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

ebwilson@brookes.a.uk

School of the Built Environment

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 NaturePart 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 missedFor example: bio-fuels damage food production; some wind & hydro-power damages biodiversity; carbon trading out-sourcing/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 lose-lose 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