Uncharted Waters: Strategic Environmental Assessment in the UK Offshore Area

Despite its clear significance for the myriad economic, developmental and infrastructure policies of the Member States, the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive remains one of the more mysterious and underappreciated elements of EU environmental law. This has proved to be especially true in the context of the offshore environment. Indeed, while the maritime implications of pertinent nature conservation and planning-orientated EU legislation have been chronically overlooked generally, there has been minimal consideration of the application of the principles of strategic environment assessment (SEA) within the marine environment worldwide, and virtually no evaluation of this issue in the specific case of the various EU seas. The lessons learned from SEA practices in the offshore environment, and their wider implications for ‘certain plans and programmes’ undertaken in both a marine and a terrestrial setting, have therefore been chronically neglected to date. This oversight is indeed regrettable for, as this Chapter seeks to illustrate, particular EU Member States have demonstrated a largely unheralded history of innovation in addressing SEA concerns in relation to their offshore activities.