Climate change has become a high priority worldwide at the level of governments, business, and community due to growing understanding of climate change's implications for trade, security, the economy, ecosystems, and the well-being of humans and other species. The strategic environmental assessment (SEA) process is well-positioned to systematically help strengthen treatment of climate change adaptation and mitigation in planning and development. This is due to its practical, analytical component, its participation component, and its ability to engage with ethical issues and reconcile competing agendas. This monograph explores criteria and good practices in addressing various climate change aspects in SEA and country environmental analysis (CEA). Climate change criteria are developed and applied to two datasets to provide an initial information baseline on climate change treatment in SEA and CEA, amended sets of climate change criteria for each, and an evidence-based resource for improving SEA and CEA guidance and practice amongst interested academics, professionals, and practitioners in the UK, EU, development banks, and developing countries. Overall findings are relevant to any individual, institution, or country interested in addressing climate change and climate-related natural hazards within an SEA or planning framework.
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a systematic, participatory decision-making support process undertaken to ensure that key factors relating to the environment and sustainability are taken into account in the development of policies, plans, and programmes (PPPs). In European Union (EU) member states, SEA is explicitly required under the EU SEA Directive (2001/42/EC) to assess significant effects related to ‘climatic factors,’ which is increasingly understood to include climate change. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international development agencies also require SEAs for many of their projects in client countries and express commitment to tackling climate change. This commitment is partly due to their mandate to reduce poverty, which is made much more challenging due to climate change's destabilising and disproportionate impacts on the poor and other vulnerable populations. Developing countries are also becoming increasingly concerned about the impacts of climate change and reducing contributions to it. This is due to growing awareness of climate change's many vexing dimensions, including environmental (IPCC, 2007, MEA, 2005 and Parmesan and Yohe, 2003), health (Patz et al., 2005 and Patz et al., 2008); economic (Stern, 2006), business and trade (Combat Climate Change, 2007 and Mani, 2007), security (Abbott, 2008, Bevanger, 2006 and CNA, 2007), development (World Bank, 2007) and ethical dimensions (Brown et al., 2006 and Posas, 2007).
This research grew out of an interest in SEA and climate change, a concern over the limited attention to and understanding of how to address climate change in SEA (Hacking and Guthrie, 2008 and Hildén et al., 2004), and a resulting compulsion to discover how to more systematically and effectively go about addressing climate change in SEA. Accordingly, the overall aim of this research is to: explore how climate change is being addressed in SEA literature and practice and how climate change might be more systematically incorporated into SEA processes going forward. To do this, the research first examines SEA and climate literature and their nexus. Secondly, by developing analytical review frameworks, it investigates recent SEA and country environmental analysis (CEA) practice on addressing climate change in developed and developing country contexts. Lastly, it discusses the climate change criteria emerging from the frameworks and offers recommendations for further research and possible ways forward in creating a more ‘climate change-enabled SEA.’ It is hoped that the information and frameworks in this monograph help developed countries, developing countries, MDBs, and international development agencies to strengthen their practices, guidance, and technical support for addressing climate change (and linked challenges) through SEA, CEA, and the planning process.
