Environmental assessments of strategic decisions and project decisions: interactions and benefits

Application of environmental assessment at the level of policies, plans and programmes (PPPs) is generally referred to as strategic environmental assessment (SEA). SEA has many interactions with the environmental assessment of follow-up decisions, whether these are still at strategic level (SEA), or at project level (EIA). An analysis of cases in the European Union of tiered decision-making and environmental assessment, has shown that these interactions can be beneficial. Hypotheses and facts from the literature are sustained by these cases, and can be elaborated further. It is argued that application of SEA can help to improve the decision-making system.