Good Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Practices in Developing Nations : Based on Japan's Support Experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa

The potential usefulness of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (hereinafter referred to as SEA) approach for the decision-making and broad consensus-building process of regional and/or nation-wide development master plan (hereinafter referred to as MP) studies has been recognized in many nations recently. In Africa, SEA practice is at the rudimentary stage, and several nations such as Tanzania and Kenya started to apply this approach around the end of 2000s for the delineation of their longand medium-term development MPs. SEA practice and its legal framework, developed in the European Union (hereinafter referred to as EU) region is the most advanced across the world. However, its direct export/or transfer to developing regions such as Africa is not straightforward due to the complicated socio-cultural backgrounds and differences (e.g., diverse, multi-ethnoracial, and multi-linguistic societies) among these regions. In Japan, several pilot study-based SEA practices have been initiated mainly by the Ministry of Environment recently. Under this situation, it is notable that Japan International Co-operation Agency (hereinafter referred to as JICA)’s environmental guidelines, used for the implementation of proper environmental and social considerations for Japan’s Official Development Assistance (hereinafter referred to as ODA) projects, incorporated SEA concepts therein, and started its actual application after the year 2010. The number of SEA practices within Japan’s ODA is increasing, but there are no consolidated SEA procedures owing to the diverse political and social backgrounds of each ODA recipient nation concerned, and a SEA approach, suitable for Japan’s ODA projects in developing nations, is still under consideration. Based on the review of the recent legalization process of SEA in several African nations and the latest SEA practices conducted therein, issues to be addressed for better future SEA practice are summarized, and then, fundamental directions for possible ways of Japan’s interaction and/or support to achieve more practical and efficient SEA practices in developing nations through Japan’s ODA projects are summarized.