Arthur Neher
Senior Advisor Environmental and Social Assessment
Integrating SESA into Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is essential to support countries in managing increasing pressures on coastal and marine areas, while ensuring environmentally and socially sound decision-making at a strategic level. Adding SESA to the planning process, we try to ensure that environmental and social values are fully integrated into marine governance from the earliest stages. SEA adds value by strengthening MSP’s environmental integrity, decision quality, and long-term sustainability.
Because MSP is inherently multi-sectoral, SESA supports the evaluation of transboundary impacts and helps identify multiple, overlapping pressures on sensitive ecosystems, habitats, and species from the outset. It enables the assessment of cumulative effects arising from activities such as fisheries, shipping, and offshore wind development, and helps determine the ecological thresholds or limits needed to ensure sustainable use.
The core added value of SESA lies in the assessment of such overlapping and/or cumulative impacts, the development and comparison of broad-perspective alternatives, the focus on joint fact-finding (public ownership, shared data), and above all in providing a systematic and legal framework to include environmental and social aspects in strategic planning and decision-making. Ultimately, SESA equips planners to explore different spatial scenarios and transparently compare their environmental, social, and economic consequences, leading to more robust, inclusive, and sustainable MSP outcomes.