Is SEA worth it? Short-term costs v. long-term benefits of strategic environmental assessment

Is strategic environmental assessment (SEA) worth carrying out? Do its benefits exceed its costs? This paper itemises the costs and benefits associated with SEA, explores the extent that these can be monetised, and discusses whether SEA’s benefits exceed its costs. The costs of SEA are definite, monetisable and short-term, and accrue to planners and developers. They include costs rarely reported in the international literature (e.g. public consultation, legal review). The benefits of SEA include environmental risk avoidance, environmental improvements, smoother project approval, and greater plan transparency: they are longer-term, much harder to monetise, and accrue mostly to the public and to the environment. The main potential benefit of SEA, which can be monetised (albeit with large uncertainties) through ecosystem services approaches, is in the avoidance of environmental harm/risk. These benefits can outweigh the SEA costs by orders of magnitude. However, these benefits are only achieved if the SEA leads to meaningful plan changes. The ratio of costs and benefits is important as countries explore ways of ‘streamlining’ their environmental assessment processes.