B5n SEA practice in coastal zone management
Kogi Govender, CSIR Environmentek, South Africa
Ivica Trumbic, UNEP Mediterranean Action Plan Regional Activity Centre, Croatia
Key issues to be addressed
Position Paper:
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is an environmental assessment process that facilitates decision-making above the project level, i.e., to policies, plans and programmes (PPPs). To date, SEA initiatives have been largely focused in the planning domain. Limited information is available on SEA and its use in integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). SEA has the potential to enhance ICZM by identifying environmental opportunities and constraints to development in the coastal zone and thereby providing a strategic framework within which sustainable coastal development can occur. This paper provides an introduction to ICZM and the potential that SEA could hold for ICZM. The paper is best received as an invitation to practitioners to present their experiences and share the knowledge that they have on the use of SEA, towards optimizing the application of SEA to ICZM.
SEA does have merits in its use in ICZM. However, case studies will be able to provide a better understanding of how SEA can be used in the coastal zone and this learning can be used to formulate a more efficient and effective means of using SEA. The session should enable SEA practitioners to:
• Share experiences related to SEA in the coastal zone (not only restricted to ICZM initiatives)
• Discuss various SEA approaches that can be used for effective and efficient coastal area management
• Show how SEA was integrated in the ICZM process
• Present tools and techniques that are being used in SEA preparation
• Show how stakeholder participation techniques have been used in SEA
• Present SEA prepared in different coastal geographic (regional, urban, protected areas) and thematic (tourism, recreation, industry, infrastructure, fish farming, etc.) contexts
• Present SEA where specific coastal issues have been integrated (coastal erosion, sea level rise, protection of coastal land, etc.)
• Present cases where specific international or national legislation for SEA has been adopted, or where SEA has been integrated in specific coastal legislation (coastal laws, regulatory documents such as decrees, international protocols, etc.)
• Present where follow up to SEA has been carried out (monitoring, indicators, evaluation, etc.)