UN-Habitat's Municipal Spatial Planning Support Program (MuSPP) in Kosovo, in collaboration with the municipalities of Gracanica, Mamusha, Prizren and Rahovec and with the expert support of independent international consultants, is developing the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of local development plans. The municipalities of Malisheve and Partesh will soon be joining the process of SEA, which is developed as a support to the MDP processes. Whilst collaborating to evaluate environmental vulnerability, SEA aims at giving focus to sustainable development. As part of the process, Municipal authorities, together with independent environmental experts, are evaluating the environmental dimension of their on-going proposed local plans and deriving local planning actions, namely by establishing environmental objectives, defining targets and indicators to help measure the change and predict impacts of the proposed plans on the environment and also by developing mitigation measures for the foreseen negative impacts occurring from proposed development (e.g. proposing a green corridor as a way of minimizing impact from a new proposed road).

The assessment has attracted attention from a wider audience, in that it offered a head-to-head evaluation of local plans, training activities and an overall participatory planning approach. During the process, the usual techniques for sustainability appraisal were considered, such as:

-       matrix evaluation;

-       use of GIS, including Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP);

-       social multicriteria evaluation with combined use of participatory techniques and multicriteria analysis;

-       'co-operative discourse' in which stakeholders select the evaluation criteria, experts present information and measure impacts, and citizens explore values, etc..

In addition to measuring the specific performance of each planning option against environmental criteria, typical ranking of scenarios was undertaken.

The process of strategic environmental assessment in Kosovo is at an experimental level and several principles are being considered as part of the guidance provided by UN-Habitat to municipal authorities:

-       considering both quantitative and qualitative data in the analysis,

-       granting intergenerational and minorities' equity by taking into account various social groups and their specific interests,

-       providing opportunities for learning during the process,

-       ensuring transparency of each step of the SEA, and

-       having a strong element of public and stakeholder engagement.

Gracanica, Malisheve, Mamusha and Partesh have opted for an in-house planning approach, with support from UN-Habitat. These four municipalities will provide a first round of exemplary SEA's being undertaken in parallel with the municipal planning process. The municipalities of Prizren and Rahovec have outsourced their MDPs and because the planning process in these two municipalities has started earlier than the implementation of SEA in Kosovo (following the adoption of the 2001 EU Directive into Kosovo's legislation), the SEA has followed the planning process, providing an independent environmental evaluation of the plans.

Conclusions from the process, so far, are positive, with the plans providing a solid base for future municipal development. Further to the plan evaluation, the environmental assessment has offered capacity building opportunities, raised awareness to environmental considerations in planning and will also encompass a range of monitoring and mitigation measures to be further developed by the municipalities when implementing their local development plans as part of an integrated approach to effective sustainable development planning.

Findings from these cutting edge evaluations, which are still being finalized, should also offer lessons relevant to other communities both in Kosovo and the Balkan region, as they consider different options for environmental planning and integrated development planning. The report from Prizren SEA is already available via the UN-Habitat/MuSPP webpage, at:

http://www.unhabitat-kosovo.org/en-us/SEA-reports

SEA for Prizren MDP: Third scenario illustration. Dark brown indicates current residential areas, light brown indicates potential residential areas and gray indicates potential industrial areas (based on AHP analysis).