Part III : How to Conduct SEA?

---

Nature and Scope

Usually closely related to

• Population growth
• Transport (in the sense that land use patterns should facilitate rail transit systems which are energy efficient and environmentally friendly)
• Supporting infrastructure (including environmental infrastructures e.g. sewage treatment plants)
• Ecologically important areas (e.g. no-go areas)
• Strategic growth areas (e.g. urban-biased vs. New Territories-biased)
• Cumulative territorial impacts in relation to sustainability

For those plans related to new town developments, more detailed information would usually be involved in an effort to assess cumulative environmental impacts comprehensively and to suggest positive features of the whole new town which cannot be done in project EIA.

Considerations

Detailed evaluations at various levels should be carried out in order to generate the preferred options, which can then be synthesized into the development strategies. Environmental initiatives and objectives should be fully integrated into the overall planning process. As this type of SEA seeks to develop a plan with scale and types of developments being commensurate with environmental thresholds, stringent testing procedures should be developed and undesirable elements should be screened out at each stage of the plan formulation process.

Moreover, as these landuse plans at strategic level provide for long term development guidance, opportunities should be seized to rectify existing landuse-related environmental problems.

Examples

HK2030 and TDSR are among examples of SEA of Territorial Land Use Planning. The key points of the examples are shown in Table 2 below while project descriptions of the study are in Project Descriptions of Key SEA Examples.

Table 2 - Examples of SEA Applying in Territorial Land Use Planning

Study		Key Sectors Involved	Scale	Dimension of Environmental Issues	Strategic Environmental Concerns and Foci
Hong Kong 2030 : Planning Vision and Strategy		Territorial Land Use, Transportation	Territory wide land use, transport and ports planning up to 2030	Territorial District	Potential environmental implications and acceptability of various development options. Key concerns were air, water, traffic noise and conservation.
Territorial Development Strategy Review		Territorial Land Use, Transportation	Territory wide population from 6.8M in mid-1999 to 8.1M in 2011	Territorial District	Potential environmental implications and acceptability of various development options. Key concerns were air, water, traffic noise and conservation.

Process

Since territorial or regional land use plans usually cover long time frames, and will lead to projects and developments over a long period of time, a comprehensive SEA is beneficial to identify major environmental problems at the outset and avoid problems which would be difficult and costly to resolve as projects are implemented at later stages.

In the process, SEA are usually supported by comprehensive studies with public consultation undertaken at the earliest possible stage.

Regarding plans for new town developments, SEA would usually be conducted together with Engineering Feasibility Study which is a Schedule 3 project under the EIA Ordinance, requiring to follow the Ordinance’s procedures such as carrying out of public consultation.

A typical SEA process for this type of PPP, by referring to the case of HK2030, is presented in Figure 17 below.

Figure 17 - A Typical SEA Process for Territorial Land Use Planning –The Case of Hong Kong 2030 : Planning Vision and Strategy