Download Strategic environmental assessment and climate change

School of the Built Environment
Strategic environmental
assessment
and climate change
UNECE 63rd session: Future directions
Geneva, 30 March 2009
Elizabeth Wilson, Oxford Brookes University
[email protected]
Key points
• Climate change requires action on mitigation
(reduction) and adaptation
• But - problems with integrating climate change
mitigation and adaptation
• Strategic environmental assessment an effective
tool: anticipatory, preventive & integrative
• Possible improvements
• Recommendations to UNECE for action
School of the Built Environment
There is no quality in human nature,
which causes more fatal errors in our
conduct, than that which leads us to
prefer whatever is present to the distant
and remote
A Treatise of Human Nature
Part II S. vii
David Hume
Scotland 1739-40
School of the Built Environment
Climate change
• Climate change is happening and will continue
(IPCC 4th Assessment; Stern Review)
• Mitigation (reduction) & adaptation essential
• But – actions are decided in isolation
• Result: conflicts & negative feedback; synergistic
opportunities missed
For example: bio-fuels damage food production; some wind &
hydro-power damages biodiversity; carbon trading outsourcing/off-shoring?
• So - co-ordinate mitigation & adaptation, to promote
synergies & avoid conflicts
School of the Built Environment
Pan-European heat-wave events:
mitigation & adaptation responses
• Heat-wave (canicule) of
summer 2003
• Heat stress impacts
• Planned & autonomous
responses:
Urban greening + +
Mechanical air-conditioning - Urban extensification - +
• Increasing frequency in
future
• Impact on migration….
School of the Built Environment
Strategic integrative environmental
assessment of climate change actions
• Strategic: up-stream; longer horizon, more integrative
• Strategic environmental assessment can systematically
address climate change
- impact of climate change on policy/plan
- impact of policy/plan on climate change
• UNECE has Protocol on Strategic Environmental
Assessment
• Possible improvements to facilitate the integrated
assessment of mitigation and adaptation
School of the Built Environment
Possible improvements 1
• Widen scope of environmental assessment
(eg health, social & eco-system impacts)
• Think strategically – not formulaically
• Use current guidance (eg OECD) creatively
• Systematically assess interactions
(eg through consistency analysis)
• Use foresight and scenarios:
extend time-horizons
do not assume business-as-usual
School of the Built Environment
Possible improvements 2
• Overcome disciplinary silos
(mitigation tends to be technocratic & target-driven;
adaptation more community-based)
• Integrate across scales (mitigation tends to be global
& national-scale, adaptation more local & community)
• Seek synergistic opportunities and avoid loselose options
• Recognise political reality:
hard to acknowledge the need to adapt, given
the efforts in negotiations for mitigation
School of the Built Environment
Recommendations to UNECE:
principles and practice
• UNECE to develop role as lead agency for
integration of mitigation & adaptation
• Use and develop current tools (such as
Strategic Environmental Assessment) with
foresight, integration of scales and disciplines,
and a broadened horizon
• States should ratify & implement UNECE
Protocol on Strategic Environmental
Assessment
School of the Built Environment