Federal budget

From SEA.unu.edu/wiki

Background

A major Canadian newspaper chain commissioned this SEA. It was essentially a preliminary commentary on the environmental implications of Canadian government expenditures and was limited to three major sectors (energy, agriculture and industrial development). The exercise demonstrated the value of scrutinising annual budgets as ES and illustrating how this can be done.

Analysis

   * anticipation and prevention of environmental problems,
   * environmental - economy integration or full cost accounting
   * equal competition of options
   * least - costs planning (energy) and support for environmental values 
     (agriculture and industry)

Lessons

This SEA was an 'unofficial', media-sponsored exercise which highlighted the differences between environmental policy and fiscal priorities. It also exemplified a potential approach to examining the annual budget as an environmental impact statement.

(Source: Resources Futures International, 1991)