Sustainability Appraisal of the Yunnan Sustainable Development Action Plan YSDAP

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• Sustainability Appraisal of the Yunnan
  Sustainable Development Action Plan (YSDAP)

Dr Jeremy Richardson Dr Steve Smith Yunnan
Environmental Development Programme (YEDP)
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Sustainability Appraisal - Looking for Good

• SA identifies and evaluates the economic, social
  and environmental implications of an action the
  three dimensions of sustainable development
• Proactive - generally applied to plans and
  policies (also often applied to projects)
• Influences the plan/policy preparation process
• Builds on EIA which has traditionally focussed on
  the final decision (i.e. do no or minimise harm)

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Sustainability Appraisal

• Moves away from a sectoral approach to plan and
  policy making, and Instead
• Identifies opportunities for integration between
  economic, social and environmental objectives as
  well as instances when trade-offs between
  objectives may be necessary
• Sustainability Appraisal (SA) is a fast emerging
  area of interest in public sector decision-making
• Increasing number of governments and
  inter-governmental organisations developing and
  experimenting with various approaches to SA with
  the aim of improving decision-making and
  promoting sustainable development

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YEDP

• Provincial Government Project with DFID support
• aims to achieve three key outputs
• Output 1 A strengthened Yunnan Sustainable
  Development Action Plan (YSDAP)
• Output 2 Development of an Integrated Strategy
  to address environment-poverty linkages and
  assist YPG in adopting participatory and
  gender-sensitive approaches to development and
• Output 3 Implementation of three pilot projects
  to demonstrate sustainable approaches to
  environment-poverty challenges

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SA Process In Yunnan
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SA of YSDAP(YPG statutory process)
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SA of YSDAP

• SA of 1st draft undertaken in stakeholder workshop

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SA Results

• Observations
• Predominantly positive impacts (SD Action Plan)
• Some uncertainty of impacts and too large a
  number of no impact score
• SA needs to be more critical
• YSDAP needs to acknowledge potential conflicts
  between objectives
• Conflicts need to be mitigated
• Some objectives need to be changed (resource use
  and conservation)
• Missing areas Climate change, gender,
  minorities
• More emphasis on social development
• Fewer more focussed and concrete actions

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Promoting SA in Yunnan

• YEDP drafting guidance on applying SA to YPG
  policies and plans
• Guidance incorporates the requirements of the EIA
  Law and draft SEPA Technical Guidelines for plan
  EIA
• SA could help fulfil the need for Category 1
  plans to include explanation on the
  environmental impact in the plan
• Most SEA systems address economic and social
  issues to some degree

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Promoting SA in Yunnan

• Issues to consider in developing guidance
• UK has adopted an objectives led approach to SEA
  / SA
• UK has incorporated SEA requirements into SA
  process
• Where is the boundary between plan EIA and
  project EIA?
• How much baseline information is required for
  plan EIA?
• Defining the no action alternative?
• Applying the scientific concept of development
  to SA impact scoring
• Scaling up representative participation to the
  strategic level

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• http//www.yedp.org
• Dr Jeremy Richardson
• Programme Management Office
• YEDP
• 27 Xi Yuan Nan Lu
• Kunming
• 650032
• P.R. China
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• Email Jeremy.Richardson_at_scottwilson.com
• Tel [phone]
• Fax [phone]