The Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (Directive 2001/42/EC) (SEA) has been a lurking legal presence in EU and UK environmental law. Plainly of considerable significance in relation to strategic governmental plans and programmes, its practical implications are only now just beginning to be worked through. Legal challenges to decisions made even at the highest policy level are being brought on the back of the SEA Directive. This book is a comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the Directive, from its history and scope, to its impact on governmental policy and its implications in...

The Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (Directive 2001/42/EC) (SEA Directive) has been a lurking legal presence in EU and UK environmental law. Now, just over a decade since its implementation, the impacts of the SEA Directive are beginning to be felt throughout the UK, and more broadly throughout the European Union as a whole. These developments have been driven both by the expansive interpretation of the Directive's scope by the Court of Justice of the European Union and by a slow learning process about how this new type of regulation should be legally interpreted and applied....

Environmental principles - from the polluter pays and precautionary principles to the principles of integration and sustainability - proliferate in domestic and international legal and policy discourse, reflecting key goals of environmental protection and sustainable development on which there is apparent political consensus. Environmental principles also have a high profile in environmental law, beyond their popularity as policy and political concepts, as ideas that might unify the subject and provide it with conceptual foundations or boost its delivery of environmental outcomes. However,...