Since 2017, the NCEA has been in a new type of partnership: the Shared Resources, Joint Solutions (SRJS) programme, which is a strategic partnership of IUCN-NL, WWF-NL and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The NCEA is the knowledge partner on environmental assessment. The programme The SRJS programme (2016-2020) focuses on safeguarding ecosystem-based services such as water supply, food security, and climate resilience in 16 low- and lower-middle-income countries across nine regions. IUCN-NL and WWFNL and their CSO partners (Civil Society Organisations) in the countries concerned are working on planning the land use and sustainably managing selected landscapes that provide the ecosystem services essential for the local communities and broader economic development. On their own, however, CSOs cannot secure ecosystem services. To do so they need to enter into dialogue with government and the private sector. To fulfil their potential, SRJS trains and assists CSOs to play their role in integrated landscape management and facilitates multi-stakeholder cooperation. Why environmental assessment? SRJS sees the role of environmental assessment in integrated decision making and implementation of monitoring processes as great potential to the landscape approach. In developing economies, ESIA (Environmental and Social Impact Assessment) is a potentially powerful tool for making fact-based, inclusive, transparent and accountable decisions at project level. The SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) instrument, which brings various stakeholders to”During the formulation of the SRJS programme, we realised that investments in infrastructure would become key in our landscapes. We would not be able to address that through only sector engagement; we needed to work through the formal system too. That’s how we arrived at environmental assessment as an instrument with legal basis”. Bart Geenen, WWF-NL “The name Shared Resources, Joint Solutions not only covers the aim of the programme but also reflects how we see the NCEA. This is what you do through environmental assessment: find joint Lucia Helsloot, WWF-NL solutions.” 39
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