Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA)

A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a systematic process for evaluating the environmental implications of a proposed policy, plan or programme and provides means for looking at cumulative effects and appropriately address them at the earliest stage of decision making alongside economic and social considerations.

SEA services support effective and efficient decision-making, ensuring that sustainable development and other environmental considerations have been taken into account in policy, program and business planning. Our specialist teams’ technical capabilities also ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

The SEA assesses the extent to which a given policy, plan or programme:

• provides an adequate response to environmental and climate change–related challenges;
• may adversely affect the environment and climate resilience, and
• offers opportunities to enhance the state of the environment and contribute to climate-resilient and low-carbon development.

Ideally, an SEA should be integrated into the policy, plan or programme preparation process from its early stages and the Government must have a high degree of ownership. Public participation is also essential for a successful SEA.

Compared with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), SEA provides recommendations at a strategic level and allows a better control over interactions or cumulative effects. There is no single approach to SEA, which can take different forms according to the specific needs.

We draw on our expertise across various environmental and sustainability disciplines and combine it with our regulatory know-how in order to deliver a comprehensive approach. Our appraisals are tailored to individual requirements across each sector. We work with clients ranging from local authorities to central government and international organizations to deliver a robust process which genuinely improves the understanding of environmental and sustainability issues at a strategic level.

OCTOPUS has years of experience in working on Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs) for a range of clients, including local planning authorities and the Office of Public Works (OPW). By forming a multi-disciplinary team of experienced ecologists, landscape architects, hydrologists and environmental analysts, we are able to conduct all stages of an SEA, from screening, baseline data collection, scoping, options appraisal and development of alternatives/mitigation to environmental report production, consultation and monitoring. We have experience of both conducting SEAs in their entirety and also working with plan making authorities, advising them on best practice techniques and appropriate methodologies to conduct SEAs in-house.

In conjunction with the SEAs, and also as standalone projects, OCTOPUS’s ecologists are highly experienced in conducting Habitats Regulations Assessments to assess how plans and projects may impact on Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs) Sites. At the screening stage, we use our extensive experience of assessing ecological impacts to determine how plans and projects could potentially affect designated sites of European and international importance. Where likely significant effects are identified, our ecologists are highly competent in devising suitable, and often innovative, avoidance or mitigation strategies to ensure that the integrity of the site is not compromised.