The assessment of the environmental effects in the Strategic Environmental Assessment process: a methodological approach

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a well-established procedure to support Decision Makers (DMs) in considering and evaluating the effects of Policies, Plans, and Programs (PPPs) on the environment, along with social and economic considerations, providing a valid basis for informed decision making. The integration of sustainability issues into decision-making processes can be provided in several ways: offering a framework to support DMs in their choice, studying and analyzing alternatives, identifying sustainability objectives, and integrating sustainability criteria in PPPs. In light of such needs, this paper aims to present an innovative methodological approach to guide the assessment phase of environmental effects in the SEA procedure. The proposed methodology consists in seeking a strong and clearly understandable connection between the environmental sustainability objectives deriving from policies at international level, and the specific environmental sustainability objectives of a Plan, which is propaedeutic to the evaluation of the environmental effects of the Plan itself. Moreover, this approach allows to keep the analysis at the strategic level, which is the one required in SEA. The contextualization of the general objectives of environmental sustainability with respect to the environmental aspects affected by the Plan itself and to the characteristics of the reference territory allows the requirement of strategic relevance to be fully met, integrating policy directions that in some contexts, such as the European one, are not subject to the SEA procedure.