Table 0-2: Project Seminars and conferences on PEIA in China, attended by Project partnersSeminar detailsIn-text referenceAll-partner and stakeholder meeting, Beijing, Xi’an and Chengdu, 11-19 June 2007S1All-partner meeting, Amsterdam, 29-30 October 2007 S2CATS, ACEE and European partners meeting, Beijing, 2-3 June 2008S3All-partner meeting, Chengdu, 17-20 November 2008 S4Workshop on Chinese Strategic Environmental Impact Assessment legislation and Interna-tional Experiences, organised by China’s SEPA (MEP as of 2008) and GTZ, Beijing, 27-28 September 2007C1International Conference on SEA, organised by SEPA – in collaboration with the International Association of Impact Assessment, 3-4 November 2007, BeijingC2/ SEPA 2008Chinese SEA Academic Forum, organised by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Nan-kai University, Hong Kong, 27 February-3 March 2009.C3
6planning of the Chinese transport and energy sector through participation;development institutions and banks who implement • or are planning to carry out projects in China in energy, transport and environment, such as the World Bank or Asian Development Bank;Chinese students and scholars interested in European • and Chinese perspectives on environmental policy integration and assessment.The technical annexes provide more detailed information aimed at practitioners.
7Throughout the project “Policy Instruments for a Chinese Sustainable Future”, SEA and China’s PEIA, are considered instruments within the broader framework of Environmental Policy Integration (EPI). This section explains the linkage between EPI and PEIA/SEA, and presents a brief overview of EPI in China. For more background and details one can refer to CHINA-EPI-SEA Paper No. 28 and the article by Bina (2008b), on which this section is based.1.1 EPI: OBJECTIVES AND FRAMEWORKGenerally speaking, SEA is an established term with a defined process, methodologies and practices. Environmental Policy Integration (EPI), on the other hand, is a more recent term that refers to the policy principle first established by the Brundtland Commission in 1987:‘The major central economic and sectoral agencies of governments should now be made directly responsible and fully accountable for ensuring that their policies, programmes and budgets support development that is ecologically, as well as economically sustainable’ (WCED 1987: 314).The expression EPI was coined, subsequently, to refer to this policy principle, and more broadly to the suggestion ‘that environmental thinking should be integrated into sectoral policy making at the earliest available opportunity in order to make human development more sustainable’ (Jordan and Lenschow 2008: xvii). It is concerned with the need for profound innovation in solving the tension between environment and development, and in particular for changes in traditional political orientation and institutional arrangements, all emphasised by the Brundtland Commission. EPI describes the relationship between a wide range of practices and activities (including SEA), that have been carried