GAIN HOW TAN

110151909

9 November 2014

Title: Consider the case for the introduction of Strategic Environmental

assessment in South Australia. What are the potential benefits and
problems associated with this concept? What methodological and
procedural approaches might be employed to achieve a useful
outcome?

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Introduction

Over the years, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in South Australia has
played an significant role in decision-making process particularly for environmentally
projects. However, the EIA system is often found to be ineffective in securing a
successful resolution of environmental concern (Briffett 2000). In particular, EIA is
more focus on providing mitigation to the issues instead of avoidance and gives a
reactive approach prior to the decision-making process (Wil 2014). Therefore, a new
assessment system namely Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has been
introduced to compensate for the limitation of the EIA system. In fact, SEA is a
convention-way of identifying the formalized process of evaluating the potential
impact of actions which may stem policy, plan or programme (PPP) and provide
alternatives at the earliest stage (Steven 2002). Furthermore, SEA is made to maintain
that environmental matters are in the consideration along side with economic and
social matters by incorporating both sustainability and environmental problems
throughout the strategic decision-making process (Wil 2014). According to Partidario
(1996), he contended that SEA is the proactive assessment which integrates
environmental consideration into higher level of decision-making to assess the likely
outcome to decide the best alternative to achieve desired results. Although SEA gives
a central step towards in achieving a sustainable development in a proposed project, it
still appeared to have some weak points such as limitation of public involvement and
the methodologies that are being adopted are not well-developed (Maria 1996). This
paper explores the extent to which procedural approaches, research methodology and
concept of SEA are implemented in a proposal, and a discussion on the benefits and
weakness of existing SEA system in South Australia to achieve a successful outcome.

Benefits of SEA

As pointed out by Simon (2007), he concluded that SEA aims to strengthens the PPPs
making processes, saves time and money through evaluation phase in an earlier stage
and also mitigate erosion of public trust in PPP and develops good governance. For
instance, undertaking a SEA would gives an early overall perspective of the potential
impacts at a higher level of processes from a number of projects and activities and
their relationships which could lead to cumulative effects (Northern Territory
Environment Protection Authority 2014). For instance, the contribution of EIA is

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mainly concerned with the biophysical environmental impacts of a proposal, unlike
SEA which is recognized by the EPA such that social, economic and environmental
impacts of PPP are integrated into strategic decision-making in support of
ecologically sustainable development, and more importantly involve public
participation throughout these processes (Christine 2014).

Applying SEA to project development has certainly benefits for development

outcomes and decision-making procedures. For example, policies for providing tax
incentives for plantation forestry can have significant cumulative impacts on the
environment. Besides that, program such as road construction could also be assessed
strategically in order to determine their wider effects on greenhouse emissions,
whereby plan can be assessed strategically for the development of large area of crown
land in a waterfront location. This has shown the SEA has been embraced as a
assessment tool for furthering sustainable development and make outcomes become
more predictable for the proponent and the community (Steven 2002).

Commonwealth Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999

(EPBC Act) emphasized that SEA has experienced considerable growth over the years
because the transparent process are primarily based on the public participation (Ausra
2006). For example, people who claims their living conditions may be affected by the
implementation of PPPs are allowed to express their interest so that their problems
will be concerned in the assessment process. In other words, public involvement
during a strategic assessment would ensure consistency in approach and also establish
public trust in the planning process.

Problems of SEA

Yet despite continuous legislative development on the environmental impact

assessment system, there is still a need for practical improvement of SEAs to ensure
an sustainable development in plans, projects and programs. Hens & Peter (2007 have
summarize the factors contributing to the impact of SEA practices in Figure 1. Based
on Figure 1, the factors are mainly indicative and largely those decision makers are
not expert in SEA and explore the potential value to the existing processes in PPP
development. To date, there is a need for more adaptability and flexibility throughout
the SEA process. Thomas (2003) stated that SEA remain unclear on how it should be

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integrated into PPP making process at key procedural stages, especially when there
are contradictions in the current suggestion, making the process of decision-making
become irrational and doubtful. For instance, if a particular decision making process
was known and to be followed, it often questioned or argued by other whether the
decision-makers are truly follow the SEA procedures with a proper explanation for
changing anything in existing practices.

Figure 1 Summary of factors made by other authors in a sample of 15 papers (Hens &
Peter, 2007).

The most common difficulties in the application of SEA are known as insufficiency of
resources in terms of information and expertise, inadequacies of prescriptive
guidelines have demonstrates the need to establish a full accomplishment in projects.
These difficulties have lead to a complicated constraint in order to achieve an
effective SEA implementation. This mechanism will need either an EIA
administrative body to have technical knowledge on which environmental factors to
be taken into account way to achieve integrated policy-making. For example, the
problem aroused when each political or organizational culture could not carry out an
appropriate approaches to ensure sustainable development in PPPs proposals (Maria
1996).

The effectiveness of the SEA system is challenged by the many aspect with multiple
alternatives to be considered, making the process of collecting and analysing data for

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SEAs become extremely complex (Brendan 2006). Additionally, dealing with
information at a different level from project EIAs cause SEAs to be harder. For
instance, sometimes they may have to disregard the importance of impact at a local
level when the national-level SEA are required to focus on national-level concerns.
Further to this, policy-making process often incorporate stakeholders and decision
makers during the negotiation, thus this may become part of the policy-making
processes at some point such as analysis (Hens 2007). For example, opposition might
be provoked from particular stakeholders if desired values or interest are not reflected
in the analysis by practitioner. As a result, it will take too long time for SEA process
due to inclusion of complicated quantitative analyses to ensure sufficient information
for the needs of decision-makers.

Methodological approaches

As written by Bina (2007), strategic environmental assessment is defined through

different methodological taxonomies instead of by its function in decision-making.
Therefore, they are not much difference in methods identified in Table 1 and their
respective purpose allows strategic environmental assessment becomes a highly
flexible approach (Bram 2012). The most commonly used methodology such as
expert judgement can be employed throughout the SEA process in South Australia.
For instance, expert judgement involve in analyse the impact of PPP to environment
for alternatives identification, evaluation and comparison. Later, the evaluation of
environmental risks via collective from expert judgement are measured in a simply
rating scale of (+ good, 0 neutral, - adverse) or any similar way (Barry 2005). In fact,
this method is evident across all cases examined regardless weather the SEA was
appraisal-based or more technical in this approach. However, one or more methods
can be used during SEA process, this depends on the availability of data, level of
definition of the PPP and available timeframe for the SEA will help determine the
methods to be employed (OECD 2006).

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 Table 1 SEA methodologies (Bailey, J & Dixon 1999).

There is no single SEA methodology is found to be applicable uniformly in a vary

proposal. (Bailey 1997). Therefore, SEA methodologies have to be adaptive to a
different situation and knowledge requirements. Various methods give different
suggestion on performing SEA procedure. For instance, when applying matrices in
SEA proccess with the integration of priorities and objectives, this give an easily
comprehensible way to the decision makers when illustrating the indicators within the
PPPs implementation, thereby providing them with possibility to follow the process of
implementation. As EIA has been widely used in South Australia in every proposal,
implementing matrices in SEA in accordance with EIS will give a favourable results
and maximally reflect the value of expected impact (Ausra 2006). Although both
processes have common elements, modifications have to be made to procedures and
methodology when moving from the project to the policy level because the variety of
the methodological approaches will contribute different outcomes which would
influence the strategic decision (Maria 2007).

Procedural approaches

From the very beginning, SEA plays in a role as intrinsic element of policy and
programme development processes where process is carried out in the initial stage.
The key requirements of the directive are summarised screening, scoping,
documentation, consultation, decision-making and monitoring. Figure 2 below

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illustrates the normal hierarchy of decision-making and the associated assessment
procedure.

Figure 2 Main steps in the SEA procedure (EnviroCentre 2014).

In the first procedure, screening of plans are required to determine whether the plan
should be subject to SEA. According to EnviroCentre (2014), screening helps to
restrict the SEA process to the most significant environmental impact. In fact, a report
justifying that conclusion will be made to the public if screening practice for
environmental significance presents that SEA is considered unnecessary. Next,
scoping is carried out for alternatives identification for PPP and impacts to be
assessed. In this process, the objectives and strategies of PPP will be developed and to
be fulfil by a range of alternatives and development policies. It is done through the
process of public consultation and obtain scoping advice from relevant authorities and
agencies. Throughout the consultation and documentation phase, the document

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involve the authority's plan for consultation and the measures related to availability of
information to comment on the content of SEA occur with the participation of public.
For instance, where planning authority intended to encourage public involvement into
the this stage, this process certainly assist on the environmental assessment.

At the end of consultation stage, all the responses from public and designated bodies
will be elicited further on the environmental effects of the proposed developments.
This approach would be beneficial prior to the preparation of the post-adoption SEA
statement (SG 2014). In decision-making stage, decision-maker adopts a plan or
programme by considering the conclusion of the environmental report and comments
from the previous stage. This includes the measures to prevention, reduction and
mitigation of the adverse effects of the various plan (Lia 2006). Finally, ongoing
monitoring of the environmental effect of the implementation of the adopted plan or
programme provides the result to the relevant authorities and the public. Monitoring
process is necessary because there may be an unforeseen effects, thus identification of
the effects are required to enable immediate remedial action (David 2006).
Furthermore, monitoring also give an overview of the actual and desired effects,
thereby improve the future of SEAs in South Australia by providing sufficient
information.

Conclusion

Though SEAs is still remains at the non-statutory level where undertaken is largely
subject to proponent or administrative discretion. This is because SEA has developed
out of an understanding by environmental practitioners.. In other words, this also
explains why different researchers often come to vary list of factors that contribute to
SEA as shown in Figure 1. Besides that, SEA have be seen as an overarching concept
because the methodologies needs to be more flexible to apply in different strategic
tasks. In order to achieve a useful outcome in SEA, more research in this area of
adaptive environmental assessments are needed such as analysis of every stages of
PPP to identify the appropriate nature of SEA and its input from stakeholder in every
stages. SEA practitioners are advised to form an ex ante assessment of the
contribution that could realistically be made and how they should act to realise this
potential. As a result, this approach could save much time and effort being put into
proposal.

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