Integrated Assessments
ICEM has extensive experience delivering integrated environmental assessments supporting informed planning and sustainable development decision-making.
Our approach reflects a longstanding commitment to ecological sustainability and social equity. In our assessments, we consider natural, social and economic systems, linking processes and issues that cross-sector and administrative boundaries.
While drawing upon innovative and technically advanced methods, our assessments have supported regional planners to avoid and mitigate environmental degradation and detrimental social impacts of development projects whilst optimizing benefits, improving governance mechanisms and increasing coherence in strategic planning.
Our assessment tools are applied to all stages of the planning and implementation cycle from broad development polices and plans through to project specific design, constructions and delivery.
STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT (SEA) AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT (EIA)
We have successfully conducted SEAs for a broad range of development policies, plans and programs at regional, national and transboundary levels. Sectors and issues we have analysed include energy, transport, trade agreements, agriculture, water resources management, climate change and biodiversity.
We are proud to be recognised by our peers for excellence in this field. In 2012, ICEM won the Corporate Initiative Award from IAIA for our SEA of Hydropower on the Mekong Mainstream, acknowledging the project’s contribution to advancing sustainable energy development in the region. The OECD set ICEM’s methodology in the Vu Gia – Thu Bon River Basin SEA as a model of good international practice.
CUMULATIVE IMPACT ASSESSMENT (CIA) AND EIA
All ICEM SEAs include CIA which evaluates the total environmental effects of a plan or large projects by considering its impacts in conjunction with the effects of all past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions and stressors in affected areas. ICEM CIAs are receptor-centered, focusing on the combined effects of multiple past, present, and future projects in an area. Our EIAs focus on identifying and analyzing the impacts of individual investment projects. EIAs start with the project, while CIA starts with the affected environmental or social components.
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND AUDITS
Once a plan or project is implemented, ICEM monitors and evaluates the impacts against the environmental management plans and monitoring and evaluation framework linked to the development. That has led to modifications and retrofitting if unexpected impacts are disclosed.
