proposed plan or programme are identified. The public and the
environmental authorities are informed and consulted on the draft plan or
programme and the environmental report prepared. As regards plans and
programmes which are likely to have significant effects on the environment in
another Member State, the Member State in whose territory the plan or programme
is being prepared must consult the other Member State(s). On this issue the SEA
Directive follows the general approach taken by the SEA Protocol to the UN ECE Convention on
Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context.
The environmental
report and the results of the consultations are taken into account before
adoption. Once the plan or programme is adopted, the environmental authorities
and the public are informed and relevant information is made available to them.
In order to identify unforeseen adverse effects at an early stage, significant
environmental effects of the plan or programme are to be monitored.
The SEA and EIA
procedures are very similar, but there are some differences:
·
the SEA requires the environmental
authorities to be consulted
at the screening stage;
·
scoping (i.e. the stage of
the SEA process that determines the content and extent of the matters to be covered
in the SEA report to be submitted to a competent authority) is obligatory under
the SEA;
·
the SEA requires an assessment of reasonable alternatives (under the EIA the developer chooses
the alternatives to be studied);
·
under the SEA Member States must monitor the significant environmental effects
of the implementation of plans/programmes in order to identify unforeseen
adverse effects and undertake appropriate remedial action.
·
the SEA obliges Member States to ensure that
environmental reports are of a sufficient quality.
1. What is SEA? – definition and objectives of SEA for strategic
thinking
In 1989 SEA was introduced as a concept, and a term, in the
context of a European research project as
“the environmental
assessments appropriate to policies, plans and programs [...] of a more strategic nature than those applicable to individual projects [...] likely to differ from them
in several important respects”
Strategic is an attribute that qualifies ways of thinking,
attitudes, actions related to strategies. Many definitions and understandings
of strategy exist, but they all relate to long-term objectives.
This guidance follows a strategic thinking model (see Part III of
this Guide) which is understood as having a vision over long-term objectives
(the distant points we want to reach), flexibility to work with complex systems (understanding systems,
the links and lock-ins, and accepting uncertainty), adapting to changing contexts and circumstances (changing pathways as needed) and be strongly focused on what matters in a wider context (time, space and points of
view).
In line with the above, an understanding of SEA has been argued
over the last decade which takes SEA as an environmental assessment instrument
with a strategic nature, conceived as a flexible framework of key elements, acting
strategically in a decision process to enable a facilitating role, ensuring an
added-value to decision-making .
SEA
acts strategically by:
Positioning itself flexibly in relation to the
decision-making process, ensuring strong interaction and frequent iteration
from earliest decision moments, and following decision cycles;
Integrating relevant biophysical, social,
institutional and economic issues, keeping a strategic focus in very few but
critical themes;
Assessing environmental and sustainability
opportunities and risks of strategic options to help drive development into
sustainability pathways;
Ensuring active stakeholders engagement through
dialogues and collaborative processes towards conflict reduction and win-win
achievements.
In this guidance SEA is defined as a strategic framework instrument that helps to create a
development context towards sustainability, by integrating environment and
sustainability issues in decision-making, assessing strategic development
options and issuing guidelines to assist implementation.
The purpose of SEA is therefore to help understand the development
context of the strategy being assessed, to appropriately identify problems and
potentials, address key trends, and to assess environmental and sustainable viable
options (i.e. that act cautiously or prevent risks and stimulate opportunities)
that will achieve strategic objectives.
SEA, in a strategic thinking approach, has three very concrete
objectives:
1.
Encourage environmental and sustainability integration (including biophysical,
social, institutional and economic aspects), setting enabling conditions to
nest future development proposals;
2.
Add-value to decision-making, discussing opportunities and risks of development
options and turning problems into opportunities;
3.
Change minds and create a strategic culture in decision-making, promoting
institutional cooperation and dialogues, avoiding conflicts.
Through
these objectives, SEA can contribute to:
-
Ensure a strategic, systemic and broad perspective in relation to environmental
issues within a sustainability framework;
-
Contribute to identify, select and discuss major development options towards
more sustainable decisions (intertwining biophysical, social, institutional and
economic issues);
-
Detect strategic opportunities and risks in the options under analysis and
facilitate the consideration of cumulative processes;
-
Suggest follow-up programmes, through strategic management and monitoring;
-
Ensure participative and transparent processes that engage all relevant
stakeholders
The
SEA must be:
•
Integrated
•
Sustainability-led
•
Focused
•
Accountable
•
Participative
• Iterative
EIA-based SEA approaches share three main common
characteristics:
• They are related to the preparation of an approvable document,
whether a plan or a
programme (or also a policy in the scope of the Kiev Protocol to
the Espoo Convention,
concerning SEA in a transboundary context);
• Their main aim is to provide information on the environmental
effects, or consequences of
proposed plans, programmes (or policies);
• Their standard methodological approach follow the typical EIA
process steps of screening,
scoping, assessment, mitigation, decision and
monitoring.
3. Why is SEA important?
There are several reasons why SEA is important
1. Promotes and helps to understand sustainability challenges,
incorporating an integrated perspective earlier in policy-making and planning
processes;
2. Supports strategic decision-making, setting enabling
development conditions;
3. Facilitates identification and discussion of development
options and provides guidelines to help development to follow sustainability
trajectories;
4. Informs planners, decision makers and affected public on the
sustainability of strategic decisions, ensuring a democratic decision making
process, enhancing the credibility of decisions;
5. Encourages political willingness, stimulates changes to
mentalities and create a culture of strategic decision-making.
SEA
has been widely promoted by international development agencies (World Bank,
2011; UNEP, 2009; OECD,2006). However more than the assessment of development
proposals, SEA is an important instrument to help face development challenges
generated by:
a)
Adaptation and mitigation to climate changes;
b)
Poverty eradication and overcome of social and regional inequalities;
c)
Enhancement and maintenance of biodiversity values, ecosystem services and
human well-being;
d)
Social and territorial cohesion;
e)
Promotion of regional development potential;
f)
Innovation and cultural diversity of the population;
g)
Promotion of environmental quality, landscape and cultural heritage and
sustainable use of natural resources.
6. Link SEA and the decision process
Several aspects need to be considered when deciding on how to link
SEA and the planning process. Having a separate but well articulated
coordination may be better than a totally separate or totally integrated
coordination, because the interconnectedness of the SEA and planning processes
is crucial for their overall success. Totally separated coordination would make
such connection more difficult. Full integration may risk making SEA, or
planning, dominant in relation to each other. The same happens to reporting and
teams. It is important to separate functions and responsibilities, should this
separation be enabled by the availability of technical and financial resources.
But it is very important that SEA and policy-making/planning processes share
several activities, such as fact-finding, information, stakeholder’s engagement
and public participation.
7. SEA and EIA relationship
The relationship between SEA and EIA is important for two main
reasons. The first reason relates to the need to clarify its differences since
SEA often behaves methodologically as an EIA, becoming what is often known as
EIAbased SEA. The second reason relates to the need to consider how they
connect and can relate to each other. To distinguish SEA and EIA only because
SEA applies to policies, plans and programmes, and EIA applies to projects in
not enough any more. The differences go far beyond the scope of application,
which do not differentiate anyway. There are multiple examples of SEA applied
to major projects, as well as there are multiple examples of EIA applied to
plans and programmes (even though many may sometimes be called SEA).
In 1996 the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research)
in South Africa published the diagram represented in Figure 5 to show the
difference between SEA and EIA. What it means is that while EIA focus on the
effects of development on the environment, SEA focus on assessing the effects
of the environment on development. This means that strategically the
environment helps to set conditions for development, and SEA should assess
whether these conditions are being considered in development processes. This
has established an important vision towards the understanding of the role of
SEA, and supports the concept that SEA is about the integration of
environmental issues into development processes
Accordingly,
as in the SEA methodological approach in this guidance, through integration SEA
works to establish enabling physical, social and economic (broad environmental)
conditions for development to be able to proceed in a
sustainable way. And that is the strategic form of assessment, instead of, as
in EIA, attempting to directly assess the environmental effects of policy,
planning and programme proposals.
In
practice what this means is that SEA should not be about the direct assessment
of environmental effects of proposals (on water, air, soil, etc.) as in
projects assessment, but instead it should be about the assessment of development
conditions (institutional, policy, economic, social issues, etc.) towards the
creation of better environmental and sustainability decision contexts and
outcomes. This will improve development decision capacity to avoid future
negative environmental effects of development projects. Thus fulfilling the
requirements of the European Directive.
Table
2 exemplifies the differences and relationships between SEA and EIA, especially
if we consider the EIA-based SEA. Questions in Table 2 simulate the questions
that professionals involved in concrete cases may ask. The way questions are
asked may help to choose between SEA and EIA based SEA. Often it is difficult
to decide what may be more appropriate to each case. We will call these the
“grey” cases where it seems any of the SEA approaches could be used.
Using
Table 2 questions can help with the answer: if you want to assess a solution,
such as a good plan or program design, and control environmental effects, go
for EIA-based SEA. But if you want to assess a good strategy and help to
improve development conditions go for a strategic-based SEA, for which this
guidance provide you with a methodology.
Table 2 –
How do you ask
questions in SEA and in EIA?
SEA
aiming at good strategy
EIA aiming at good design
What
are your objectives?
What are the main characteristics of your project?
What
are key drivers?
Where is it located?
What
are your strategic options?
What are project alternatives?
What
are key restrictions?
What are its main physical, social and economic effects?
What
are major interests?
What are its major impacts?
What
are the most important policies to be met? What are its
mitigation measures
3. Components of the strategic thinking model in SEA
SEA is not only about technical studies. SEA is also about setting
a plataform for stakeholders dialogue and acting as
a facilitator of a decision problem. Four components contribute to
the SEA strategic thinking model:
(1) A technical component considers expert knowledge and specialized studies to
reduce uncertainty and increase knowledge on priority and strategic issues.
Priority setting, trend analysis, assessment, guidelines and follow-up are
technical activities that need to run together along with the process, the
institutional and communication components. Specific tasks in the technical
component include choice of team expertise, sources of available information,
techniques and methods (see annex I) and conducting analysis
and assessment. The technical component must also select the
appropriate assessment techniques for communicating so that the relevant
stakeholders can be engaged, at critical decision moments during the planning
process.
(2)
A process component is vital in establishing a
permanent dialogue between SEA and the decision process throughout the decision
cycle, and to ensure SEA flexibility and adaptability to each case. The linkage
between the SEA process and the planning and programming processes must be
ensured through decision windows and governance rules, adopted to enable the
integration of the processes. SEA process needs to be designed each time to fit
the contextual conditions. Specific tasks includes aliging decision timings and
inputs needed from SEA and stakeholders engagement.
(3)
An institutional component is fundamental to
understand the institutional context for decision-making. It relates to
institutional analysis and change, as needed or simply as a result of policy
dynamics, and the extent it influences decision capacity over time, and
consequently the success of SEA. In the institutional component distinction is
important between formal and informal rules. Formal rules relate to established
levels of responsibilities, decision capacity, the governance rules to be used
in decision windows but also legal and regulatory frameworks, implementation
norms. Institutional analysis should look at responsibility overlaps, and gaps,
conflicting positions or synergies, joint initiatives and complementarities.
Very important, and often determinant, are the informal rules, how things
normally happen, and the extent of informal cooperation and voluntary
initiatives.
(4)
A communication and engagement component
is vital to ensure knowledge-brokerage, networking, stakeholders engagement and
public participation. This will enable exchange and cross-referencing of multiple
perspectives, creating opinion, an integrated vision and participative
processes suited to the problem and to the critical decision moments. There is
therefore an important governance component expressed through process linkages
and the communication capacity. The communication component is
adjusted
to the characteristics of the target groups. Tasks include defining
deliberative or representative processes, identifying stakeholders, finding
engaging practices that are appropriate, ensure learning processes, knowledge
sharing and the understanding of stakeholders about what is happening, what is
a collective vision for the future, promoting collaborative practices.
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