Widening the scope: strategic environmental assessment - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 362

12.3 SEA worldwide
Despite these problems, SEA has been increasingly carried out worldwide. For instance,
the USA, European Union Member States and New Zealand have all established SEA
regulations; Canada requires SEA by Cabinet decision; South Africa has guidance on
SEA; and SEAs are regularly carried out in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Here the SEA
systems of the USA, Canada, New Zealand, the EU and UNECE are discussed because
they are well developed and demonstrate a range of possible approaches. They differ in
terms of whether they require or just encourage the preparation of SEAs; the types of
strategic actions that require SEA; whether the SEAs consider only environmental issues
or the full range of sustainability considerations; and the level of detail that they go into.
12.3.1 The USA
The USA has no separate SEA regulations. Instead, the National Environmental Policy
Act of 1969 (NEPA) requires that
all agencies of the Federal Government shall include in every
recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major
Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human
environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on the
environmental impact of the proposed action… [42 usc §4332]
The term “actions” has been interpreted through the courts and through Council on
Environmental Quality regulations (CEQ 1978) as including a range of PPPs. Federal
agencies must prepare “programmatic environmental impact statements” (PEISs) for the
following actions, if these are likely to significantly affect the quality of the human
environment: agency proposals for legislation; the adoption of rules, regulations, treaties,
conventions or formal policy documents; the adoption of formal plans that guide the use
of federal resources; the adoption of groups of connected actions that implement a policy
(40 CFR 1508.18[b]).
Several hundred PEISs have been prepared to date under the NEPA, although these
form only a small percentage of all the assessments carried out in the USA, For instance,
PEISs carried out in 2003/4 include statements for mountaintop mining and valley fills in
Appalachia (Army Corps of Engineers and others), licensing launches of horizontally
launched vehicles and re-entry vehicles (Federal Aviation Administration), and carbon
sequestration (DoEn).
The main problem with the USA's system of SEA seems to be its basis in EIA, and
the detailed—arguably severely over-detailed—approach it fosters:
Unfortunately, NEPA's role as a strategic planning tool has not been fully
realized… Congress envisioned that federal agencies would use NEPA as
a planning tool to integrate environmental, social, and economic concerns
directly into projects and programs. However…application has focused on