Strategic environmental assessment of Thai river basins: Incorporating climate change considerations
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Abstract
It is globally recognized that climate change is increasingly affecting sustainable development. Given these challenges, it is imperative to incorporate climate change considerations as part of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), a tool used for sustainable development and planning strategies. The Thai government is in the process of developing river basin management schemes and updating SEA for all the river basins in the country. Considering climate change in future development planning processes would ensure that the outcomes enable more sustainable development. In this article, SEA reports for Thai river basins that have been completed were examined to determine if climate change was considered and how it was done. Analyses were conducted for each of the four phases of SEA, i.e., establishing the context for SEA, implementing SEA, informing, and influencing decisions, monitoring and evaluating plans. The checklist criteria were used to analyze climate change impacts in the river basin SEA reports, focusing specifically on climate change or global warming impacts that lead to serious disasters in the river basins. The results showed that 7 out of the 9 reports currently consider climate change impacts, but not in all phases of the SEA. The linkage of climate change impact analyses between the different phases was weak. There were only 4 reports that sufficiently considered climate change impacts in the second phase of the SEA. These reports used both qualitative and quantitative tools that were appropriate for predicting climate change impacts and with a link to the third and fourth phases. As a result, most of the SEA reports were insufficient in considering climate change impacts.
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