Strategic Environmental Assessment in the World Bank : Learning from Recent Experience and Challenges

Loayza, Fernando

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCESS TO INFORMATION;    AGRICULTURE;    AIR POLLUTION;    AIR POLLUTION CONTROL;    ASSET VALUATION;   

RP-ID  :  80491

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This report presents the results of areview of the World Bank's Strategic EnvironmentalAssessment (SEA) experience undertaken by the World Banklearning community-the SEA Community of Practice (CoP). Thisreport is no more than a first step. Its findings andresults cannot be treated as conclusive. The World Bankfollows the Organization for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD) in describing SEA as 'analytical andparticipatory approaches to strategic decision-making thataim to integrate environmental considerations into policies,plans and programs, and evaluate the inter linkages witheconomic and social considerations'. Over time SEA hasbecome more strategic by bringing different groups ofstakeholders into an environmental and social dialogue in aniterative and adaptive way. Impact-centered approaches toSEA best fit to integrate environmental considerations inplans and programs where environmental impacts and risks canbe identified and predicted. Country environmental analysisis a type of policy SEA developed to inform the dialoguebetween the Bank and client countries on nationalenvironmental priorities. The main objective is tostrengthen Bank staff's capacity on SEA by fosteringlearning in applying SEA in World Bank-supported projectsand thus contribute to sustainable development outcomes inprograms, plans, and policies of client countries. Toachieve this objective, among other activities of the SEACoP, there is a component to take stock of the Bank'srecent regional experience with the following scope of work.The structure of this report organized as: chapter twopresents the synthesis and conclusions from thecross-analysis of the regional reviews. Chapters threethrough eight present the findings and conclusions of theregional reviews. Chapter three on the SEA experience inEast Asia and the Pacific focuses on the use of SEA mainlyas a tool for environmental safeguarding. Chapter fouranalyzes the use of SEA as a planning and policy tooldrawing on the Middle East and North Africa experience. Amixed experience with impact-centered and policy SEAapproaches is described by chapter five on South Asia.Chapter six on Sub-Saharan Africa shows a trend of using SEAinitially for environmental safeguarding but later forinforming policy making. Chapter seven shows that sectorreforms and infrastructure developments have influenced theuse of SEA in Latin America. And the mixed results ofpromoting SEA practice by making it regionally mandatorythrough the European Union's SEA directive aredescribed in chapter eight on Europe and Central Asia.