Welcome

Since 1999 the Environmental Assessment and Planning Research Group undertakes research on the environmental impacts of public and private planning as well as on management opportunities of decision-making processes by means of existing and new environmental assessment tools on the level of projects, plans, programs and policies.

Environmental assessment tools concern the consideration of media- and cross-sectoral environmental issues in planning processes in urban and rural areas. They serve political decision-making as well as public information and participation in the context of such processes.

For information on the Group's research activities please follow this Link [2].

Staff of the Environmental Assessment and Planning Research Group is involved in the bachelor course "Ecology and Landscape Planning" and in the masters programs "Environmental Planning" and "Environmental Policy and Planning". You will find the contents of these courses Link [3].

Climate change is a challenging phenomenon that should be dealt with in EIA. Its large temporal and spatial scale, its complexity, and the considerable uncertainties derived from missing data and the knowledge of how climate change will modify environments, represent major challenges to practitioners. Although it is difficult to estimate the single role of a project on the global phenomenon of climate change, it is essential for us to recognize the importance of climate change consideration to adequately address all relevant impacts throughout the EIA process.
 
During our student project, Climate Change and EIA: Easy Said, Challenging Done, we developed a guidance document on how to integrate climate change into the EIA process based on current academic research and existing guidelines, and best practices from a selection of international environmental reports. The aim of this guidance is to formulate our recommendations for good practice of climate change mitigation and adaptation consideration in EIA, and thereby, support practitioners in integrating and enhancing this issue in practice.

Find the results of the project at: https://lehre.umweltpruefung.tu-berlin.de/MEP_Project/doku.php?id=guideline_for_climate_change_integration_in_eia_ss20:start [6]

We are pleased to host the first "European Best Practice Conference on Strategic Environmental Assessment" together with the Tallinn Forum and Mid-Sweden University from 9-11 September 2020. Due to the current Pandemic situation the conference will be hold online.

The conference aims to bring together European and international SEA actors. It is aimed at employees in authorities, planning offices, NGOs and academia who work with or are interested in the instrument of SEA. We want to facilitate an international exchange of experience, learn from good practice on SEA and discuss the future role, challenges and opportunities of SEA.

More information and a first overview of the programme can be found on our website: https://www.sea-conference.eu/ [7]

If you would like to receive further information about the event, please subscribe to our newsletter at https://www.sea-conference.eu/ [8]or send us an e-mail to: info@sea-conference.eu [9]