The state-of-art of the Strategic Environmental Assessment in Brazil

Abstract

Environmental impacts is one of the main issues to be addressed in past decades, and sustainability has become the main focus of authorities when defining alternatives to development processes. One of the main instrument which deals with the prevention of impacts caused by human activities, project-EIA and its derived instruments, has showed to be limited to walk side by side with the evolution of the economic systems, and consequently to set the pace of environmental changes. Therefore there is an increasing investment in Strategic Environmental Assessment to fill the blanks in terms of strategic decisions (that comes from a Policy, a Plan or a Program) and their relations, specially in developing countries - in which the main demand is given by international funding agencies like the World Bank and so on. To be implemented, SEA requires attention to estabilish the adequate limits, concepts and procedures, in order to set the framework that will support the instrument in accordance to the politic and institutional context. The present project intend to define the state-of-art about SEA in Brazil, taking the international expertise as a reference. The project focuses, in a complementary way, on the identification of good practice in SEA. It is believed that an analytical framework which describes the situation of SEA in Brazil in a way that could be compared with other countries would allow the identification of the main aspects that need to be observed to link SEA with the brazilian environmental policy framework. (AU)