Value-driven SEA: time for an environmental justice perspective?

This paper argues that we cannot debate SEA procedures in isolation from questions of value, and that these debates should foreground qualities of outcomes rather than become preoccupied with qualities of process. Value differences should not be left as a question of mediation between conflicting positions. As a means of introducing this normative perspective on SEA, the paper explores how theories of environmental justice could provide a useful basis for establishing how to deal with questions of value in SEA, and help in understanding when SEA is successful and when it is not. From this perspective, ‘good’ SEA is more than good process. Good SEA must be able to take into account the distributional consequences of policies, plans, or programmes, with decisions driven by the recognition that certain groups tend to systematically lose out in the distribution of environmental goods and bads. SEA therefore has a role to play in redressing such imbalances.