“Regulatory Support and Strategic Environmental Assessment for Policy Documents by Municipalities (Local Self-Government Bodies)” was the topic of the event organised by the U-LEAD with Europe Programme.
The event aimed to present to municipal officials the Ukrainian legislation regulating the process of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of state policy documents (SPD) by customers and the preparation of the SEA report, as well as the practical aspects of their implementation.
Volodymyr Boiko, Strategic Environmental Assessment Expert at U-LEAD, explained what the SPD SEA is and why they need it.
According to him, for municipalities, SEA is a tool for implementing local environmental policy, which enables them to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the possible environmental impact of planned activities and to prevent and mitigate any possible negative environmental effects. Furthermore, this is part of the obligations of Ukraine as a candidate state for the EU and, therefore, a necessary component for participation in significant projects, including EU pre-accession funds.
“A principled donor responds to whether the SEA procedure was in place, because it describes and evaluates the environmental impact of the implementation of the SPDs, including public health, reasonable alternatives and the development of measures to prevent, mitigate and compensate for possible negative effects. Then the big question is whether the municipality is accounting for this and planning any measures in this direction. Still, no one expects any miracle transformations — in practice, it means showing readiness for proper effort and positive changes.”
Among other things, the expert explained to the participants the steps of the SEA process and handling the Unified Strategic Environmental Assessment Register, sources of information for analysing the environmental conditions in the municipality, as well as typical feedback for the SPDs and SEA reports.
The participating municipalities, together with the expert, also reviewed and analysed typical feedback and guidance provided by the executive authorities during the SEA procedure, including for the contents of a SEA report.
Volodymyr Boiko emphasised that implementation of SEA for SPDs is the duty of local self-government bodies. This is a continuous systemic work that municipalities must learn to do mostly on their own. Reporting is a component of the SEA procedure. While it is a rather complex analytical document, there are currently no specific requirements for its developers. Hence, in practice, it is a component of the human resource capacity of the municipality.
The expert also stressed that municipalities need to clearly follow the exact order and steps to implement SEA and enter all data required by law into the Unified Register of SEA in a timely manner:
“The SEA report is drafted according to the template defined by the law. This is a kind of detailed questionnaire that needs to be answered. The most difficult is the second section, which contains an analysis of the environmental situation in the municipality. The main reason for the difficulties is non-localised data, but the use of open sources largely compensates for their lack. The following answers largely depend on the results of the analysis. In addition to meaningful content, you also have to properly comply with formalities, which quite often becomes the subject of critical feedback by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.”
Here is another important advice from the expert: in order to prepare a high-quality SEA report and minimise the number of comments, monitor the most recent reports in the Strategic Environmental Assessment Register and the latest guidance. This way, you can be one step ahead of potential negative feedback.