Jingjing Gao

The politics of strategic environmental assessment indicators: weak recognition found in Chinese guidelines

? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at vbn@aub.aau.dk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.The choice and use of indicators is not only technical and science-led, but also a value-laden social process, and thus concerns public participation and political judgement. This article approaches the Chinese strategic environmental assessment (SEA) indicator system from a science–policy interface perspective and aims to: (1) contribute to the general recognition of indicators functioning in SEA; and (2) analyse, through a Chinese case study, to what extent national guidelines address this science–policy interaction. The overall finding is a strong emphasis on technical/science aspects in the Chinese SEA guidance, and a weak explicit recognition that policy plays a role in choosing and using indicators. Recent development, however, indicates a growing recognition of the politics involved and thus also leads to greater involvement of stakeholders.

Application of the WEAP model in strategic environmental assessment: Experiences from a case study in an arid/semi-arid area in China

This article investigated how the use of a water resources assessment model contributed to one of the first strategic environmental assessments (SEA) conducted for arid/semi-arid regions in China. The study was based on the SEA of a coal industry development plan in Ordos, an arid/semi-arid region of northwest China, where a temporally and spatially simplified version of the WEAP (Water Evaluation And Planning System) model was applied for assessing the impact of the planned activities on local water resource system. Four scenarios were developed to simulate various alternatives using a diverse range of water utilisation measures such as irrigation efficiency, treatment and the reuse of water. The WEAP model itself was found to be a useful tool for efficient water resources assessment in SEA: 1) WEAP provides built-in simulation modules for water assessment, which improve the SEAs efficiency significantly; 2) WEAP temporally has the flexibility in both delivering information on a reasonably aggregated level by evaluating water resource on an annual time step, which fits most SEA cases, and being possible to take a finer time step analysis monthly, weekly even daily; 3) Spatially, WEAP has advantage in dealing with distributed demand sites in large spatial scale. However, although WEAP appears as a useful tool in providing support for decision-making, in this SEA case we experienced difficulty in building a feasible scenario to mitigate the impact of the proposed activities on the local water system, so that solution had to be found outside of the assessed scenarios - which led to the discussion on the fact that the proposed activities in SEA cases are rarely regarded as an uncertainty. Therefore future research on the scope of SEA scenarios could be valuable.

The politics of SEA indicators: Weak recognition found in Chinese guidelines

? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at vbn@aub.aau.dk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.The choice and use of indicators is not only technical and science-led, but also a value-laden social process, and thus concerns public participation and political judgement. This article approaches the Chinese strategic environmental assessment (SEA) indicator system from a science–policy interface perspective and aims to: (1) contribute to the general recognition of indicators functioning in SEA; and (2) analyse, through a Chinese case study, to what extent national guidelines address this science–policy interaction. The overall finding is a strong emphasis on technical/science aspects in the Chinese SEA guidance, and a weak explicit recognition that policy plays a role in choosing and using indicators. Recent development, however, indicates a growing recognition of the politics involved and thus also leads to greater involvement of stakeholders.

The politics of SEA indicators

? Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at vbn@aub.aau.dk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.The choice and use of indicators is not only technical and science-led, but also a value-laden social process, and thus concerns public participation and political judgement. This article approaches the Chinese strategic environmental assessment (SEA) indicator system from a science–policy interface perspective and aims to: (1) contribute to the general recognition of indicators functioning in SEA; and (2) analyse, through a Chinese case study, to what extent national guidelines address this science–policy interaction. The overall finding is a strong emphasis on technical/science aspects in the Chinese SEA guidance, and a weak explicit recognition that policy plays a role in choosing and using indicators. Recent development, however, indicates a growing recognition of the politics involved and thus also leads to greater involvement of stakeholders.