GEO Brasil - UNEP

introduction
Each of the Integrated Environmental Management stages
will be discussed briefly below, and the development of
actions will be explained, which aim to put in practice this
environmental management process perspective at federal
government level – specially at the level of the Ministry of
the Environment.
3. Integrated Environmental
Management Planning
The same argument is true for the geographic dimension
issue. It is impossible to consider the use of a determined
territory without pondering the sector activities that will be
developed within (and also out of) its boundaries. Althoug
this separation is convenient to simplify the analysis to be
developed in a SEA process, it brings consistent problems
to the execution of the final results of the proceedings. This
factor must be considered in SEA conclusions.
3.1. Strategic Environmental Assessment
A simple idea of Strategic Environmental Assessment –
SEA – is that it represents a process of environmental
assessment of policies, plans and programmes – PPPs.
Probably, due to the fact that it is a new concept, there are
few definitions that have been attributed to the SEA process.
However, an appropriate definition is used by Sadler and
Verheem (1996):
“SEA is a systematic process to assess the environmental
consequences of policies, plans and programmes, in a way
to ensure that these consequences are included and
appropriately considered in the initial stage of the decisionmaking
process, together with the economic and social
aspects.”
In accordance with the literature on the SEA process and
also with the analysis of the main experiences related to the
practice of this process at national, regional and local levels,
three main types of action may be submitted to a SEA
process:
a) sector PPPs (such as power and transportation);
b) PPPs related to territory use, covering all activities to
be implemented in a determined area and;
c) policies or actions not necessarily implemented
through projects, but that may have significant
environmental impacts (for example, incentive or credit
policy).
The main problem concerning this triple context of the SEA
process application is the integrated nature of these three
types of actions. It is impossible to discuss a sector policy,
plan or programme without relating them to the territory
where they will be implemented or the political and
ideological context in which the policy, the plan and the
programme were designed and approved.
In order to overcome this issue in the context of SEA, the
proposed proceeding is management by ecosystem/ biome.
Because it is new perspective, like SEA, the establishment
of a precise concept of what management per ecosystem/
biome is not in an easy task. Nevertheless, it is important to
point out that the concept has two dimensions: one is
structural/ functional and the other is political.
In relation to the first dimension, it is important to consider
that in the definition of what an ecosystem/ biome is, it is
necessary to understand that this is a term applied to a
wide variety of spatial scales. Functionally, as well as
spatially, ecosystems and biomes exist in a hierarchic
structure. The higher level contains and is composed of
different components in a lower level. Thus, the boundaries
of an ecosystem/ biome can be both structural and
functional. If the differences identified on both sides of the
boundary are significant, then the boundary is real or natural;
if the differences are not significant, then the boundary is
artificial and cannot define different ecosystems/ biomes.
However, even considering this aspect, defining an
ecosystem/ biome is still a very complex task. In order to
make some progress towards this definition, climate has
been considered a relevant element for the establishment
of boundaries of an ecosystem/ biome. Climate controls
the patterns of ecosystems/ biomes on different scales. As
a result, the boundaries of an ecosystem/ biome are based
on climate, which allows the identification of permanent
boundaries.
Another system for the definition of ecosystems/ biomes
takes water into consideration. Thus, climate and water are
the two most important factors, as they present more
precisely the real boundaries of relevant ecological
processes.
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