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Since the 1970s, East and Southeast Asia have experienced unprecedented levels of economic growth, exposing the countries in the region to a wide range of development opportunities and challenges. The environmental challenges, including natural resource degradation and deteriorating environmental quality in many cities and regions, threaten people’s health and livelihoods, reduce economic productivity, and compromise sustained economic growth and poverty reduction.
The region's great diversity means that the countries have differing levels of capacity to deal with these challenges. For example, while Singapore and Korea have joined Japan in becoming developed countries, China, Vietnam and Mongolia are transitioning from a command economy to a market-based economy, and, at the same time, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Lao PDR are rebuilding their economies after years of internal and regional conflict.
Remarkable transformations and notable policy reforms are being undertaken in resource and environment-intensive sectors such as water, energy, transport, urban planning, mining and trade in many countries in the region. It is important that these countries build the capacity to assess sustainability and the implications of these policy changes on the environment. Adoption of tools to ensure sustainable development considerations in policy formulation is, therefore, critical.
This report has three objectives:
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to review existing regulations, key components, and applications of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA);
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to assess SEA requirements, including the mandates, applications, initiatives, and relevant existing conditions of SEA; and
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to identify lessons learned and challenges in implementing EIA and SEA in the East Asia and Pacific region.
 Download the Full Report (480kb pdf)
We would appreciate your feedback on the report. Please send comments to Jian Xie at jxie@worldbank.org.
More information:
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)
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