E3n Developing SEA guidance
Bobbi Schijf, Ameco Environmental Services, The Netherlands
Key issues to be addressed
Position Paper:
Against a backdrop of continued debate on the exact nature of SEA, governments around the world are busy implementing their specific version. Consistently, such introductions of SEA into a planning system are accompanied by the development of some sort of guidance, explaining just how SEA should be undertaken.
The EU SEA Directive is serving as an impetus for many such guidance materials. Current and aspiring EU member countries have had to adapt their strategic assessment practices to meet the EU Directive requirements or newly introduce the topic into their laws and practice, both often leading to the development of national SEA guidelines and manuals. SEA guidance materials have also been developed outside Europe, in, for example, South Africa, Canada and Hong Kong. Of course, SEA guidance is produced not just at the level of a country or region: the EU has provided guidance, the Espoo Convention (on transboundary SEA) is giving rise to an SEA manual, and international agencies such as the World Bank are also setting SEA standards through production of their own SEA guidance documents and training resources.
Considering this broad range of SEA guidance material from an equally diverse range of sources, two issues present themselves:
• Is there a danger of continual “reinvention of the wheel” in SEA guidance, or should each piece of guidance stand alone as it is specific to the local context? And if there is indeed a need to optimise synergies, especially between existing and new SEA guidance material, how might this be achieved?
• What can be concluded about the effectiveness of SEA guidance material?
• Since this area is relatively new, there has been little systematic evaluation of guiding documents on SEA, but there are undoubtedly lessons to be drawn from practice on what seems to work well and what doesn’t.
This session will seek to explore how these two broader issues might be addressed within the impact assessment community, as well as providing an opportunity to discuss more practical issues relevant for the development of SEA guidance.