Addressing climate change through environmental assessment tools in planning processes: international practices and perspectives for Niger

2.1.3. Public Participation/ Public Involvement

As public participation or public involvement is one of the most important aspects in planning processes, a clear understanding of the concept is supposed to allow an effective evaluation of the procedure of the environmental assessments tools (SEA and EIA). André, et al. (2006) defined public participation as `' the involvement of individuals and groups that are positively or negatively affected by, or that are interested in, a proposed project, program, plan or policy that is subject to a decision-making process». This definition highlights the involvement of all stakeholders whether they are positively or negatively impacted by the planning process in the management of their resources and the definition of strategies for a better future of their living area. In addition, public participation is one of some important elements of Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration regarding the right of the public to access environmental information, decision-making and to judicial and administrative proceedings⁴.

2.2. Relevance of Mainstreaming Climate Change in Environmental Assessment Procedures

2.2.1. Climate Change in Strategic Environmental Assessment

Climate Change can be seen as a typical cumulative environmental effect resulting from many individual factors for which appropriate answers must be found. SEA is needed to provide a framework for evaluating and managing a wide range of environmental dangers and contribute to the incorporation (or «mainstreaming») of CC considerations into PPP. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence and experience on

4 http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163&l=en

7

the area of CC mitigation and adaptation concerns in PPP through SEA is not well developed (Suzaul-Islam and Yanrong, 2016). The questions that have to be asked in this context are: which roles can SEA play regarding to CC? How far can SEA contribute to the mitigation of negative effects of CC? How the impacts of the PPP on CC and the CC induced impacts on the PPP themselves should be considered?

From the questions raised above, it is clear that the mainstreaming of CC into SEA faces many challenges. One that has to be mentioned is that dealing with the effects of CC in SEA throws up the question as well about how risks can be dealt with that are brought about by CC because the effects of CC do not only have destructive extents that are difficult to predict, but they also occur with a probability that is very difficult to determine and affect societies or social groups with differing vulnerability or resilience (Weiland, 2010). For example, as noted by Lee and Walsh(1992 cited in Larsen et al. 2013) in the early stages of SEA, the most likely significant challenges faced when developing and implementing SEA are how ensuring that uncertainty is satisfactorily handled at each step of the assessment procedure.

Other challenges are those regarding the mainstreaming of some issues such as the gender in the context of adaptation responses, the way the indigenous people will be affected by CC and the multi-sectoral coordination of the process in all stages of an SEA procedure (OECD/DAC, 2010).

Finally, the assessment of CC impacts for human activities such as agricultural sector that contributes to a significant share of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 17% directly through agricultural activities and an additional 7% to 14% through changes in land use(OECD,2015) is another issues that has to be handled while considering CC in SEA.