Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is seen as an important tool for integrating the environment into decision‐making, e.g. 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 politicized 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 organizations, 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. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.
BioScene (scenarios for reconciling biodiversity conservation with declining agriculture use in mountain areas in Europe) was a three-year project (2002-2005) funded by the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme, and aimed to investigate the implications of agricultural restructuring and decline for biodiversity conservation in the mountain areas of Europe. The research took a case study approach to the analysis of the biodiversity processes and outcomes of different scenarios of agri-environmental change in six countries (France, Greece, Norway, Slovakia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) covering the major biogeographical regions of Europe. The project was coordinated by Imperial College London, and each study area had a multidisciplinary team including ecologists and social and economic experts, which sought a comprehensive understanding of the drivers for change and their implications for sustainability.A key component was the sustainability assessment (SA) of the alternative scenarios. This article discusses the development and application of the SA methodology developed for BioScene. While the methodology was objectives-led, it was also strongly grounded in baseline ecological and socio-economic data. This article also describes the engagement of stakeholder panels in each study area and the use of causal chain analysis for understanding the likely implications for land use and biodiversity of strategic drivers of change under alternative scenarios for agriculture and rural policy and for biodiversity management. Finally, this article draws conclusions for the application of SA more widely, its use with scenarios, and the benefits of stakeholder engagement in the SA process.
The concept of participation in rural development has been evolutionary for the past two decades with those involved, such as development agencies and governments, particularly in rural water supply, re-evaluating their active role. The move towards effective community participation has encouraged a shift from the traditional top-down to a bottom-up approach whereby there is a decentralisation of unevenly distributed resources and power to empower a community and allow mobility of 'people participation'. The Molinos water project is the first large-scale development project of its kind introduced into the village of Molinos in an under-developed area of Chile, where there has been no tradition of people participation. The project objective was to implement a low technology, low budget water treatment plant to the village of Molinos. Various aspects have hindered the continued development of the project including both technical and financial. In terms of people participation, the initial approach used was the top-down approach. There was a failure to fully integrate the community or inform the community in a formal manner about the project and consult them regarding key project issues. This case study illustrates that the lack of comprehensive consultation and the low level of participation of the community on the participatory scale does not achieve much in terms of people-centred benefits. For governance at the local level to be effective, participation should be inclusive and communicative so as to enhance transparency throughout the project lifetime.
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