84 Chapter 6 – Conclusion and Recommendations This chapter, as a final part, concludes the result of this study through answering the main research question and its supporting research questions in chapter 1. Conclusion of this research is based on theoretical framework developed in chapter 2. This chapter firstly will conclude the answers for the main research question and several supporting research questions through exploring several preconditions of implementing SEA for transport plan both in the UK and the possibility of SEA implementation in Indonesia. Then, this chapter will be closed by giving several recommendations in accordance with the conclusion results. 6.1 Conclusion Why SEA is needed for transport decision-making and planning process. In the world including Indonesia, environmental management strategy has currently been moving towards decision-making at a strategic level and an early stage due to the awareness of sustainable development. It means that coordination and cooperation among various development actors will be effective if efforts to achieve sustainability focus not only on project level but also on policies, plans and programs, known as SEA. Generally, the benefits from SEA are giving huge opportunities to achieve sustainable development, enhancing the effectiveness of EIA and enabling more room for determining alternatives and giving opportunities to analysis long-term, global, cumulative and synergistic effects of development plans. Besides, in Indonesia condition, SEA can also deal well with ensuring the consistency of environmental objectives from national to local level related to decentralization. The SEA approach could give benefits for enhancing more environmentally sound transport plan in Indonesia. Currently transport plans in Indonesia have just taken into account environmental assessment at individual project level (EIA), while transport development with its services have contributed on cumulative and synergistic impacts and also influenced the degradation of quality of life as well as 85 other spatial impacts. It indicates that current environmental assessment (EIA) is deemed often too late in the decision-making process. Environmental assessment at individual or project level (EIA) has failed and been limited to deal with providing proactive solutions and tackling cumulative impacts resulted from the traffic growth and activities. Thus, those drawbacks of EIA lead to the need of assessing environmental effects at strategic level. Another reason for the SEA implementation in Indonesia is related to the decentralization era. Decentralization causes fragmented-environmental management among various authority levels. This is because decentralization arranges sharing responsibilities and authorities to regional and local authorities in developing their own areas, including environmental management. And, in practice, local authorities tend to formulate and run their plans and projects by using their own capabilities and assets without coordinating with other surrounding regions and vertical administrative. Related to the environmental assessment for transport plans, transport development has characteristics cross- wide geographic areas and is interconnected either to inter-modes or multi-modes, while the current EIA is clearly seemed to be failed to analysis environmental impacts of cross administrative-boundary. This is because EIA is just applied at individual (project) level. So, in order to make environmental management more effective, it calls for another environmental assessment tool, namely SEA. SEA can provide wider room for making proactive alternatives and anticipating environmental impacts and operates at early stage of decision-making process and at greater area. SEA can help tiering with horizontal and vertical authority especially in taking into account environmental objectives and alternatives at early stages of decision-making. How can SEA for transport plans in the UK be effectively implemented regarding with preconditions and facilitating factors of SEA implementation. This question will be answered by referring to preconditions and factors of the effectiveness of SEA for transport plans in the UK in accordance with the results of analysis in chapter 5. Generally SEA for transport plans in the UK has been effective for assessing environmental information at strategic transport level. 86 It can be approved by which most of the preconditions and facilitating factors for the Effectiveness SEA are good accommodated in the UK except several part of tiering PPP of SEA. Regarding the political will and legal provisions, formal regulation and guidance on SEA for transport plans is effective for starting point and for providing necessary support for initiating, carrying out and publishing the results of an environmental consideration. Generally the UK has had formal or statutory Guidance on SEA for transport plans since 2004. The basis of SEA for transport plans is Statutory Instrument No. 1633 – Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programs Regulations 2004. It integrates SEA Directive’s requirement with existing transport appraisal process – The NATA. SEA guidance is applied for plan and program level, not for policy level because it is assumed that environmental assessment at plans and programs levels can be more described and quantified than that at policy level. The guidance assigns all regional and local authorities to implement SEA into transport planning process. The SEA for transport plan is used as criteria for assessing and granting fund by national government. Related to the classification of SEA types in theoretical framework, SEA for transport plans in the UK has procedural characteristic. SEA document (Environmental Report) is separated with transport plan document. It means that environmental assessment and transport planning process are conducted parallel but are interconnected over all the process. Moreover, related to coverage of impacts, SEA for transport plans in the UK addresses not only environmental impacts, but also both environmental and socio-economic impacts through using integrated transport appraisal (NATA). When intending to implement SEA, it is also useful to consider other preconditions and facilitating factors, namely, the integration and timing, tiering, information provided and networking. Those preconditions and factors are the content of the legal SEA guidance. In the UK, The SEA guidance is not strictly applied by all authorities because LTP processes vary among regions. Nevertheless, all local authorities should engage several main integration elements of SEA into their LTPs (see chapter 4). 87 Furthermore, the UK’s SEA integration makes a better balance between systematic information (e.g. economic objectives) and unplanned information (e.g. greenhouse gases) by using NATA-Appraisal Summary Table 2 (AST). Those objectives can be gathered and equally weighted if the relationship between environmental assessment and the preparation of the plans, as well as its linkage with other plans such as land use plans, is made clear to all stakeholders. In order to achieve clear networking/participation among relevant stakeholders, the UK’s SEA guidance arrange consultation process among stakeholders at overall environmental assessment and transport planning process. The guidance appointed legally designated-environmental bodies for consultations. Besides, networking also builds vertical relationship (tiering) with relevant authorities such as regional and national levels both among transport planning levels and among environmental objective level in dealing with ensuring their objectives to be considered.