Editor's Note: First Published in June 2007 in Sangu Daily. This article is being reproduced as the information in this article is important to the government, state institutions, the business community, the general public and civil society of the Maldives as they all lack an in-depth knowledge of Impact Assessment (IA), especially that of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The article is being republished because the term SEA was missing in the Third National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP-3) proposed for 2009 to 2013 which was published by UNEP & the Government of Maldives. It is hoped that even at this stage, colleagues in government would recognise the importance of reference to SEA in documents such as NEAP and other reports or documents related to environment and sustainability because SEA (not the conventional project-based EIA) is the best known tool to make strategic decisions sustainable, as it has the capacity to assess the economic, social and environmental impacts of all policies, plans & programmes which are strategic in nature or all proposals above project level.
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The meaning of the phrase “Sustainable Development” is difficult to define as the intended meaning varies with the context and is also based on the background of the people who use that phrase. However, in 1987 a widely accepted definition of Sustainable Development was given in the Brundtland Report or the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Most jurisdictions accept Sustainable Development as development or developmental activities including Policy, Plan and Programme (PPP) in addition to projects that meet the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
A number of jurisdictions have attempted to assess effects of their proposals, mainly of projects to advance the sustainability agenda. In the earlier days cost benefit analysis (CBA) was popularly used to assess the impacts of projects in an attempt to make development sustainable. But CBA has its limitations and was not able to assess externalities, especially environment, sufficiently. As a result, promoters of the sustainability agenda and the environmental advocates kept on experimenting with various decision making as well as decision aiding tools. In 1969, US senate passed a land mark environmental legislation, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which required all the proposals funded by federal government to be subjected to an Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE), giving birth to one of today’s most commonly used term, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
After the enactment of NEPA, EIAs are being widely used around the world to assess environmental implications of various projects in order to promote sustainable development. All of them were not legally required, but soon it became a legal requirement in almost all of the developed or industrialized countries. Eventually, all projects with potential negative environmental effects on environment are required to undertake an EIA, before the execution of the project, even in many of the developing countries.
Later, many responsible governments and a number of international organizations including the UN System, EU, The World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) acknowledged that undertaking environmental assessments of individual projects alone is not enough to understand a number of combined long-term effects, cumulative effects and many other synergetic effects of a number of small projects, and have advocated the need for the assessment of the effects which are not properly assessed by individual project EIAs and also the need to integrate developmental decisions in order to promote sustainable development. Integrated decisions can remove antagonism between different policy decisions and projects to enhance the positive or desired outcomes and also to minimize the negative outcomes.
However integration of different developmental proposals and the assessment of potential impacts of those proposals is obviously not an easy task. The traditional project centric decision aiding and making tools are just not sufficient enough as they are not primarily designed to address such tasks. Nevertheless, EIAs have become an important process in decision making and continue to evolve and a process known as Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) or second generation EIA or Policy EIA has emerged.
In spite of the importance of considering environmental issues for the survival and development of the Maldives in a sustainable manner, legislating EIA in the Maldives is just not enough. The complete EIA regime from the conduction of the EIA through to the enforcement of the EIA recommendations is important. Furthermore, the Maldives needs to subject important high-level strategic decisions to the scrutiny of SEA.
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The meaning of the phrase “Sustainable Development” is difficult to define as the intended meaning varies with the context and is also based on the background of the people who use that phrase. However, in 1987 a widely accepted definition of Sustainable Development was given in the Brundtland Report or the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Most jurisdictions accept Sustainable Development as development or developmental activities including Policy, Plan and Programme (PPP) in addition to projects that meet the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
A number of jurisdictions have attempted to assess effects of their proposals, mainly of projects to advance the sustainability agenda. In the earlier days cost benefit analysis (CBA) was popularly used to assess the impacts of projects in an attempt to make development sustainable. But CBA has its limitations and was not able to assess externalities, especially environment, sufficiently. As a result, promoters of the sustainability agenda and the environmental advocates kept on experimenting with various decision making as well as decision aiding tools. In 1969, US senate passed a land mark environmental legislation, National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which required all the proposals funded by federal government to be subjected to an Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE), giving birth to one of today’s most commonly used term, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
After the enactment of NEPA, EIAs are being widely used around the world to assess environmental implications of various projects in order to promote sustainable development. All of them were not legally required, but soon it became a legal requirement in almost all of the developed or industrialized countries. Eventually, all projects with potential negative environmental effects on environment are required to undertake an EIA, before the execution of the project, even in many of the developing countries.
Later, many responsible governments and a number of international organizations including the UN System, EU, The World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) acknowledged that undertaking environmental assessments of individual projects alone is not enough to understand a number of combined long-term effects, cumulative effects and many other synergetic effects of a number of small projects, and have advocated the need for the assessment of the effects which are not properly assessed by individual project EIAs and also the need to integrate developmental decisions in order to promote sustainable development. Integrated decisions can remove antagonism between different policy decisions and projects to enhance the positive or desired outcomes and also to minimize the negative outcomes.
However integration of different developmental proposals and the assessment of potential impacts of those proposals is obviously not an easy task. The traditional project centric decision aiding and making tools are just not sufficient enough as they are not primarily designed to address such tasks. Nevertheless, EIAs have become an important process in decision making and continue to evolve and a process known as Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) or second generation EIA or Policy EIA has emerged.
In spite of the importance of considering environmental issues for the survival and development of the Maldives in a sustainable manner, legislating EIA in the Maldives is just not enough. The complete EIA regime from the conduction of the EIA through to the enforcement of the EIA recommendations is important. Furthermore, the Maldives needs to subject important high-level strategic decisions to the scrutiny of SEA.
Research Interests: Appraisal and Valuation, Land Management and Development, Housing and Urban Development, Public Involvement in Decision Making, Sustainable Development, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).
Send your comments and suggestions to aslam.shakir@gmail.com
18 June 2007
2 comments:
Please do not use foul language and try to keep within the topic in discussion.