The Philippines In the Philippines, a group consisting of 40 local and national NGOs, government agencies and researchers joined in the first SRJS workshop to look at the elements of a good practice SEA system for their country. They concluded that the next steps should focus on improving the SEA regulation, raising awareness of its importance for The Philippines and starting learning by actually doing SEA. An immediate result of the introductory workshop is that government agencies in Zamboanga del Norte province have decided to carry out an SEA for joint land use planning in District 1 of this province. To launch this SEA a joint workshop for government and NGO stakeholders was facilitated by the NCEA. In this conflict-sensitive area of the country, it was inspiring and encouraging to see how these stakeholders collaborated to solve puzzles and start a joint SEA process. SRJS will now assist these actors to carry out the SEA; the NCEA will act as a coach. Mr. Noy Panorel of PARTS (Philippinian NGO): ‘The NCEA’s SEA support has a unique place in the Philippines, in the heart of environmental planning and decision making processes over land use, where alternative development options must be designed and decided upon in a participatory way’. Madagascar IUCN-NL is collaborating with several local partners in Madagascar on the sustainable management of the Ampasindava peninsula. Could SEA – an approach not yet widely applied in the country - be a good means of achieving that? The NCEA facilitated an introductory workshop on SEA for the local stakeholders, including government, NGOs, local tourism operators and a mining company. Cas Besselink: “Madagascar is a good example of what we envision with SRJS and SEA. Government, CSOs and even the mining corporation joined the table. Discussions started out by being pretty emotional, but everyone hung on and after three days a more objective debate was being held on possible future steps. The first demonstration of the added value of an SEA approach in practice?” The SRJS partners in Madagascar and the Environment agency ONE are together exploring the application of SEA for the municipal and regional land use plans to be developed for the Ampasindava peninsula. They are also studying the lessons learnt so far and how these can be translated into a better SEA regulatory set-up in the country. 43
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