Strategic Environmental Assessment: Current Status, Practices and Challenges in Bangladesh

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is an appraisal device of policies, plans, and programs and has evolved from an alternative of environmental impact assessment (EIA) to a potential environmental policy integration tool in national policy planning. Bangladesh has likewise rendered SEA in its environmental evaluation framework to consider environmental and social outcomes of policies, plans, and programs(PPPs), but the practice and current situation of SEA in Bangladesh is unknown to all. Considering this crisis the study was carried out to analyze the present status of SEA as well as to find out the constraints for successful SEA implementation in Bangladesh as an approach to integrate environmental considerations in the PPPs. The data were collected through multiple methodological techniques including document review as well as survey by standard questionnaire and key informant interviews (KIIs) with different stakeholders of the various backgrounds of Bangladesh related to policymaking. The study showed that SEA first appeared in Bangladesh in 2006 with the support of the World Bank as a donor agency and the first SEA was done in Bangladesh on the Dhaka metropolitan development plan in 2007. But through the enactment of the National Environmental Policy 2018, SEA gained formal status in the country. Now, This study also revealed that most of the organizations (government and non-government) i.e. 55.77 percent never practice SEA whereas only 15.38 percent of organizations of Bangladesh practice SEA on regular basis, and 28.85 percent of organizations practiced partially for assessing SEA in their proposed PPPs. A diverse list of constraints such as lack of political will, lacking awareness of SEA, inadequate finance, weak enforcement of environmental law, and inadequate knowledge of the implementation of SEA in PPPs were identified. Therefore, awareness building, capacity development, and proper training on SEA in Bangladesh are urgently needed.