Strategic Environmental Assessment

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)

The increasing concentration of the World's population in coastal areas has created different conflicts between the human and development activities and the coastal ecosystems along with management difficulties. Typically, management in coastal areas has been characterized by sectoral, fragmented and short-term development strategies that have failed to take into account the multiple uses occurring within the coastal environment. This has led to problems arising from the lack of understanding of the socioeconomic character of coastal environments and poor cooperation between different levels of administration and management. For that matter, a new tool has been introduced, the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), including both socioeconomic and environmental issues.

The relationship between SEA and EIA       For the most part an SEA is conducted before a corresponding Environmental lmpact Assessment (EIA) is undertaken. This will mean that information on the environmental impact of a plan will be able to cascade down through the tiers of decision making and be used in an EIA at a later stage. This should reduce the amount of work that needs to be undertaken. A handover procedure is foreseen.

SEA helps authorities and developers to make decisions taking environment into consideration. It is a term widely used to refer to a systematic process of analyzing the environmental effects of policies, plans and programmes. Often the process is equated with a formal procedure based on Environmental Impact Assessment. It is a means of integrating environmental considerations into development policy-making and planning, more recently referred to as “mainstreaming environment”. SEA is a holistic, cross-sectoral approach to the implementation of sustainable development which could also include social and economic effects.

SEA has become an important instrument to help to achieve sustainable development in public planning and policy making. The importance of SEA is widely recognised. Particular benefits of SEA include:

The structure of SEA is based on the following phases:

SEA should ensure that plans and programmes take into consideration the environmental effects they cause. If those environmental effects are part of the overall decision taking it is called Strategic Impact Assessment.

For more information about SEA, consult the Strategic Environmental Assessment Information Service website: http://www.sea-info.net

The aim of SEA for the Namibian coast is to provide decision makers at national, regional and local level and affected stakeholders with timely and relevant information on the potential environmental impacts of on the ground activities, policies and programmes. Such information is usually used to enable decision makers and affected people to make required modification and adjustment in an effort to avoid negative environmental impacts and environmental disasters.

SEA is therefore a process that is inextricably linked to decision making. It facilitates the early consideration of environmental impacts, the examination of a broad array of potential alternatives, the generation of standard mitigation measures and the opportunity to address a wide range of impacts, including those that are cumulative, synergistic, indirect, long range, delayed and global.2. As basis of this, regional SEAs will be conducted in all coastal areas of the four coastal regions: Kunene, Erongo, Hardap and Karas during the project period.

The information, data and findings resulting from the SEA process will be presented in a Decision Support Tool (DST). This tool will be disseminated to political and technical decision makers at local, regional and national levels in order to assist them in taking decisions on biodiversity conservation, land use planning, and social and economic development planning in the Kunene and Erongo coastal zones.

DST is a map-based documentation of the results of the modelled land use suitability, including the analyses of spatial trends in biodiversity. DST is part of the SEA report and should be used together to interpret the background for the conclusions and recommendations given. An important usage of the DST in relation to spatial planning of future developments is the possibility to compare the suitability of an area for different and potentially competing land uses. The DST does not offer any decisions, but rather a user-friendly map in high resolution of the suitability of each land use evaluated on the basis of multi-criteria evaluations of all economic, social and environmental issues.

On the Namibian coast, with the prospects of continued decentralisation and growth in the standard of living and thus the diversification of the use of natural resources, the task of effective resource allocation will soon become a difficult task for resource managers, not least at the regional level. Add to this the dynamic environment subject to substantial and complex impacts from human intervention, and one has the ingredients for a decision making process that is dominated by uncertainty and consequent risk for the decision maker.

All data and other information collected during the SEA process will feed into the preparation work for regional coastal profiles for particular use by the Kunene, Erongo, Hardap and Karas Regional Councils.

A specific contribution to the preparation of these regional profiles will be identified in the recommendations that will be derived from the SEA. The regional coastal profiles are intended to give regional councils and local authorities as well as local communities general information on biophysics, socioeconomic, biodiversity, etc for their specific areas.

A profile may describe what the coastline has to offer in the way of natural resources, its people, what they do and how the natural environment responds. Like the SEA, the information in the coastal profile can be used as a basis when policies in the coastal zone are formulated. Briefly a profile will complement a SEA and DST.

SEA for the coastal areas of Kunene and Erongo regions

The final SEA study for the coastal areas of Kunene and Erongo regions is available on NACOMA webpage in the section Reports & Publications. A publication version will be available by end of July 2008.

One of the outcomes of the SEA of the coastal areas is a SEA Decision Support Tool (DST). The DST is an easy to-use GIS application for visualisation of the results of the SEA for the coastal areas of Erongo and Kunene regions. The DST has the role of informing the decision making process on land use options in the two coastal regions, and does not provide decisions per se. The DST has been developed as a stand-alone application which can be viewed in the widely available ArcView 3.2 as well as in the freeware ArcExplorer.

The Decision Support Tool has been finalised in April 2008 and has been disseminated to MET, MFMR, Walvis Bay & Swakopmund municipalities, Erongo and Kunene regional councils etc. Further dissemination will take place in the coming months. For more information, please contact Nathalie Cadot: ncadot@nacoma.org.na / 064-403-905.

SEA for the coastal areas of Hardap and Karas regions

DHI has been contracted to undertake the SEA for the southern regions (Hardap and Karas regions). The consultancy will start in August 2008. The objective is to have a draft SEA study report before the end of the year.

Implementation of SEA recommendations on the Kunene and Erongo Coast

The Southern African Institute for Environmental Assessment (SAIEA) has been contracted to implement key recommendations of the SEA for the coastal areas of the Erongo and Kunene regions, in order to improve conservation management on the Kunene and Erongo Coast.

The SEA found that conservation management of coastal areas needed to be improved, particularly for areas such as the Walvis Bay Nature Reserve, and the area of land between Walvis Bay and the Ugab River. For this purpose SAIEA will consider best-practice management planning methodology in either revising existing management plans, or developing new management plans to ensure effective management of these areas, considering socio-economic needs and conservation priorities. Such planning would include the classification of land for various uses, updating and formulating relevant regulations, ensuring the conservation of areas of biodiversity significance, and the consideration of maximising benefits to communities in the regions.

A number of key activities will be undertaken. The activities will be implemented in phases as described below:

Phase 1:
     Developing best practice guidelines for the development of management plans in coastal      protected areas.

Phase 2:
     - Development of a land-use plan, zonation map and management plan in order to facilitate the      proclamation of the Walvis Bay Nature Reserve
     - Development of a coastal land-use plan, zonation map and management plan to guide      management of the NWCRA
     - The review of land-use planning, zonation and management plans for the Namib Naukluft Park      and the Skeleton Coast Park, to ensure the inclusion of coastal management and conservation      priorities, as identified by the Nacoma SEA process.

Phase 3:
     Formulating of regulations for newly proclaimed protected areas and agreed land-use zones, as      well as review regulations for existing protected areas.

The above process will be completed by November 2008, and will be consultative in nature. This implies that the views of all stakeholders in the concerned areas will be sought, to inform the development of management plans, zones of use and regulations.

The consulting team consists of Dr. Peter Tarr, Dr. Chris Brown, Dr. John Mendelsohn, Dr. Jon Barnes, Mr. Cormac Cullinan and Mr. Morgan Hauptfleisch, and have commenced with Phase 1. Consultations with MET, as well as coastal stakeholder consultations are currently being planned for July 2008.

The main contact person is Mr. Morgan Hauptfleisch:
Tel: 061-220-579
Fax: 061-279-897
Email: morgan.hauptfleisch@saiea.com

For more information and download reports linked to this activity, please visit Reports & Publications.