Strategic environmental assessments (SEA) in the Swedish Armed Forces planning and decision processes

According to directions from the Swedish Ministry of Defence, the Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) shall report progress with regards to its work with implementing Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) in planning and decision making processes. SwAF has commissioned the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) to conduct a study with the aim to develop a proposal for a customized SEA approach with complementing tools. The work has included establishment of project organisation, method development and testing of the model in two 'pilot processes' within SwAF. The project has also conducted a number of interviews with relevant stakeholders within SwAF. The proposed SEA model focuses on six main areas which are considered to capture some of the core issues of a strategic nature for SwAF: a) Impact on SwAF environmental policy, priority areas in the defence sector, thematic priorities, environmental legislation and other applicable regulations, b) environmental issues that affect the security situation c) environmental impact affecting personnel and the general population, d) environmental effects that impact confidence in SwAF and Sweden; e) Resource use from a life cycle perspective, and; f) Protection against financial responsibility/liability claims. The SEA checklist is supported by four additional checklists regarding a) the 16 national environmental objectives, b) SwAF own environmental priority targets c) a modification of the British Ministry of Defence's checklist for strategic environmental assessments and d) tentative assessment criteria for 'high' and 'low' environmental impact. The SEA model has been tested against two defence processes, and is assessed as being able to capture most of the strategic issues that emerged in the interviews and reported experience. The proposed model represents an initial needs assessment (i.e. SEA screening) and is adapted to a time-critical process, where an assessment needs to be carried out within a matter of hours or days. If necessary, the SEA screening can be followed by a detailed SMB survey. Areas in need of further development include answering the following questions: a) How to secure environmental expertise in the assessments? b) Is there a need for adapted training and/ or particular environmental support in the assessments? c) How can it be secured that SEA screening will be carried out in practice? d) Is there a need for priorities for the decisions / processes where SEA screening should be implemented? Furthermore, a definition of indicators and impact levels need to be defined. The report presents some recommendations in order to enable effective implementation of SEAs in SwAF planning and decision making processes, namely to:  Initiate a work to ensure responsibilities, command structure and assessments of the SEA process, where SwAF environmental functions at the HQ level routinely is involved.  Perform complementary SEA screenings on relevant processes related to equipment and procurement, after which the SEA checklist should be reevaluated and amended, if necessary.  Ensure simple and quick access to already existing environmental information in SwAF including point of contacts to facilitate time-critical SEA assessments.  Promote efforts to enhance strategic environmental approaches through collaboration with EU, NATO and the UN, including that environmental expertise from the Swedish defence sector can be used to fill relevant positions in EU and the UN.  Determine criteria for ' high' and 'low' environmental impact. Finally, the Swedish Armed Forces should evaluate how detailed SEA surveys can be performed, when justified