Introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment in the South Australia - Essay Example

Title: Introduction of Strategic Environmental assessment (SEA) in South Australia Name Institution Introduction Over the last two decades, majority of the countries have created a focus and interest particularly in sustaining and management of the environment. This has led to introduction of various environmental legislations both at international and national level. For example, European Commission is an international environmental agency in Australia that seeks to influence the association between development of a country and environment. Strategic Environmental Assessment in Australia has the main purpose as to incorporate environmental considerations such as social, economic and biophysical to the strategic decision-making thus acting as a facilitator of environment sustainability. Strategic Environmental Assessment entails examination of environmental implications of the project above the ‘threshold’ project effects to the environment, informing the planners and all other stakeholders of the strategic decisions being made, facilitating search for alternative, promoting credible decisions, informing at the right time and incapacitating the constrains of environmental impact assessment. Perhaps the introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment in South Australia met with great resistance. Planners had the perception that, since there is a partial justification about the effectiveness of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), the likelihood of achieving positive after implementing SEA is low. On the side of developers, they perceived as a costly investment to the community and the whole country at large. Interestingly, the state apparently pointed out external factors like political sensitivity and negative sounding as the major challenges to beat. Despite of the identified constrains, Strategic Environmental Assessment in South Australia is currently taking the attention of most of the EIA stakeholders in all states. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in Australia offers influential and current report on State’s EA results both in New Zealand since the time of SEA recognition up to considering it as a legitimate protection to natural resources. Nevertheless, there has been variety of high level of environmental assessment in Australia such the use of environmental comprehensive review and management. This method required the proponents to come up with scoping document and justified environmental factors partitioned in the proposal. The procedure of documentation and communication of the objectives for this program often take two weeks. However, with this and other programs, the impacts of majority of the projects are still a subject of concern in South Australia. Like other high level environmental assessment, the introduction of strategic environmental assessment in Australia provided a comprehensive and proactive promotion of important aspects of environment management such as mitigation of negative effects at different stages of the implementation of projects. However, Strategic Environment Assessment perhaps looks different when it comes to giving alternative approaches of handling those projects with severe impacts to the environment. Therefore, the introduction of SEA in Australia generally called for public decision-making process right from community level to the state representatives without merely the absence of representations of private and other obligatory bodies. As the name suggest, SEA involved systematic use of information at all levels in the state to strategize and find ways of trying to reduce project impacts in the environment. Apparently, SEA in Australia contained both theoretical and practical outlooks, which complements the works of SEA in most of the developed nations such as North America and United Kingdom. Benefits and problems associated with Strategic environmental Assessment Benefits Like any other project, SEA needs to achieve its designed purpose particularly by covering all the policies of the environment, planning, evaluation and facilitation at all levels. Incorporation of all these aspects will lead to the following benefits. Strategic Environmental Assessment promotes the development of better environmental safety and management that will in turn promote sustainable development. Since SEA incorporate social, economic and political dogmas, therefore it reconciles different objectives which are pursued by different administrative bodies within the state. South Australia has various bodies attached to environmental conservation and management. These bodies have different objectives in formulating their own measures and therefore introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment will harmonize their divergent ways of handling environmental issues. As a result, this strategy has created several pillars with the same aim of environmental management and sustainable development in Australia. The proactive instruments of SEA is that as the aim remains to be sustainable development, it focuses on addressing causes of problems in the environment rather than only focusing on just treating symptoms. Therefore, by helping to safeguard natural resources and environment, SEA will not only focus on current situations of the population but also takes care of the future prospective of the environment. This can simply imply that SEA supports a holistic evaluation of options and alternatives after considering overall objectives of the sectorial partners thus coming up with a sustainable plan for implementation. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) safes time and money at the same time. The affiliates to SEA such as European Environmental Agency (EEA), Partnership in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA, local governments and World Nature Organization (WNO) finds it easy to obtain alternatives in promoting sustainable developments in Australia (Weiland, 2010). Apparently, this will save money and time which are problematic to majority of stakeholders of environment conservation and management in Australia. Also, SEA ensures that planners have access to relevant inputs from the stakeholders which are within the boundaries of the policy program. This will ensure that there are effective decisions made within less time and proximity of actions taken. There is a reflection of well management of time and money in most projects in Australia as far as environmental management is concerned. Healthy environment have been created since the sound introduction of SEA. There is evidence of reduction of costly remedies of environment that comes as a result of poor decision. The presence of comprehensive focus in SEA promotes good economic and social conditions. For example, the introduction of SEA has led to avoidance of large scale production of health problems destruction of natural resources without compensating at relative cost. The introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment has improves good governance as well as entrusting public policy and plan at the community level (Caratti, Dalkmann and Jiliberto, 2004). SEA in developed nations like United States and United Kingdom was found to improve transparency when it comes to development and implementation of strategic of strategic decisions. The use of SEA enables the decision makers to put into account the opinions of key stakeholders of environment such as Global Environment Facility (GEF) especially in the early stages of planning process. As an effect, this reduces the risk of stalemate of ideas during decision making process on various projects which are locally warranted. In this case therefore, Australian environments have been protected by the enhanced credibility of policies and plans through SEA. This has then mobilized support of the stakeholders for implementation of dependable policies and plans for sustainable development. Strategic environmental Assessment (SEA) strengthens policy and programme making process at all level of authority. SEA is concern more about the significant impact of policies and programmes on environment and health. In this regard it helps planners among other stakeholders to proactively deliberate on both local and global environmental impacts. The introduction of SEA in Australia has identified various development options when it comes to achievement of environmental key objectives. The state government in South Australia has achieved this through proper coordination of environmental policies and programmes at all level. For example, European Environmental Agency (EEA) came up with threshold standards of various project programs in Australia and it was the responsibility of SEA to craft a strategic ‘posture’ of the policies and harmonize with other key players of environment such as local government. Apparently, the output decisions perhaps would optimize the support of previous endorsements by the stakeholders thus promoting the development of strategic decisions on what policies to effect. Problems associated with Strategic Environmental Assessment Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is very broad thus engendering scepticism especially on its ability to produce positive results. According to Jackson and Dixon (2006) environmental stability is like happiness where everyone belief in it but offering different definitions. The institutional systems in Australia are rigid like in any other developing country and therefore lacking flexibility which is very essential when it comes to SEA. Local government as an agency of environment have catalogued environmental activities in a way that it limits the ability of SEA to define and implement broad strategic goals for sustainability. Some sectorial sectors like budgetary in Australia perhaps may not allocate enough resources thus reducing the effectiveness of SEA. There is a problem of misconception of the idea of Strategic Environmental Assessment by the public. The public in this case expects SEA to give immediate solutions to environmental issues. However, SEA is meant to be one of the fundamental elements when it comes to policy proposal (Schmidt, João and Albrecht, 2005). Unlike other high profiled Environmental Assessment tools which focuses on products, SEA is more concern on the on the process. The process in this case integrates activities like informing decision makers about the potential impact a program is to the environment and giving objective responses which are crucial to making effective decisions for sustainability. Therefore, majority of public fails to understand the aim and objectives of SEA as far as sustainable environment is concerned. The ecological goal of Australia on environment is to develop a sustainable environment within the boundaries of legislative reforms both at the national and state level. Implementation of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is complex and sometimes perceived as a lengthy matter. SEA in this case exhibits the notion of carrying capacity which is problematic to the stakeholders. Considering the ecological perspective, this may be difficult to apply SEA in unpredictable systems and the kid of disputes that are likely to be encountered. Sometimes current players may not be the same in future and therefore harmonizing agendas will be a big task among the concern parties. For example, the Victoria strategic taskforce approach in 1987 came to be superseded by the evolution of Victorian Coastal Strategy of 1990s which had no updates to South Australia. Analysing the strategies that superseded Victoria taskforce, all became ad hoc in Strategic Environmental Assessmen (Lee, Ancev and Vervoort, 2012)t. This later called for amendment for some principles in order to come up with valid and effective environmental solutions. It is apparent that it is difficult to put into practice the anticipated solutions when the changing future is reached. Approaches to achieve useful outcomes Strategic Environmental Assessment looks to be a complex concept to be understood and be applied as well (Jackson and Dixon, 2006). Therefore the initiators and implementers of SEA should invest a lot of efforts in dealing with environmental information. The following methodology is recommended in order to achieve useful outcome: 1) Creation of checklist questions: In order to develop relevant checklist of questions, the institution should liaise with environmental agencies like local government so that they get information. The information will be used for developing a set of checklist questions. 2) Evaluating the significance of the criteria established: This involves examination of established efforts of sustainability as per the requirement of policies and developing viable strategies to be implemented. 3) Compatibility analysis: This involves conducting situation analysis and checking whether the established strategies are compatible with the existing environmental policies in the region. 4) Economic evaluation: This involves checking on the cost-benefit of the program that is to be implemented by also considering the maintenance cost of SEA. 5) Corresponding scenarios: Some high profile environmental assessment focus may be equally valuable. Therefore, there will be no need to implement SEA when there is an existing assessment tool which will give the same outcome. Therefore, it is recommendable to merge strategy if it is equally valuable. 6) Before implementing the SEA, it is important to pool both the internal and external experts of environmental assessment. This will help in offering advices to the implementers and perhaps pointing out areas of weakness to rectify. 7) Monitoring and evaluation is the next step after implementation that will entail training and development of human resources recruited for the program. There are various activities that should be done in the course of implementation such as refining checklist, drafting manuals of SEA and updating regularly the government about the project progress. References Caratti, P., Dalkmann, H. and Jiliberto H, R. (2004). Analysing strategic environmental assessment. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Jackson, T. and Dixon, J. (2006). Applying strategic environmental assessment to land-use and resource-management plans in Scotland and New Zealand: a comparison. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24(2), pp.89-101. Lee, L., Ancev, T. and Vervoort, W. (2012). Evaluation of environmental policies targeting irrigated agriculture: The case of the Mooki catchment, Australia. Agricultural Water Management, 109, pp.107-116. Schmidt, M., João, E. and Albrecht, E. (2005). Implementing strategic environmental assessment. Berlin: Springer. Weiland, U. (2010). Strategic Environmental Assessment in Australia — Practice and open questions.Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 30(3), pp.211-217. Read More

As the name suggest, SEA involved systematic use of information at all levels in the state to strategize and find ways of trying to reduce project impacts in the environment. Apparently, SEA in Australia contained both theoretical and practical outlooks, which complements the works of SEA in most of the developed nations such as North America and United Kingdom. Benefits and problems associated with Strategic environmental Assessment Benefits Like any other project, SEA needs to achieve its designed purpose particularly by covering all the policies of the environment, planning, evaluation and facilitation at all levels.

Incorporation of all these aspects will lead to the following benefits. Strategic Environmental Assessment promotes the development of better environmental safety and management that will in turn promote sustainable development. Since SEA incorporate social, economic and political dogmas, therefore it reconciles different objectives which are pursued by different administrative bodies within the state. South Australia has various bodies attached to environmental conservation and management. These bodies have different objectives in formulating their own measures and therefore introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment will harmonize their divergent ways of handling environmental issues.

As a result, this strategy has created several pillars with the same aim of environmental management and sustainable development in Australia. The proactive instruments of SEA is that as the aim remains to be sustainable development, it focuses on addressing causes of problems in the environment rather than only focusing on just treating symptoms. Therefore, by helping to safeguard natural resources and environment, SEA will not only focus on current situations of the population but also takes care of the future prospective of the environment.

This can simply imply that SEA supports a holistic evaluation of options and alternatives after considering overall objectives of the sectorial partners thus coming up with a sustainable plan for implementation. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) safes time and money at the same time. The affiliates to SEA such as European Environmental Agency (EEA), Partnership in Environmental Management for the Seas of East Asia (PEMSEA, local governments and World Nature Organization (WNO) finds it easy to obtain alternatives in promoting sustainable developments in Australia (Weiland, 2010).

Apparently, this will save money and time which are problematic to majority of stakeholders of environment conservation and management in Australia. Also, SEA ensures that planners have access to relevant inputs from the stakeholders which are within the boundaries of the policy program. This will ensure that there are effective decisions made within less time and proximity of actions taken. There is a reflection of well management of time and money in most projects in Australia as far as environmental management is concerned.

Healthy environment have been created since the sound introduction of SEA. There is evidence of reduction of costly remedies of environment that comes as a result of poor decision. The presence of comprehensive focus in SEA promotes good economic and social conditions. For example, the introduction of SEA has led to avoidance of large scale production of health problems destruction of natural resources without compensating at relative cost. The introduction of Strategic Environmental Assessment has improves good governance as well as entrusting public policy and plan at the community level (Caratti, Dalkmann and Jiliberto, 2004).

SEA in developed nations like United States and United Kingdom was found to improve transparency when it comes to development and implementation of strategic of strategic decisions. The use of SEA enables the decision makers to put into account the opinions of key stakeholders of environment such as Global Environment Facility (GEF) especially in the early stages of planning process.

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