1 Conference Paper for the IAIA10 Conference Transitioning to the Green Economy Geneva, Switzerland, 6-11 April 2010 Indicators and SEA: Chinese and European Experiences and Guidance Jingjing Gao 1 *, Lone Kørnøv and Per Christensen 1 1 Department of Development and Planning Aalborg University 9220 Aalborg Ø Denmark Abstract: Indicators are widely used in SEA to measure, communicate and monitor impacts from a proposed policy, plan or programme, and can improve the effectiveness for the SEA by simplifying the complexity of both assessment and presentation. Indicators can be seen as part of the implementation process helping to understand, communicate and, integrate important environmental issues in planning and decision-making. On the other hand, use of indicators can also limit SEA effectiveness, if the ones chosen are biased or limited, if the aggregation gives incorrect interpretation and if the information requirement for different target groups is not addressed. The paper firstly considers Chinese experience with use of indicators in SEA and secondly presents a comparative study of national systems and guidelines. The study takes a point of departure in the Chinese system, and compares this to Great Britain and Denmark. Great Britain represents a centrally guided SEA indicator system, while Denmark represent a SEA tradition with no formal indicator system in place. The paper explores and identifies the challenges and opportunities in using indicators in Chinese SEA: insufficient in indentifying the social and economical issues; difficulties in practice due to the low availability of data and availability of information. There is space for improving the Chinese SEA system especially when it comes to treating and using indictors in a process as well as in communicative perspective. Developing indicators is both a political and professional process, and the paper finally discuss the need of selection criteria mentioned in the guidelines, and also gives some ideas on how to tackle the development of indicators being explicit about it both as a political and a professional process. Introduction The main purpose of SEA is to facilitate systematic consideration of potential environmental impacts in strategic decision-making and ensure the consequences are fully included and appropriately addressed at the earliest stage of decision-making possible (Partidario M, 1999, Lee and Walsh, 1992; Therivel et al., 1992; Sadler and Verheem, 1996). One of the means for achieving this is the use of indicators as a tool for measuring and representing environmental conditions, predicting impacts and for monitoring. Indicators can be a useful tool by which the complex impacts and relationships arising from a given policy, plan or programme can be measured and presented more simply. The questions of how inclusive the indicator system will be in relation to environmental, economic and social indicators should be addressed as should how to find the appropriate level of aggregation. Developing and designing indicators also raises the question of participation, not only by the general public but also from experts and decision makers. The criteria for indicator selection is challenging as the indicators used in SEA ―…will affect what baseline data are collected, what predictions are made and what monitoring system are set up. Poorly chosen ones will lead to a biased or limited SEA process…‖ (Therivel,2004). Developing indicators in * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: jingjing@plan.aau.dk