About EIA and SEA

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is an aid to decision-making. It is a technique and a process by which information about the environmental impact of a planned project is collected and taken into account by the authorities in forming their judgements on whether a development should go ahead or not. In that sense EIA is a way of thinking ahead, to predict, describe and evaluate the consequences on the environment of a planned action. EIA is also the process in which the knowledge of different actors contributes to the foundation for decision-making.

The systematic process in which the environmental impact of development actions is examined involves a number of steps. These include for example project screening, scoping, consideration of alternatives, description of environmental baseline, identification, prediction and evaluation of impacts, public consultation, mitigating and monitoring of impacts, presentation and documentation, review and decision-making.

Development actions may be for a project, a programme, a plan or a policy. Predicting and evaluating environmental impacts at a more strategic level i.e. for policies, plans and programmes is called Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The need for SEA is due to, among other things, the inability of EIA to consider the cumulative effects caused by several projects. Furthermore, project EIAs cannot fully address alternative developments or mitigation measures because often alternatives are limited by choices made at an earlier more strategic level. If SEA is carried out for policies, plans and programmes that provide a framework for upcoming projects the establishment of project EIAs is enhanced.

In Sweden the EIA legislation departs from the EIA directive 97/11/EC amending Directive 85/337/EEC on the assessment of the effects of certain public and private projects on the environment. The Swedish interpretation of it is however very extensive leading to the performance of many EIA documents each year. In 2004 Sweden implemented the SEA directive 2001/42/EC on the assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment. SEA for plans and programmes is thereby conducted according to the EC directive interpretation of SEA and not according to the wider understanding of the SEA concept.