Strategic environmental assessment

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a systematic decision support process aiming to ensure that environmental and possibly other sustainability aspects are considered effectively in policy, plan, and program making. In this context, following Fischer (2007)^[1] SEA may be seen as:

• a structured, rigorous, participative, open and transparent environmental impact assessment (EIA) based process, applied particularly to plans and programs, prepared by public planning authorities and, at times, private bodies,
• a participative, open and transparent, possibly non-EIA-based process, applied more flexibly to policies, prepared by public planning authorities and at times private bodies,^[2]
• a flexible non-EIA-based process applied to legislative proposals and other policies, plans, and programs in political/cabinet decision-making.

Effective SEA works within a structured and tiered decision framework, aiming to support more effective and efficient decision-making for sustainable development and improved governance by providing for a substantive focus regarding questions, issues and alternatives to be considered in policy, plan and program (PPP) making.

SEA is an evidence-based instrument aiming to add scientific rigor to PPP making by using suitable assessment methods and techniques. Ahmed and Ernesto, Sánchez-Triana (2008) developed an approach to the design and implementation of public policies that follows a continuous process rather than as a discrete intervention.^[2]