حکومت در ارزیابی زیست محیطی استراتژیک: درس هایی از عملیات پرتغالی Governance in Strategic Environmental Assessment: Lessons from the Portuguese practice

1. Introduction 1.1. Overview of governance in SEA Governance and strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can hardly be dissociated. According to Meuleman (2015) the construction of SEA systems is highly dependent on the procedural, incremental and substantive dimensions of respective governance contexts. Meuleman (2008: 11) defines governance as ‘the totality of interactions, in which government, other public bodies, private sector and civil society participate, aiming at solving societal problems or creating societal opportunities’. In the political arena, governance can be tied to three political dimensions as the political system itself (politics), the institutional structures and political instruments (polity) and the political processes and contents (policy) (Meuleman, 2015). The consideration of governance in SEA gains special meaning in the legitimisation of strategic decisions, based on the relationship between society and decision-makers. This is also because it is through governance that multiple types of knowledge can be better incorporated to enable learning processes. In the context of this paper, governance can be understood as a dimension of analysis that should be strategically positioned in SEA to enable the achievement of desired development objectives. In its essence, governance shapes functioning patterns of the development system, underlying the formulation of public policies and respective regulatory aspects. Thus, addressing governance in SEA can play a pivotal role in defining goals, setting priorities and making choices. The objective of this paper is to understand why governance in important in SEA. Research on governance in SEA is expanding but still fragmented into single aspects of governance (e.g. public participation, monitoring and follow-up, capacity-building, decisions transparency or accountability).