Strategic environmental assessment at a crossroads

Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, volume 18, number 3, September 2000, pages174–176, Beech Tree Publishing, 10 Watford Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, UK.

Guest editorial Strategic environmental assessment at a crossroads Wil A H Thissen

M

ANY DECISIONS AFFECTING environmental quality, and, more broadly, sustainability, are made at the policy, plan and programme level rather than at the project level. Therefore, many environmental assessment practitioners felt that an approach complementary to environmental impact assessment (EIA) had to be developed to ensure sufficient attention to environmental and sustainability considerations at these decision levels. This approach was labelled strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Interest in SEA has been growing rapidly over the last decade (Project Appraisal, 1992; Thérivel and Partidário, 1995; Sadler and Verheem, 1996; Partidário and Clark, 2000). A host of issues and questions have been raised with respect to the nature of SEA. Should it be an upscaled version of EIA or something completely different? What should be the relation of SEA and existing planning and policy-making procedures? Should it be founded in legislation? Is it something new or just re-inventing the wheel? How should it be applied? How should it be ‘sold’? In the spirit of growing interest and increased intensity of discussions, at the IAIA’98 Conference held in Christchurch, New Zealand, the workshop on SEA, Planning and Decision Making covered nine sessions, included more than 30 presentations, and was attended by well over 100 participants. The workshop had been set up “to enhance a shared understanding of the relationship between strategic approaches to environmental assessment and policy/planning systems”,

Wil A H Thissen is at the School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management, Delft University of Technology, PO Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, Netherlands.

174

1461-5517/00/030174-3 US$08.00 © IAIA 2000

and consisted of sessions focused on: (1) country case studies and country overviews (2) institutional and procedural aspects of the formal planning context, and (3) more theoretical or visionary contributions. Inspired by the lively discussions at the workshop and the relevance of wider dissemination of the material presented, a process towards the publication of a special issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal on SEA, planning and policy making was started, based on the contributions to the workshop. The present issue, consisting of nine papers, is the result of this effort. The papers have been ordered into two main themes. The first five directly address several of the questions about SEA mentioned above. They concentrate on visions and theoretical views on what SEA is or should be, its future development, its implementation, and its integration with policy and planning processes. The subsequent four papers are primarily empirical in that they describe country case studies and reflect on what the findings mean for SEA and its relation to planning and policy making. The empirical material confirms several of the assertions made in the more theoretical papers. In the first paper, Verheem and Tonk address the issue of guidelines for SEA. They argue that, instead of attempting to define one best way of performing SEA, a limited set of more general principles should be established that are recognisable to potential users of SEA, and at the same time allow for variety in implementation forms depending on the context. They tentatively develop such a set of principles, and use two examples to show that quite different implementation forms of SEA can be in accordance with the proposed principles. Brown and Thérivel argue, along similar lines, that discussion should be focused on SEA concepts, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal September 2000

Strategic environmental assessment at a crossroads

principles and objectives rather than on detailed prescriptions. They propose that the objective of SEA is to provide an holistic understanding of environmental and social implications of a policy proposal. It should be rather different from EIA, with an emphasis on the process rather than the product (that is, the report), and its form should be adaptable to, and grafted on, different policy, actor, network and cultural contexts. Kørnøv and Thissen discuss insights and recent developments in the decision and policy sciences, and their implications for SEA. Impact assessors can play different roles in planning and decision processes, depending on the policy context, the dominant model of decision making, and their own ambitions or intentions. Therefore, an additional step is needed in which the objectives of the impact assessment effort and an associated process design are chosen. They also note the incompatibility between SEA as an advocative approach (aiming to enhance environmental awareness), and SEA as an integrated approach (aiming to support a policy debate in a broad sense, requiring neutrality with respect to the interests at stake). Eggenberger and Partidário concentrate on SEA and spatial planning and discuss the need for an integrative framework including environmental, economic and social impacts, to co-ordinate sector policies. They argue that integration is needed along many dimensions and identify five forms of integration: substantive, methodological, procedural, institutional, and political. The paper develops a research agenda and proposal aimed at establishing present practice and elaborating appropriate conditions and guidelines for integration. Buckley provides a complementary view. He argues that, while there is much to be said in favour of being flexible and grafting SEA on existing processes, in general this will not result in serious attention to environmental issues and to public involvement at the policy and plan level. Rather, analogous to EIA, a mandatory framework should be established to ensure sustainability considerations at the policy level. The paper explores and elaborates the different possible components of such a legal framework. As the first in the second, empirical set of papers, Rossouw et al describe and analyse the SEA approach developed in South Africa. Instead of starting from development proposals and concentrating on assessment of their environmental impacts, the approach takes environmental conditions and ambitions as a starting point, and concentrates on identification of the resulting constraints for development activities. The authors confirm that the apparent lack of agreement of what SEA precisely is does not have to be an obstacle as long as some generic principles are followed. Harvey analyses the inclusion of environmental considerations in strategic decision making for part of the southern Australian coastal zone. Despite the lack of formal regulation or implementation of SEA, a number of general principles have been followed that Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal September 2000

have contributed to the realisation of objectives very similar to those of SEA. Although the process was not called SEA, it may serve as a good example of SEA implementation in a planning context. Elling describes the integration of SEA and regional planning in Denmark. Based on his analysis and reflection, he concludes that integrating an environmental component in a spatial planning process has added value: it can add to the transparency of the decision-making process, and may contribute to bringing back the process at the political level. He stresses the need to reflect on, and perhaps adjust, the objectives of planning processes when SEA is integrated into them. Finally, Renton and Bailey report on an empirical study on the inclusion of environmental considerations in planning processes at different levels of Australian government. Based on interviews with employees of a variety of government agencies, they distinguish different types of policy processes. An SEA approach close to EIA may be appropriate in clearly structured policy processes. In less structured situations a more flexible approach is suggested. They also find a number of common stages in all policy situations covered in the empirical research: these stages could provide assistance in structuring SEA approaches. While not covering all the discussions and viewpoints articulated at the workshop, this collection of papers provides insight into a number of key issues regarding SEA. SEA should, indeed, be approached differently from EIA. It should be seen, not as a single tool, but rather as a process in the context of which a family of tools may be applied. A set of overarching principles and objectives should be established to guide the development of different implementation forms of SEA which are adapted to the specific context. Relevant contextual conditions include, but are not limited to, the nature of the decision issue at hand (policy, plan, or program) and the characteristics of the decision-making context (structured or unstructured, extent of normative conflict, extent of agreement on facts, decision culture). Integration of SEA with planning and policy processes is important, but integration is a complex concept that has different dimensions that need to be defined and explored. As SEA moves towards supporting integrated planning and policy making, its very objectives may shift, and even the appropriateness of the name ‘SEA’ may be questioned. Guidelines should be developed to assist practitioners in selecting an appropriate approach given a specific situation and objectives, but empirical evidence to develop such guidelines is lacking. More empirical and evaluative research at the interface of SEA and policy making is therefore needed. This learning process could be enhanced by building on theories and experiences from the policy sciences. Whether SEA objectives are best served by a formal, legal or an informal context remains to be resolved. 175

Strategic environmental assessment at a crossroads

While the workshop in Christchurch marks a milestone in the discussions on SEA, much remains to be discussed, learned and researched, and the process is to be continued. I hope the record of evidence, discussions and views presented in this special issue will stimulate further thought and action. To conclude, I want to thank the authors for their contributions, the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful assistance in the process, and Markus Eggenberger and Lone Kørnøv for their stimulating co-operation in organising the workshop in Christchurch.

176

References Maria Rosário Partidário and Ray Clark (editors) (2000), Perspectives on Strategic Environmental Assessment (Lewis Publishers/CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL). Project Appraisal (1992), Special issue on strategic environmental assessment, guest editors N Lee and F Walsh, 7(3), September. B Sadler and R Verheem (1996), Strategic Environmental Assessment: Status, Challenges and Future Directions, Report no 53, Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, The Hague, The Netherlands. Riki Thérivel and Maria Partidário (editors) (1996), The Practice of Strategic Environmental Assessment (Earthscan Publications, London).

Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal September 2000