An Exploration On Theory And Methodology Of Strategic Environmental Assessment Of Water Security In Hainan Province

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is employed to determine the environmental implications of strategic decisions, such as legislations, policies, plans and programmes. SEA can be used to assess a proposed legislation, policy, plan or programme that has already been developed; or it can be used to develop, evaluate and modify a legislation, policy, plan of programme during its formulation. The purpose of the application of SEA is to minimize or even eliminate negative environmental impacts from governmental strategic decision failure, therefore to achieve the goal of good man-nature harmony. This is why the relatively new and still evolving SEA could attract the interests of environmental academics and professionals as well as government authorities.To be part of ecological security, water security is the foundation of safety of social, economic and environmental systems. Regional water security is defined as water resource and its related environment of a region that can meet the needs of human society, sustainable economic development and maintaining desirable environmental quality despite of any risk or threat from human intervention or natural events such as drought etc. To be more specific, SEA on regional water security assesses the impact of water security from regional policy, plans, or programmes.The theoretical basis of regional water security SEA is the theories and principles of sustainable development, environmental carrying capacity, environmental systems engineering and environmental economics. The methodology adopted for regional water security SEA is an integrated approach with security as its criterion on the basis of hierarchical analysis of social, economic-water resource coupling system. System Dynamics is used to construct dynamic models of social economy-water resource, water environment coupling system, which then are employed in the status-quo analysis and medium and long-term prediction of water security of Hainan Province.The status-quo analysis of water security in Hainan Province indicated that, although relatively abundant water resource is endowed, the water security tended to decrease year by year since 2001 in Hainan, while that of the whole country and of Guangdong Province improved steadily at the same period. Further analysis of the causes for the decrease revealed that the water security was obviously affected by precipitation and total water...