Anyone serious about integrating environmental factors into planning and policy making will gain new insights and ideas from Fischers book on SEA; and students, teachers and practitioners of the ...subject will find the book essential.
Leonard Ortolano, Professor at Stanford University, USA
Fischers book demystifies the process and substantive analytical dimensions of SEA. Offering solidly documented empirical evidence of the value of SEA to development, the knowledge captured in this book is a great contribution to the practice.
Linda Ghanime, Environmental Operations and Policy Adviser, United Nations Development Program
This book is an invaluable reference text for SEA practitioners. I recommend it to everyone!
Xu He, Professor and Director of the Strategic Environmental Assessment Center at Nankai University, China
Fischer gives a concise and wellstructured account of SEA as it is used today. Readers thus will gain important insights into SEA: why it is important, how it works, and what it can and should achieve.
Professor Thomas Bunge, Federal Environment Agency, Germany
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a fast-growing and rapidly evolving professional field driven by both advances in theory and practice and by regulatory requirements in Europe, North America, Australasia, South Africa and increasingly across Asia. However, to date, analysis of existing practice and associated reporting has remained far from systematic and there has been a clear need for a comprehensive textbook to facilitate teaching, learning and practice in this burgeoning field.
This textbook, the first of its kind, provides for a state-ofthe-art review of SEA theory and practice and promotes a more systematic approach to SEA. It is written for a wide student, professional and academic audience and aims particularly at supporting the development of SEA modules in undergraduate and postgraduate planning, environmental assessment, engineering and law course
The central idea animating environmental impact assessment (EIA) is that decisions affecting the environment should be made through a comprehensive evaluation of predicted impacts. Notwithstanding ...their evaluative mandate, EIA processes do not impose specific environmental standards, but rely on the creation of open, participatory and information rich decision-making settings to bring about environmentally benign outcomes. In light of this tension between process and substance, Neil Craik assesses whether EIA, as a method of implementing international environmental law, is a sound policy strategy, and how international EIA commitments structure transnational interactions in order to influence decisions affecting the international environment. Through a comprehensive description of international EIA commitments and their implementation with domestic and transnational governance structures, and drawing on specific examples of transnational EIA processes, the author examines how international EIA commitments can facilitate interest coordination, and provide opportunities for persuasion and for the internalisation of international environmental norms.
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) systems are under pressure in many countries, driven by a call for efficiency and streamlining. Such a phenomenon is particularly clear in Brazil, where, in the ...past few years, a number of influential associations put forward documents proposing significant changes to environmental licensing and impact assessment regulations. So far, there is no publicly available information about any initiative towards scrutinizing those proposals. The objective of this study was to critically review the merits and drawbacks of the changes proposed in those documents. The analysis triangulated content analysis, focus group and online survey data. The focus group included ten seasoned Brazilian EIA specialists; the survey, based on Likert-scale and open-ended questions, resulted in 322 valid responses from EIA professionals. Results show that the proposals generally agree that the current EIA system, while playing a key role in mitigating impacts and enhancing project design, needs many changes. Nonetheless, the proposals neither offered solutions to overcome political, technical and budget barriers, nor established a sense of priority of the most urgent issues. Findings from the focus group and the survey signaled that a number of proposed actions might face public outcry, and that those changes that do not depend on legislative action are more likely to be implementable. Previous studies about EIA reform focused mostly on the context of developed countries after changes had taken place. This study, while addressing the perspective of a large developing country in a “before-reform” stage, shows that capacity-building is a key requirement in EIA reform.
•Brazil's EIA system is under strong pressure for change.•Findings corroborate ineffectiveness in current system.•There are tensions as to the best approaches to overcome problems.•Exact effects of proposals are uncertain.•Low institutional capacity can play strong role in driving EIA reform.
