Researchers at EEU and EfD Kenya have played a key role in the evaluation of the World Bank pilot program on institutions and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in policy and sector reform.
Daniel Slunge and Anders Ekbom, at the Environmental Economics Unit, University of Gothenburg, led the development of the methodology for the overall evaluation and co-authored the final report. Together with Kenyan EfD research fellows Paul Guthiga and Wifred Nyangena, they also evaluated the SEA of Forest Sector Reform in Kenya.
The book “Strategic Environmental Assessment in Policy and Sector Reform – Conceptual Model and Operational Guidance” is the final report from the World Bank's SEA pilot program. It presents the findings and recommendations of the evaluation of the Pilot Program which comprised six SEA pilots on sector reforms in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone, West Africa, Bangladesh and China. Apart from enhancing environmental integration in the pilot cases the pilot program has influenced the new World Bank Environment Strategy and World Bank approaches to environmental integration in sector reforms.
The book shows that sector reforms often are inherently political processes driven by strong economic interests. In such a context traditional technically oriented environmental assessments focusing on estimating impacts are often of little relevance. The book strongly argues that effective environmental assessment in policy and sector reform should focus on analyzing and strengthening the institutions and governance frameworks for managing key environmental priorities. In particular SEA should strive to strengthen constituencies that can demand improved environmental governance and a system to hold policy makers accountable for their decisions.
"As an environmental economist the evaluation of the pilot program has deepened my understanding of the complex political economy associated with policy reforms which can pose important obstacles to the implementation of different policy instruments", says Daniel Slunge at EEU who was one of the evaluators of the pilot program:
"We have seen that SEA can be an important approach to create attention and dialogue around key environmental problems linked to policy reforms and in that way provide a lever for the implementation of different policy instruments. It is also clear that strengthening institutions for environmental management is a long term process, so the expectations on a specific SEA should be modest."
The book which was launched by the World Bank on October 17, 2010, is the result of collaboration between the World Bank, the Environmental Economics Unit at the University of Gothenburg, the Swedish EIA Centre at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment. Fernando Loayza, senior Economist at the World Bank Environment Department has been the Team Leader for the pilot program which has been partly funded by Sida.
Daniel Slunge and Anders Ekbom, at the Environmental Economics Unit, University of Gothenburg, led the development of the conceptual model and the methodology for the overall evaluation, and contributed actively to synthesizing the findings from the six different evaluations.
SEA evaluations in Kenya and Malawi
Together with Kenyan EfD research fellows Paul Guthiga and Wifred Nyangena, they also evaluated the SEA of Forest Sector Reform in Kenya, in early 2010. In total more than 60 people were consulted during the evaluation, representing government, private sector, civil society, community based organizations, research organizations, development agencies and the team that conducted the SEA.
"Our evaluation shows that the SEA of the Kenya Forests Act was influential in several ways," says Anders Ekbom at EEU:
"It consolidated and spread knowledge about the Forests Act and its intentions knowledge that had been scattered across agencies, ministries, and other key stakeholders; and it created a lever for civil society advocacy to implement the Forests Act. However, given that forest sector reform in Kenya is highly politicized and involves entrenched vested interests at high political levels it would have been vital for the SEA to foster a more sustained change process through ownership, resources, follow-up, and other means. Many stakeholders stated that the SEA became a too punctuated intervention to realize its potential."
The SEA of mining sector reform in Malawi was evaluated by Slunge and Ekbom, who made interviews with the Minister of Energy and Mines, other key decision makers, civil society and mining industry.
"Malawi is not a traditional mining country, but the first large-scale mining development in the country, the Kayelekere uranium mine, had ignited a confrontational dialogue about social and environmental risks associated with uranium mining between civil society organizations, government, and the mining company,"says Daniel Slunge.
"Our evaluation shows that the efforts to collect and share information on key environmental and social concerns in the SEA played a small but important role in strengthening constituencies and improving accountability. However, the institutional framework for managing the environmental impacts of large scale mining development in Malawi is extremely weak. The SEA drew attention to the urgency in strengthening these institutions."
The World Bank book acknowledges the need for tailoring SEA to the context of specific sectors and countries, it discusses in detail and illustrates with examples the analytical work and participatory processes required for effective SEA at the policy level. It highlights the need for country ownership for effective SEA at the policy level and suggests that the time is ripe for establishing an international alliance of donors and partner countries for further promoting SEA and environmental and social mainstreaming at the highest strategic level.
About Strategic Environmental Assessment
According to OECD/DAC Strategic Environmental Assessment refers to a range of "analytical and participatory approaches that aim to integrate environmental considerations into policies, plans and programmes and evaluate the inter-linkages with economic and social considerations." SEA has become an important instrument to help to achieve sustainable development in public planning and policy making.
For more information about the World Bank Pilot Program, please contact Fernando Loayza, Senior Economist at the World Bank Environment Department: floayza@worldbank.org
For more information on SEA see:
- OECD/DAC SEA Task Team: www.taskteam.net
- World Bank SEA Tool Kit