The UK's Draft Guidance for Health in SEA in light of HIA community priorities and the UNECE SEA Protocol

Journal Article · Fri Apr 15 04:00:00 EDT 2011 · Environmental Impact Assessment Review

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2011.01.002· OSTI ID:21499688

The Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Espoo Convention came into force on 11 July 2010. This Protocol, to which the European Union is party, gives a legal basis for enhanced attention to human health in the SEA process. In this context, the United Kingdom's (UK's) 2007 Draft Guidance on Health in Strategic Environmental Assessment represents an important early government-led effort to bring health issues and public health considerations more significantly into the SEA process. Since the UK is a worldwide leader in environmental and various other types of impact assessment, and since other countries may eventually consider its example in efforts to meet UNECE SEA Protocol requirements, scrutiny of its outputs is warranted. This paper thus examines the UK's Draft Guidance from both HIA academic and practitioner perspectives. First it assesses the extent to which the Draft Guidance reflects recent issues and lessons learned in the academic literature. In order to make the assessment, a meta-analysis of 70 HIA-related peer-reviewed articles was undertaken to extract authors' priority recommendations. These recommendations were subsequently compared with the contents of the Draft Guidance. Secondly, the Draft Guidance was assessed for its accordance with recommendations of the UNECE SEA Protocol background paper written by two HIA practitioners. Overall, the Draft Guidance's accordance with both sets of recommendations was found to be high, with only a few easily-remedied gaps. This evaluation suggests that the UK's Draft Guidance can be a useful starting point in the creation of future guidance on health in SEA in both the UK and other countries.

• OSTI ID: 21499688
• Journal Information: Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Journal Name: Environmental Impact Assessment Review Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 31; ISSN 0195-9255; ISSN EIARDK
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AGREEMENTS
COMMUNITIES
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
DOCUMENT TYPES
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY
EUROPE
EUROPEAN UNION
EVALUATION
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
LEGAL ASPECTS
PUBLIC HEALTH
RECOMMENDATIONS
UNITED KINGDOM
UNITED NATIONS
WESTERN EUROPE