دانلود رایگان مقاله حکومت در ارزیابی زیست محیطی استراتژیک: عملیات پرتغالی

ABSTRACT

The analysis of governance in Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) can help understand why, whether and how strategic decision-making happens. Understanding the governance context is strategic to improve the role and capacity of SEA to stimulate, and legitimate decisions that integrate environmental issues and are sustainability driven. The objective of this paper is to discuss why governance is important in SEA. In the SEA literature governance is mostly addressed in silos (i.e. public participation or decisions transparency or accountability) rather than in an integrated way. In addition few authors adopt a strategic view to address the governance context within which SEA is used. In this paper we address the heuristics of governance in SEA based on theoretical and empirical evidence, suggesting how SEA may incorporate the governance dimension. First a review of the SEA literature in relation to governance sets the context to the analysis on how governance is approached in practice, based on 60 Portuguese SEA cases. This is followed by the presentation of an empirical SEA case conducted in Portugal to illustrate what, in our understanding, can be an example of good practice in considering governance in SEA. Final discussion reflects on the role of governance in SEA in promoting engagement, enabling collaborative action, learning processes and dialogues, concluding on the relevance of governance in creating development contexts that can deal with change.

5. Discussion and conclusions

With this paper we intended to share our findings on how governance is approached in SEA using the Portuguese practice as an example that can provide empirical evidence. For that 60 environmental reports were surveyed, and a framework of analysis based on governance elements and criteria was used, as well presented a case that we consider successfully in approaching governance. The use of governance in the case of Sintra allowed to understand the decision-making context, the collection, consideration and incorporation of different perspectives and values in the assessment as well as how the context (governance, social, environmental) may react to future changes. Issues such as participation, uncertainty, complexity, transparency were addressed in the assessment in different ways and produced palpate benefits for both the assessment and the planning processes. Most importantly we wanted to show the role that governance plays in the assessment. The case of Sintra is a real case. It is not theory, and it is not simulation. It has happened. The quest was not without some constraints and limitations many due to the sensitivity of what analyzing and assessing governance implies.