Eagle Environmental Reviews

Triggered by the wider needs of the European Directive on strategic environmental assessment, this thoughtful book takes thinking on strategic environmental assessment, “out of the box”, and one step further and includes the quality of decision-making and the integration of environmental values in decision making.

Discussion in the book focuses on “analytical strategic environmental assessment” (ANSEA), which is a new approach to environmental evaluation, based upon decision theory, policy analysis and environmental considerations.

I particularly enjoyed the case study, which looked at the German Federal Transport Infrastructure Planning (FTIP). An ANSEA approach was used and the discussion on procedural criteria in the approach raised a number of important aspects which, when documented, made a great deal of sense. The context of this is that these various criteria are often separated or incomplete. Seeing them altogether, in a structured analytical context, helped to see the value of ANSEA.

The book has three sections: - “ANSEA Theoretical Background”; “The ANSEA Approach”; and “Illustrating the ANSEA Approach in Practice”. The contributing authors spell out their thinking clearly and do not clutter the text with too much academic background material. The book is useful, easy to read and a good addition to the references list of practitioners who use strategic environmental assessment as a day-to-day tool.
Good reference for the practitioner.
AJH