A review of strategic environmental assessment in 12 selected countries

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is acknowledged to be an important decision support tool. The increased application of its principles in countries worldwide, the introduction of SEA procedures in planning and decision-making processes of international aid and cooperation organisations, as well as the recent endorsement of two relevant legal documents in the international arena only serve to emphasise the acclaimed significance of the process. In light of the scarcity of literature exploring the practical implementation of SEA, this paper attempts to provide a comparative overview of SEA systems in 12 selected countries from their legal, institutional and procedural perspectives in order to unveil potential implementation pitfalls, obstacles and lessons learnt as well as uncertainties and lack of data for future research, replication and customisation elsewhere or refining of existing systems.