Current trends and conditions for institutionalizing the SEA in local governments: Analysis of panel surveys in 2002 and 2006

Although it is expected that Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a vital tool for the sustainable society establishment, institutionalizing the SEA is not easy. However, some of the local governments of Japan seem to be newly making progress for instituting the SEA system. It is essential to grasp the real activities and develop the conditions for the institutionalization, in order to obtain the knowledge to institute the SEA system in Japan. Therefore, a questionnaire survey, whose structure is consistent with the preceding survey in 2002, was conducted for all the prefecture governments and ordinance-designated cities in January 2006. Based on the survey, it was found that the number of the locals governments which already institutionalized the SEA increased from 4 to 8 between 2002 and 2006, while it was revealed that respectable numbers of the local governments acted negatively for the SEA system establishment. With regard to the factors for institutionalization among the local governments which already established the system, some changes were observed between 2002 and 2006. Specifically; 'opinions from experts' was strongly attributed to one of the major factors in 2006, while 'media' corresponded to it in 2002. The fact that issues at introduction of the system such as 'insufficiency of people' and 'imperfection of evaluation methods' besides 'utilizing other currently available systems' were identified as factors against the institutionalization among the local governments whose attitudes were negative for the institutionalization suggests that institutionalization of the SEA has been gradually a more realistic subject. Moreover, regarding methods for evaluating alternatives, which is the core of the SEA, the fact that considering the environmental aspect with economic and social aspects was adopted among some of the local governments which already institutionalized the SEA was observed, while it was generally attributed to being 'difficult to adopt'. According to the analysis of the system prescription from the aspect of easiness of realization, although the items attributed to being difficult to adjust resulted in the same conclusion between 2002 and 2006, regarding the items which is 'possible to adopt', progress of realization was suggested by the fact that 'submission of opinions' and 'holding a meeting for explanation' were newly added to the items identified in 2002.