Abstract

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) needs to develop its own theoretical ground and its related concepts to be able to address the challenges of environmentally improving complex strategic decisions such as policies, plans and programmes (PPP). According to its conceptual specificity, SEA requires an autonomous methodology. Its main feature is that it must be able to dialogue with the decision-making process to ensure the decision related environmental values are duly taken into account. This paper proposes two linked concepts that could help to set up an autonomous conceptual ground for the SEA: The concept of consistency requirements of decisions and the concept of decision related environmental values. In addition, SEA needs to identify the specific environmental dimension of strategic decisions. The concept of environmental impact describes perfectly the environmental dimension of projects. This paper proposes the concept of the sectorial environmental system as the genuine representation of the strategic environmental dimension of strategic decisions and therefore as the key target for SEA activities.