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New report on practitioner guidelines for TDA/SAP process released by SEA-RLC (June 2006)

Title of report: 'Practitioner Guidelines for Preparation of Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA) and Strategic Action Programme (SAP) in East Asian Seas Region.' Prepared by Dr. Seng-Keh Teng as an IW:LEARN SEA-RLC Consultancy.

Executive Summary

The transboundary diagnostic analysis (TDA) provides scientific and technical analysis on status and impacts of the environment in given international waters and it is recommended for most of the projects in the Global Environment Facility (GEF)’s International Waters Operational Programme 8 (OP8) and 9 (OP9). On the other hand, the SAP is a negotiated policy document that establishes clear priorities for action and identifies policy, legal and institutional reforms as well as investments needed to address and resolve priority problems of the transboundary waters. The present practitioner guidelines for preparation of the TDA/SAP, which is meant primarily for application in the East Asian Seas region, was prepared taking into consideration of, (a) the conclusions and recommendations of the GEF International Waters Program Study conducted recently; (b) a detailed review of more than 18 TDA and 15 SAP reports from GEF; and (c) the ‘Terms of Reference’ provided by the Southeast Asia Regional Learning Center (SEA-RLC) of the Southeast Asia START Regional Center (SEA START RC) in Bangkok, Thailand.

The guidelines deal in details the approach in preparing the TDA and SAP after when the associated TDA or SAP project has been approved for implementation by GEF Implementing Agencies. However, the approaches provided in the guidelines could be adopted in preparing the project ideas or proposal to be submitted to GEF for funding consideration.

Frameworks and guiding principles that provide overall procedures and strategy on how to proceed with the preparation of TDA and SAP were detailed. It is important that in the process of preparing the TDA and SAP there should have, (a) full stakeholder participation; (b) joint fact-finding and transparency; (c) ecosystem approach; (d) adaptive management and accountability; (e) inter-sectoral policy development and step-wise consensus building; (f) risk management; (g) inclusion of partnerships and incremental costs; and (h) aligned actions and government commitment.

 The processes of preparing the TDA and SAP were described. Preparation of the TDA involves a series of consultation and collaboration among the stakeholders and a team approach is generally adopted at all stages of the preparation process. The process may involve principally the preparation of national TDAs to provide consensus regarding national information and perspectives to be used in the subsequent preparation of a regional (multi-national) TDA. Detailed procedures include the,

a) appointments of Regional and National Coordinators as well as TDA Task Teams to lead and manage the TDA preparation;

b) information and data collection and analysis to provide references for preparing the TDA;

c) impact assessment to  assess the relative importance of different impacts on the ecosystems within the region, and identification/prioritization of transboundary environmental problems;

d) governance analysis which includes: stakeholder analysis to verify interests of groups and individuals and to assemble information on affected populations; institutional analysis to understand the formal and informal mechanisms of actual decision-making;  and legal and policy analysis to provide the bases for recommending legal and policy reforms;

e) causal chain analysis to identify the most important root causes of each of the priority environmental problems in order to target them by appropriate policy measures for remediation or mitigation; and

f) collation of the TDA results into regional and national TDA reports for public consultation and adoption by countries of the region.

Formats for preparation of the national and regional TDA reports were proposed.

Similarly, procedures for the preparation of SAP also follow the,

(a) review of the priority transboundary issues, and their immediate and root causes from the associated regional TDA report to be used as reference material for establishing the vision statements for the priority environmental problems;

(b) formulation of ecosystem quality objectives (EcoQOs), indicators and targets to define the strategic program actions for mitigating the environmental problems;

(c) conduct of feasibility study for the program actions to identify the best options feasible for managing the environmental problems;

(d) seeking of decision on intent to implement selected feasible options by the governments and private sectors;

(e) technical consultations to set and agree on the short/medium term operational objectives, national/regional institutional framework and comprehensive monitoring/evaluation indicators for implementation of the SAP;

(f) establishment of incremental partnerships for achieving maximum benefits in environmental management;

(g) development of SAP implementation and financing mechanisms;

(h) assessment of investment needs associated with the SAP implementation;

(i) conduct of partnership conference to develop GEF interventions in managing the environment of the region;

(j) collation of the SAP results into regional SAP report for public consultation as well as endorsement and adoption by countries of the region.

Formats for preparation of the SAP reports were provided.

As the present practitioner guidelines is primarily meant for application in the East Asian Seas region, environmental and socio-economic information related to the region as well as their sources (e.g., titles and Internet URLs) of retrieval were provided; the information should be useful to assist the practitioners from the East Asian Seas region in preparing the TDA and SAP. Completed TDA and SAP reports, and on-going projects for developing the TDA and SAP as well as GIWA regional assessment reports for the region, together with the sources for their retrieval were provided. TDA and SAP reports produced by GEF in other regions of the world were also listed in the present practitioner guidelines.

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