Dr. Thomas Fischer delivered a Skype Lecture at USPCAS-W

Dr. Thomas Fischer, a professor at University of Liverpool – UK, has delivered a skype lecture on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) at ORIC MUET. Dr. Fischer has a special interest in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and environmental impact assessment (EIA). He is also involved in exploring ways to develop sustainable environmental policies, plans, programs, and project. In Dr. Fischer’s opinion,  EIA and SEA are currently the only effective instruments available in achieving more balanced outcomes in the decision-making process.

While elaborating the difference between EIA and SEA, he described that primary purpose of EIA is to determine and evaluate the environmental impacts of development and to inform decision-making at project level. Whereas, more strategic decisions are made at plan, program and policy levels of decision-making. As a result, he believes, SEA has evolved that can have a major impact on the nature of later developments.

He further highlighted that SEA determines the environmental implications of policies, plans, and program and is complementary to EIA. During his skype lecture, Dr. Fischer emphasized the importance of SEA in the context of changing world’s politics. In this regard, he referred recent presidential election in the USA and Donald Trump’s post-truth politics, and Brexit decision in June 2016 referendum to leave European Union (EU). Dr. Fischer was well aware of the EIA process in Pakistan and also had helped in developing EIA course curriculum for many universities of Pakistan.

MS Students of Environmental Engineering Batch-16 of USPCAS-W participated in the lecture.  Dr. Arjumand Z. Zaidi, Senior Research Fellow at USPCAS-W, facilitated the students in the lecture for their interactive participation and questions.