END OF DISCUSSION FORUM ON SEA: Watch the video!

Hello,

this is Jiri Dusik from UNDP. I was engaged in several SEAs funded by the EU prior joining UNDP and was happy to see a growing interest to apply SEA in development cooperation after adoption of the OECD/DAC guidance.  But lately, this interest seems to somewhat decline which is a pity since SEAs can - when done well - bring a lot of addded value to strategic decision-making.

I am hence very happy to see this renewed discussion within EU development cooperation. Will be glad to contribute during the next 4 days when I am in the office - hopefully long enough to see some exchange going.

Jiri

Hello all,

My name is David Annandale. I am a freelance consultant, working on SEA and environmental safeguard procedures around the world (mostly in Asia and Africa). I note Juan and Jiri's concern that perhaps SEA is losing its currency. I work with a range of donors, and if anything, I think there is an increase in donor interest. IF there is a problem, it is with the takeup of SEA by newly developing countries. My view is that there is considerable work to do in persuading decision makers that SEA is of benefit. I would like to see alot more research/publication focusing on specific SEA benefits ... which I see as focused on reduction of economic and reputational risk. I have my own case study examples, but would really like to see more documentation of benefits!

This is Paolo Toselli from Timor Leste EU Delegation. I have recently been introduced to the world of SEA because in Timor the EU delegation will soon launch a SEA (end 2018 or beginning 2019). We must be honest in recognizing that Timor Leste Government is not concern about SEA at the moment. Our strategy is therefore to tailor a SEA to those specific issues that have had or could have a positive reaction from Government and other development partners. For example land degradation and soil erosion are issues that will capture the attention. Same is water availability because it is an acute problem in rural area during dry season.   
In practice it means to chop SEA and limit SEA to those few arguments that are common interest. Is this adaptive strategy changing the nature of the exercise or a valid solution to overcome the "low ownership and participation" of Governments?
 

Dear Paolo,

We dealt with very similar challenge when introducing SEA in Indonesia as part of Danida support there. Our SEA approach was exactly as you suggest. In sensitive cases (e.g. SEA of Presidential Master Plan for Economic Restructuring - MP3EI)  we proceeded through the following steps:

1. We identified key concerns of decision-making actors (those having influence on adoption or implementation of the proposed plan) and also of the wider stakeholders concerned about impacts of the proposed policy/plan.

2. We started SEA by focusing it on concerns of key decision-making actors - hence establishing political legitimacy of SEA (as this process tried to asnwer concerns of influential actors) and we tried to proactively feed in information for their informal debates (that were actaully much more improtant than formal administrative stepsin drawing up the proposed policy/plan).

3. We use these initial analyses to involve outside stakehodlers having stake/interest in issues examined. Their engagement was justified because it was a fair thing to do, and because they possed know-how that could benefit the assessment process.

4. As the decision-makers became more familair with SEA and found some of these debates useful, we gradually exanded analyses to other improtant issues that were raised by wider stakeholders.

Obviously, it was a multi-step process - but this is fine since all guidance documents on SEA acknowdge that we must not follow some rigid procedural blue-print. We always need to adjust our SEA approach to fit the realities of decision-making. If you wish, I can try to locate the guidance that we prepared for this process.

Hope this helps

Jiri

In response to Paolo's question ... I think that one of the real strengths of SEA is to force (encourage?) governments to look forward beyond the standard political cycle ... and thereby to pinpoint longer term resource problems and infrastructure needs. For example, perhaps if the South African government had undertaken a SEA of water resource planning a decade or so ago, this could have pointed to the shortage problems that it is currently facing. Another example is a SEA that was done in Mongolia 4 years ago in the mining sector. Using GDP growth scenarios, this focused attention on infrastructure needs (ie water supply, energy needs, transportation infrastructure) in 30 years time.

Hi, I’m Rodrigo Jiliberto. As most of you I’ve been working on SEA several years and in particular in Latin America. I find this a very interesting discussion.

In the forefront I’d like to agree with Juan’s statement that SEA is a benefit in its own right.

However, our perception about how successful a SEA is has been depends very much about do we means an SEA is. In my experience results depends very on the degree of institutionalization of the environmental issue in each country. It is not easy for not SEA practitioners to understand the purpose and the benefits of and SEA.

The more developed is the environmental policy and practice in one country, the more the local authorities will appreciate a strategic oriented SEA, which is able to contribute to find more sustainable development ways. This has been for instance my experience in Colombia or Chile, so they will interiorize the exercise.

On the other one side, when you face less experienced environmental policy country, the authorities will be interested in impact oriented SEA, and the probability them to be frustrated will increase. Because they will not get what they expected; a clear cut environmental information for decision making. I remember very well a SEA on the national metal mining plan in El Salvador, a significant group of local authorities wanted from de SEA a white and black statement about positive future environmental impact of the metal mining industry in the country, a result which is not only far away from a standard SEA, but impossible to deliver in this case because of the huge data lack in the country.

In any case, to apply SEA in countries where SEA it is not institutionalized, which is most of the cases for the cooperation aid, implies sometimes overwhelming pedagogic effort. In general I’d agree with the very open approaches already suggested, which include,  as an initial step, a clear definition about what do national authorities expect from the SEA. However not conceived as an non critical objective setting, but a point of departure to transform, in general weak or in relation to SEA distorted demands, in a strategic environmental oriented demand/objective agreed by all stakeholders.  

Juan, I understand the purpose to promote SEA in the aid framework, somehow the EU cover its sustainability responsibility when giving financial support to third countries and this is fine of course. The complexity began with the fact that SEA is an institutional sophisticated tool, degree of sophistication that it is not easy to find in the receiving countries. The point for me is how to perform SEA overcoming this gap, and at the same time leaving some experience over which the country can build upon.

I keep in mind your recommendation to use or explain SEA in the Spanish speaking world using the term analysis. Assessment look like auditing. By the way I teach at the university the use of strategic environmental analysis in territorial planning in this sense, because it is incorporated in the plannign process.

The training Towards Sustainable Development: Greening EU Development Cooperation will take place on 7 and 8 June in Brussels. The training includes a session on practical tools and approaches to integrate environment and climate change at the various stages of the operations cycle covering the SEA.

The Methodological and Knowledge Sharing (MKS) Programme provides assistance to DEVCO in order to deliver training on operational aspects and innovative capacity development activities, including support to the development and content of the capacity4dev platform.  In this framework the Programme may offer the possibility to develop a tailor-made training on SEA.

Dear colleagues

I am Miguel Coutinho. I've been involved in SEA for at least 15 years. My initial focus was in the preparation of SEAs in Portugal but more recently I was involved in the coordination of SEA processes in Brazil, Guyana and Indonesia.

From these experiences I would say that the main challenge of SEA is to explain to the social actors involved what is the main objective of the SEA process. Why do we do SEAs? For many reasons... But if we want to find the most relevant one, I would say that we want to improve the quality of the decison making process, and consequently, at the end, we hope to come out with a better decision. For that is is essential to create the right mood with the institutions involved, especially with the government body resposible for the decision, and it is necessary to act in the right moment. The right mood and the right moment because to improve a decision, the decision has to be changed!

I would point out scoping (focused, strategic, participated,...) as the other critical issue to assure SEA success. But without the right mood and moment SEA becomes an exercise without any impact.

I'd like to add to a comment made two days ago by Juan about SEA for budget support. Folks involved with EU programming may like to know that the World Bank undertakes occasional SEAs of what it terms "development policy loans (DPLs)". 40% of the WB's financing is for DPLs, and this is straight budget support for different sectors, based on agreements made with governments about very specific policy reforms. For example, the WB has provided significant budget support to Mozambique and Vietnam in recent years, where the loads are linked to policy reforms in the "green growth and climate change sectors". The DPLs are usually multi-year tranches, where release of funds is contingent on agreed reforms (such as the introduction of feed-in tariffs). The SEAs identify environmental and social concerns associated with the reforms, and these concerns influence the design of future tranches. The Bank has been developing a specific methodology for undertaking these SEAs.