Keynote: Strategic Environmental Assessment

• Main Authors: Andrade, Francisco, Ferreira, Maria Adelaide
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2018
• Subjects: Fulcrum; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1254320; https://zenodo.org/record/1254320

ATLAS work package 7 presentation at ATLAS 3rd General Assembly Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), as set forth, e.g., by EU Directive 2001/42/EC on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment, stems from the evaluation of transboundary environmental impacts. This accounts for a widely spread practice where SEA is conducted under an impact assessment-based approach, differing from a traditional Environmental Impact Assessment in that its object is a policy, plan or programme (PPP) instead of a project. A different conceptualization of SEA as a strategy-based approach capable of influencing the development and deployment of PPPs and as such, as a process for influencing the decision-making process and driving institutional change, constitutes the opposite end of the gradient from less to more strategic approaches SEA can assume. Impact of SEA on decision-making will be more significant if it is explicitly used as a tool to develop policy, as opposed to merely being used to review predefined proposals, when SEA still has value but its contribution to the decision-making process is strongly reduced and relevant opportunities are lost. Within this conceptual framework, SEA can and should become instrumental in influencing the political decision-making process towards improved environmental performance, thus assuming a major role for an effective sustainable development (cf. UN 2030 SDGs). SEA will be discussed as an approach to answering key questions pertaining to the policy instruments at stake (SEA scope), and reference to its conceptual structure, main aspects and contents, will be made (namely resorting to case studies). Scenarios development under different policy approaches and management options, and their comparative analysis will be debated as the fulcrum of a “truly strategic” SEA together with the corresponding long-term time frames involved. An overarching SEA of the ATLAS SMP at the North Atlantic scale represents an opportunity for coherent integration and spatial management of the different case studies that represent different systems under pressure and in a climate of change. Bound by the existing variety of environmental, legal and governance frameworks, namely ecosystems – including their foreseeable exploitation and change – and boundaries – international and with ABNJ – relevance and opportunity of such an SEA arises from the possibility to identify ways in which an Atlantic wide spatial management plan should be designed and implemented, namely considering: adequate geographic and time scales; boundaries (vertical and horizontal, national, ABNJ); and development and comparative analysis of potential scenarios (namely integrating blue growth policies), over an underlying Ecosystem Based Management approach to sustainable development.