Environmental Protection Department

Environmental Protection Department Ref. SA 06-009 Review on the Latest Practice in Environmental Evaluation and Strategic Environmental Assessment on Transportation Policies and Actions Final Reference Document January 2007

edms

Review on the Latest Practice

in Environmental Evaluation and

Strategic Environmental Assessment on

Transportation Policies and Actions

(2007)

Final Reference Document

This Reference Document is prepared to review the current practice in Environmental Evaluation and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) on Transportation Policies and Actions by EDMS (Hong Kong) Ltd commissioned by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) in June 2006. EDMS (Hong Kong) Limited is responsible and accountable for the content of this report.

Key Objectives

The main objectives of this study is to review the latest international practice on environmental evaluation and SEA on transportation policies and actions, including actual examples, in countries and development co-operations as follows. Environmental evaluation and the SEA process to be reviewed shall include both the statutory and the non-statutory systems, as well as both the evaluation tools and the overall process. Countries to be reviewed shall include Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Mainland China, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and UK), USA, Japan, Macau SAR, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Portugal, Pakistan, and South Africa. The review shall also include the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, United Nations Development Programme, and United Nations Environmental Programme. Examples of the environmental evaluation/SEA on transportation policies and actions have been given to show how the environmental evaluation/SEA process and evaluation tools are applied and the outcome of the application in the country;

Background

SEA is a systematic process for evaluating strategic environmental implications of proposed policies, plans and programmes that is widely adopted in many countries as a tool to facilitate early integration of environmental considerations during decision-making processes, prompting the achievement of sustainable developments.

Hong Kong has a statutory system to carry out SEA for certain landuse plans under the EIA Ordinance (EIAO), as well as an administrative system for conducting SEA for other major proposals. In particular, Section 3 of the EIAO requires EIA for 2 types of engineering feasibility studies:

1. 
   urban development projects with a study area covering more than 20 ha or involving population more than 100,000
   
2. 
   redevelopment projects with a study area covering more than 100,000 existing/new population
   

In Hong Kong, transportation policies and actions is one of the three main categories of environmental evaluation/SEA. It aims to facilitate the formulation of a “win-win” policy or action which can best meet the transport (social) and environmental needs together with financial/economic requirements. Examples like Third Comprehensive Transport Study (CTS3) and Second Railway Development Study (RDS2) are among examples of SEA of transportation strategies and projects.

With over 15 years of experience in implementing strategic environmental assessment (SEA), it is time for reviewing the latest international practices in SEA and examining how Hong Kong can conduct SEA on transportation policies and actions in a comprehensive and effective manner, by taking into account of the experiences from other countries. While sometimes the term “SEA” is not used in some countries or for some cases, transportation policies or actions is still subjected to other environmental evaluation processes serving similar purpose. Therefore, either the environmental evaluation or SEA process should be reviewed.

Analysis and Conclusion

This Reference Document covered countries located in Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Africa and Development Co-operations. It is found that most of the European countries, e.g. United Kingdom and Finland, have been transposed the EU Directive 2001/42/EC (or named SEA Directive) into its own legislation. General SEA guideline (e.g. Finland) or specific guidance for transport sector (e.g. United Kingdom) have been published for instructing responsible parties on how to conduct SEA before making decision on policy, plan or programme. Table 1 has summarized the information on transport sector in those studied countries and development co-operations, including SEA legislation status, overall process and so on. Detailed information can be referred to the Appendix Document submitted to EPD, including summary description (with process flow chart(s), government regulations, guidelines and circulars and so on) on the latest practice in Environmental Evaluation and SEA on Transportation Policies and Actions in the country, together with a summary table and diagram for examples found in that country, separately together with this Document.

Examples from 5 countries / development co-operations, namely Mainland China, United Kingdom (England), United States of America (USA), Australia and World Bank, have also been extracted as illustration purpose. For each example, a summary table and a diagram describe information of the studied assessment. The table describes the general information of the study, the process type, concerns in the evaluation, process description, requirement mechanism and the outcome of SEA. The corresponding diagram describes environmental impacts considered in the SEA, the corresponding pros and cons results caused after the assessment and the possible designated projects or alternatives preferred.
Besides, it is found that the Department of Transport in the two North American countries, USA and Canada, have established a clear and explicit system for SEA in the transport sector. Clear and detailed guidelines could be obtained. In Asia Pacific, some countries are found to have developed some SEA-like assessment requirement. For instances, the local Act, Resources Management Act, is treated as the SEA legislation in New Zealand. In the meantime, in Korea, a SEA-like system called Prior Environmental Review System (PERS) is used to monitor the environmental concerns for parties in the early stages of planning. Some countries are still in formative stage administratively (e.g. Pakistan and South Africa).
Generally speaking, a typical SEA in transport sector should be conducted with the following steps:

1. 
   Screening
   
2. 
   Scoping
   
3. 
   Environmental Report
   
4. 
   Monitoring
   

In between every step, public consultation is recommended to perform in order to acquire an all-rounded proposal for any policy, plan or programme.

As mentioned, transportation policies and actions is one of the key areas in SEA, which is one of the three main categories of environmental evaluation/SEA in Hong Kong. However, it is still under administratively procedure.
With the experience obtained from other countries and Development Co-operations, a detailed periodic transport plan could be prepared by the local Transport Department, in cooperation with local Environmental Department in order to have a considerable transport plan in the environmental view.
To adopt the international practice in Hong Kong, SEA could be mandatorily applied for planning the future development (e.g. building a new corridor for railway) or re-organization on transport (e.g. re-distribution of public transport route), which may have high relationship with the future land use planning. The plan should be review regularly during executing.
Besides, to have a clearer picture and to smooth the whole process, a specific guidance could be published for guiding the responsible person on what to consider and how to conduct the environmental impacts during decision making on any policy, plan or programme for transportation policies and actions.
Public consultation is widely adopted as a procedure to collect the comment for the proposed policy, plan and programme in those studied countries. Public comments would be collected by means of internet, surveys, seminar and individual workshop. Especially in United Kingdom, an individual report would be prepared to summarise and analyse those collected comment. Furthermore, in most of European countries, “Do-nothing” option would be one of the alternatives in the SEA for the proposed plan and programme to present the existing environment situation to let the public and decision maker to understand the whole picture of the proposed plan and programme.