Policy brief

Better integration of SEA into the process of drafting of policy documents 

Kaja Peterson
Open Society Institute, IPF Fellow 2003 

Introduction
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is required by the national law in Estonia. It is stated in the law (art.22) that SEA should go in parallel to the drafting process of the policy document and that likely environmental impacts arising from the implementation of a plan and a program should be taken into account. Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) should form a separate document in each such case. When the national law remains short-handed in providing guidance for SEA process often EU Directive 2001/42/EEC (called usually as SEA-Directive) is referred and consulted in Estonia.

Followed by the enforcement of the law in 2001, there have been 7 SEAs of programmes and plans at national level and probably hundreds of spatial plans developed at county or municipal level in the period of 2001-2003. These seven national level SEAs  have been studied more closely to understand the problems and controversies perceived by different groups of actors in the process and to provide recommendations for better integration of SEA into the process of drafting of policy documents in the future.

Status of integration of SEA into the drafting process of policy documents
On the basis of 26 evaluations by three groups of respondents (public authorities, SEA experts and environmental NGOs) of 7 cases of SEAs in Estonia we may conclude that SEA has become a useful tool of forecasting environmental impacts and communicating them to the public and stakeholders. The respondents also stressed the importance of SEA having the biggest effect on the draft policy document by modifying its content and composition. But it was regarded being too late stage by SEA experts, since many of the essential decisions, such as the scope and objectives of the policy document have already been adopted before SEA starts. 

Many public authorities find it difficult to identify whether an SEA is required or not for a particular plan or programme. This confusion is mainly caused by the lack of legal definition of a plan and programme and of established hierarchy of these documents. 

Setting the objectives of SEA appeared to be another difficult task for responsible ministries and SEA experts. It has been difficult to achieve a consensus on these tasks with environmental NGOs. For example, the environmental NGOs were not expecting to reach public consensus on the environmental issues in the SEA in the first place, whereas the public authorities and SEA experts stressed the importance of this objective. For obvious reasons the public authorities and SEA experts were aiming at involving other ministries into the process - to get acceptance of the policy document by the end of the process, whereas the NGOs left this objective unnoticed. Instead, the environmental NGOs were expecting SEA to develop a clear mitigation plan for minimizing likely significant environmental impacts and define environmental objectives for this particular (sectoral) policy. 

I WOULD SHORTEN AND STREAMLINE THE TWO PARAGRAPHS BELOW. MAY BE MAKE A BULLETED LIST OR A TABLE OF OBJECTIVES OF THE TYPE THAT YOU WERE PRESENTING AT THE WORKSHOP.

Tasks to be solved in the SEA process varied even between the actor’s groups and between people of the same group. For example, in the case of National Long-term Development Plan of Fuel and Energy Sector, the Ministry of Economy and Communications expected SEA to facilitate reaching public consensus on environmental issues, Ministry of Environment as a supervisory body in SEA expected SEA to identify the potential activities designed by the policy document likely to have significant environmental effect, and the SEA expert considered his main task to make the development plan public and have public debate on it. 

In the case of the Single Programming Document, for example, where several experts were involved in the SEA, Expert 1 regarded the ultimate aim of SEA to identify the potential activities designed by the policy document likely to have significant environmental effect, Expert 2 pointed out that his/her main task was to identify possible conflicts between the objectives of the policy document and national (or sectoral) environmental objectives, whereas Expert 3 regarded the involvement of other ministries into the process the primary aim of SEA. Objectives that are not agreed among the actors of the process at the beginning of the process lead to different expectations about the outputs and outcomes. Different expectations lead to misunderstandings between actors and hampered the whole process by extending the time and increasing budgets.

The ten national environmental objectives were regarded too general to be used for sectoral plans and programmes and the sectors lack their own environmental objectives. Thus the public authorities and SEA experts developed sector specific environmental objectives for the SEA that otherwise should have been developed and adopted at a different political level in a separate process.

Once SEA has been launched, keeping the given timeline and budget usually become difficult. The law requires at least two public hearings during the SEA: one prior to the adoption of the SEA programme and SEA report. However, all the seven SEAs studied required either one or two public meetings additionally, mainly due to the complexity of issues and controversial public interests involved. The extension of the whole process had also implications on the overall budget. Public authorities found the management of public meetings, communication with stakeholders and reaching consensus between interest groups a demanding task to accomplish with little prior training they have. 

Current capacity of SEA expertise was evaluated by the respondents as rather modest. Ministries other than Ministry of Environment usually lack SEA expertise, except the Ministry of Economy and Communication. The number of SEA experts was estimated less than 10 people. 

Recommendations
On the basis of the survey done on 7 cases of national level SEAs in Estonia, the following recommendations could be put forward:

1.	Once the development of policy documents and corresponding budgets are planned, SEA and correspondent budget need to be planned as well. This will result in better planning of both processes and avoids overuse of time and resources further down in the process. 
2.	It is strongly recommended that SEA is officially started with the same decree as the drafting of policy document to ensure the correspondence of objectives and scope of the policy documents and environmental issues involved.
3.	In order to make the screening process transparent and effective, the definition of plans and programmes and their mutual hierarchy need to be legally established. Legal definition will provide a clear system of policy documents subject to SEA.
4.	The objectives of SEA need to be agreed among actors and communicated to them in the early stage of the SEA process in order to avoid controversies during the SEA process and false expectations of the results of SEA and .
5.	Since national environmental objectives are too general for sector specific SEAs, it is proposed that each sector must develop and adopt its own environmental objectives to provide framework for SEA methodology and further impact assessment.
6.	It is recommended to develop SEA training programmes for public authorities in charge of SEA in their sector to build their in-house capacity on SEA and in public communication, in particular.