Soil profile beside a polluted riverImage © Jeremy Barker
What can SEA do for biodiversity?
The purpose of SEA is to help provide a high level of environmental protection. It is identified by key international agreements, notably the CBD and Ramsar Conventions, as an important tool with which to promote the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity; this is consistent with two key principles in biodiversity protection: the precautionary principle
and the no net loss principle
.
Human impacts on ecosystems have increased to the degree that the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report 'Ecosystems and Human Well-being: a framework for assessment' (2003) concludes that economic development has led to ecosystems being degraded more rapidly and extensively during the past 50 years than at any previous period in history.
SEA is recognised by the CBD as being an important tool for identifying, avoiding, minimising and mitigating adverse impacts on biodiversity.
SEA overcomes many of the limitations of project-based EIA by providing opportunities for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity to be considered as a fundamental part of strategic decision-making, rather than as a single specialist topic that needs considering. Methods to achieve this could include (but are not limited to!):
- Build biodiversity objectives into land-use, urban or sectoral policies, plans and programmes, at any point between international and local levels
- Identifying and managing apparently minor impacts, which when accumulated may pose severe threats to biodiversity
- Identifying biodiversity-friendly alternatives and mitigation strategies that would be compatible with sustained delivery of ecosystem services
- Ensuring effective monitoring programmes are in place to provide information about biodiversity
- Allowing biodiversity specialists and decision-makers &/or planners to engage
- Integrating biodiversity into a range of activities affecting the way environmental resources are dealt with, such as agriculture, minerals and forestry, from the level of central government downwards.
SEA should have roles in both advocacy, to raise awareness of biodiversity issues, and in integration of environmental, social and economic considerations.