Environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment and sustainable development.

Project-based environmental impact assessment (EIA) has many deficiencies under the requirement of sustainability objective; while strategic environmental assessment (SEA) offers a way to overcome these problems and to promote sustainable development. However, SEA cannot replace project-level EIA; on the contrary, they are mutually complementary and have different roles to play in sustainable development. Therefore, the integration of EIA, SEA and sustainability objectives is crucial. Based on review and analysis of the rationale, approaches and problems associated with the integration of them, the problems of and prospects for using EIA and SEA to implement sustainable development in China are analyzed and explored.