Strategic Environmental Assessment

Strategic Environmental Assessment in Australasia provides an authoritative, up-to-date report on the state of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in Australia and New Zealand, at a time of gathering momentum for recognition of SEA as a necessary and legitimate part of natural resources management. SEA is the application of environmental assessment to policies, plans and programs. It seeks to address, as early as possible, and on a par with social and economic impacts, what environmental impacts may occur, and what measures should be taken to avoid or ameliorate these impacts. In Australia and New Zealand, SEA remains the poor relation to project related environmental impact assessment (EIA) with the result that project related EIA still commonly takes place in a vacuum of strategic and cumulative environmental assessment.