Strategic environmental assessment of policies and plans: legislation and implementation

Governments can, and commonly do, adopt policies whose environmental implications completely overshadow the impacts of individual development projects as assessed by project-scale environmental impact assessment. Environmental assessment (EA) of government policies is therefore as important to sustainable development as EA of projects. One way to achieve routine policy EA is through a formal legal framework which covers: definition of a policy; screening criteria and exemptions; public advertisement, exhibition and submission; technical standards for environmental assessment; substantive criteria for weighing public environmental costs against public benefits; and provisions for third-party standing. The aims of such a framework would be to make policy EA a routine part of policy formulation.