Strategic environmental assessment: the state of the art

Abstract

This paper reflects upon the current state of the art of strategic environmental assessment (SEA), based on a review of existing literature, recent international conferences and practical experience. It provides an overview of how SEA has evolved, the main schools of thought, and application internationally. It briefly examines whether SEA is making a difference to planning and decision-making processes, and raises the question: 'where to next?' Based on the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, a number of recommendations for future practice are made. We conclude that SEA has evolved rapidly into a broad field of application and that the 'family of SEA approaches' continues to develop. SEA brings about numerous benefits and has a high potential to contribute to better decision-making processes, even if it currently falls short of some of its expectations. We suggest that the SEA community must learn to better identify and promote SEA's less tangible benefits beyond the immediate decision-making situation and that SEA practice would benefit from a more explicit understanding and communication of how it can add value to any given context.

Critical multi-level governance issues of integrated modelling: An example of low-water management in the Adour-Garonne basin (France)

“…This approach implies that water actors and scientific teams closely collaborate (Lemos and Morehouse, 2005;van Delden et al, 2011). In a certain way it confirms the implication of researchers themselves and of their technical tools in the management of water (Fundingsland Tetlow and Hanusch, 2012;Coombes and Barry, 2014). This change can be seen as a local governance reform which would facilitate treatment of the wicked problems (Head and Alford, 2013) of water management.…”

Methods for assessing future scenarios from a sustainability perspective

“…Specifically developed for the assessment of plans, (and also required by law in many countries for some types of plans) [16], Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a procedural method which can include several types of analytical tools [17,18]. Tools described as suitable in SEA guidelines and/or used in practice for SEA are also considered in the overview of methods.…”

Sustainability Indicators Integrating Consumption Patterns in Strategic Environmental Assessment for Urban Planning

“…The experience gained during the last two decades of SEA practice in the EU raised some concerns about the real effectiveness of SEA implementation procedures to comprehensively assess the environmental sustainability of interventions [2,3]. One of the main debated issues is the necessity to enlarge the perspective of the assessment in order to enhance discriminating power between alternatives and to support decision making.…”

“…Therefore, the concept of limit is the basis upon which all the indicators considered should be developed. In addition, the most recent trends in SEA requires the integration of environmental limits as a reference for the evaluation and the inclusion of climate change as one of the most relevant issues for environmental sustainability [3].…”