Development of Integrated Framework for Strategic Environmental Assessment Based on the Principles and Theories of Resilience Thinking

Nowadays environmental strategic assessment as a tool for incorporating environmental considerations into the early stages of decision making has attracted the attention of planners. Scholars have attributed characteristics such as attention to the relationship between different layers of decision-making from policy making to implementation, consideration of cultural- political context and organizational structure of development as well as reflection of socio-economic considerations to environmental strategic assessment.

Despite these characteristics, the usual process of strategic environmental assessment does not have the ability to comprehensively assess the effects of cultural, social and ecological contexts. Criteria that do not provide clear results to decision makers are also used to measure the sustainability of development types. For this reason, in this study, the process and structure of the strategic environmental assessment based on the theoretical foundations of the resilience approach has been improved. Based on the resiliency approach, uncertainties and disturbances in socio-ecological systems can be analyzed. It is also incorporated into the evaluation process by reference to the multi-scale concept resiliency approach.

In this study a three-step process for strategic environmental assessment is proposed. Each step is based on the basic concepts of the resiliency approach.

The sum of these characteristics makes environmental assessments possible on the basis of the unpredictable future, the inevitability of change, and the vulnerability of ecological systems.