Integrating the environment into strategic decision-making: conceptualizing policy SEA

Article abstract:

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is seen as an important tool for integrating the environment into decision-making, eg at plan and programme levels where it is being used with increasing regularity. At the policy and most strategic decision levels, however, it is less clear how SEA can best be used or what methodologies are appropriate in what are inevitably highly politicised contexts. This paper reports on a study carried out for the European Commission to review the mechanisms of integration at strategic decision levels and to examine the role of SEA in helping to achieve better integration. This was undertaken by first reviewing integration and SEA in all EU member states and in a range of other countries and international financing organisations, and then analysing in detail 20 SEA and integration case studies at various strategic decision levels, primarily policy and plan levels. What is clear is that SEA at the most strategic level needs to be flexible in relating to the policy-making process, but can bring significant advantages by providing a more systematic approach to the consideration of environmental issues. Existing institutional mechanisms may already provide elements of SEA that can be harnessed together in a more systematic process. At the most strategic levels qualitative, participation and communication processes become much more important than technical methodologies. SEA should be seen as complementary to the newly emerging tool of sustainability appraisal, although the exact relationship will depend upon the preferred interpretation of sustainable development.