ABSTRACT
A good-quality Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) process informs planners, decision makers and affected public on the sustainability of strategic decisions, facilitates the search for the best alternative and ensures a democratic decision making process. This chapter provides guidance to include in SEA analyses that can clarify the potential impacts of planning decisions on ES, in order to avoid unintended negative consequences, and seize opportunities for improvement. The proposed analyses can be used in different contexts and for different types of SEA processes. The integration of ES in SEA has various benefits in terms of contributing to better design of policies and plans, but there are also critical issues that need to be recognized. These include the complexity of appropriately evaluating ES and the lack of well-established indicators and assessing methods.
The ultimate objective of Strategic Environmental Assessment is to help to protect the environment and promote sustainability by ensuring that environmental considerations inform “strategic actions”, i.e., policies, plans and programmes. There is a growing interest in the potential of SEA, and impact assessment in general, to mainstream ecosystem services concerns in decision making, as shown by recent publications and reviews of practices as well as legislation. Experiences in this field have begun to emerge in the last few years, showing the need for comprehensive guidance.
