Strategic Environmental Assessment in the World Bank : Learning from Recent Experience and Challenges
This report presents the results of a review of the World Bank's Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) experience undertaken by the World Bank learning community-the SEA Community of Practice (CoP). This report is no more than a first step....
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| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/798361468332063446/Strategic-environmental-assessment-in-the-World-Bank-learning-from-recent-experience-and-challenges http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27119 |
| Summary: | This report presents the results of a
review of the World Bank's Strategic Environmental
Assessment (SEA) experience undertaken by the World Bank
learning community-the SEA Community of Practice (CoP). This
report is no more than a first step. Its findings and
results cannot be treated as conclusive. The World Bank
follows the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) in describing SEA as 'analytical and
participatory approaches to strategic decision-making that
aim to integrate environmental considerations into policies,
plans and programs, and evaluate the inter linkages with
economic and social considerations'. Over time SEA has
become more strategic by bringing different groups of
stakeholders into an environmental and social dialogue in an
iterative and adaptive way. Impact-centered approaches to
SEA best fit to integrate environmental considerations in
plans and programs where environmental impacts and risks can
be identified and predicted. Country environmental analysis
is a type of policy SEA developed to inform the dialogue
between the Bank and client countries on national
environmental priorities. The main objective is to
strengthen Bank staff's capacity on SEA by fostering
learning in applying SEA in World Bank-supported projects
and thus contribute to sustainable development outcomes in
programs, plans, and policies of client countries. To
achieve this objective, among other activities of the SEA
CoP, there is a component to take stock of the Bank's
recent regional experience with the following scope of work.
The structure of this report organized as: chapter two
presents the synthesis and conclusions from the
cross-analysis of the regional reviews. Chapters three
through eight present the findings and conclusions of the
regional reviews. Chapter three on the SEA experience in
East Asia and the Pacific focuses on the use of SEA mainly
as a tool for environmental safeguarding. Chapter four
analyzes the use of SEA as a planning and policy tool
drawing on the Middle East and North Africa experience. A
mixed experience with impact-centered and policy SEA
approaches is described by chapter five on South Asia.
Chapter six on Sub-Saharan Africa shows a trend of using SEA
initially for environmental safeguarding but later for
informing policy making. Chapter seven shows that sector
reforms and infrastructure developments have influenced the
use of SEA in Latin America. And the mixed results of
promoting SEA practice by making it regionally mandatory
through the European Union's SEA directive are
described in chapter eight on Europe and Central Asia. |
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