A methodological proposal to integrate the environmental impact assessment and the strategic environmental assessment in urban planning: The case of the Autonomous Community of Valencia

Abstract

The European Union (EU) promoted some important changes with the Directives to implement the Aarhus Convention and the Strategic Environmental Assessment. Spain developed the Directives with some Acts in 2006 and incorporated the sustainable development principle in land regulation, land planning, land activity, land transformation and land use with Acts in 2007. However, in Spain, for environmental matters, the central laws regulate only a general framework and rules for central plans and programmes. The autonomous communities must approve any complementary laws with a detailed application, especially in urban planning matters. In this moment the Autonomous Community of Valencia (ACV) does not have any special regulation for strategic environmental assessment of urban planning, but, at the same time, the ACV publishes some acts for urban planning and approves guidelines concerning sustainability, citizens' quality of life and land planning. It is obliged to apply these guidelines to urban planning. The new proceedings and documents that these new Laws require one to elaborate the Urban Plan are not foreseen in ACV legislation. All these matters generate a situation of juridical insecurity. Anyway the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) have a special methodological relation. Paradoxically, urban plans in the ACV have been subject to EIA since 1999. There is therefore, a great experience on this matter with a type of environmental impact evaluation that, in fact, is a kind of SEA. Nevertheless, a parallel process is taking place so as it concerns two completely different processes. That means that urban plans are subject to EIA and to SEA, but, in fact, there is a great confusion on the implementation of different instruments and proceedings with very similar objectives. This paper analyzes the actual situation and proposes a methodological process for strategic environmental assessment in urban planning integrated with an environmental impact assessment. © 2011 WIT Press.