Introduction
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) evaluates the environmental impact of policies, plans and programs (or strategic proposals/decisions). The objective of SEA is to mainstream the environmental consideration at the earlier phase of decision making and improved governance through reducing administrative burden via avoiding project level EIA and duplication along the ministries (Fischer 2007; Therivel 2010; Fundingsland Tetlow and Hanusch 2012).
Australia has more than 30 years of expeirnce of evaluating PPPs (policies, plans and programs) under different legislative mechanisms. In May 1992 the Australian Commonwealth, all States (6) and Territories (2) and Australian Local Government Association, signed the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (IGAE). The signatories agreed that ‘environmental issues associated with a proposed project, program or policy will be taken into consideration in the decision making process’. Clearly, the IGAE enveloped the principle of SEA (Kelly et al. 2012). Following this after an extensive review of Environment Protection (Impact of Proposal) Act 1974, in 1999 Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act came into force. This Act formally introduced SEA in Australian legislative context. Before this SEA was informally applied to propsals nationally and regionally but no mandatory or formal bindings (Marsden 2013b). Section 146 of EPBC Act introduced the discretionary provison of SEA in all sectors excepts for fishery which has been made mandatory by Section 147 (Ashe and Marsden 2011).
Extent to which SEA became a Central Component of Decision Making
The voluntary nature of Section 146 resulted poor take-up of SEA by the proponents through producing ...
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The Great Barrier Reef Management Authority identified in an outlook plan for the reef that climate change is the long term threat that will destroy the reef. The Australian Government and Queensland officials have formally agreed to undertake an assessment on the Great Barrier Reef and the routes taken in order to maintain the reef’s beauty. A public group has been set up, allowing for people to have their say in how to protect the reef. There is a Long-Term Sustainability Plan for the Great Barrier Reef being undertaken by Australian and Queensland officials. This plan involves both costal officials and those of the general public that want to get involved. Officials have taken in all the comments from the general public and are expected to come up with a shot and long term plan into order to sustain the Great Barrier Reef.
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When it comes to environmental issues there are many value perspectives and different opinions on how the issues should be resolved. These perspectives that author Judith Lazyer describes her book “The Environmental Case” includes Promethean, conservationist, preservationist, and ecological perspectives. In our class we connected topics we learned in our Environmental Policy class to the books such as “Flight Behavior” and Ecotopia in our English Reality and Utopia class. A connection I found between these books and the policies we learned about in POLS 336 was that all our books included the Promethean and Ecological perspectives when it came to environmental issues. These perspectives were also included in the case studies we read in “The
Wright, R. T., & Boorse, D. F. (2011). Environmental science: Toward a sustainable future (11th ed., pp. 349-369). Boston: Benjamin Cummings.
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1989 United Nations moratorium on high seas large-scale driftnets is passed. 1990 Greenpeace Australia's Clean Waters campaign exposes coastal water pollution.
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Glazewski, J.A. 2005. Environmental law in South Africa. 2nd ed. Cape Town: Butterworth publishing. 665 p.
The Aral Sea and the entire Aral Sea basin area have achieved worldwide notoriety due to the environmental disaster. The example of the Aral Sea disaster has sent a signal to the entire international community demonstrating how fast and irrevocable the environmental system can be ruined if there is no long-term thinking and planning in place. This paper gives a broad overview of the policies that have resulted in dying of the forth-largest inland body of water. It concentrates on the policies and approaches of the international organizations towards the problem, describes examples of the projects and presents a conclusion on effectiveness of such policies.