Strategic Environmental Assessment: strengthening Ukraine’s planning for sustainable recovery

On 25 Novem­ber 2025, a spe­cialised work­shop on Strate­gic Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment (SEA) took place in Ukraine, sup­port­ed by the FELICITY II pro­gramme and DIAPOL-CE, GIZ. The event brought togeth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Min­istry for Com­mu­ni­ties and Ter­ri­to­ries Devel­op­ment of Ukraine, the Min­istry of Econ­o­my, Envi­ron­ment and Agri­cul­ture of Ukraine, and the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMUKN).

SEA is a sys­tem­at­ic process for eval­u­at­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions of pro­posed poli­cies, plans, and pro­grammes. It pro­vides a struc­tured way to look at cumu­la­tive effects and envi­ron­men­tal risks at the ear­li­est stages of deci­sion-mak­ing, along­side eco­nom­ic and social con­sid­er­a­tions. By doing so, SEA helps ensure that long-term devel­op­ment choic­es do not under­mine the nat­ur­al sys­tems.

Dur­ing the work­shop, par­tic­i­pants exchanged views on the cur­rent state of SEA imple­men­ta­tion in Ukraine and dis­cussed how pro­ce­dures, method­olo­gies, and insti­tu­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties could be fur­ther improved in light of EU acces­sion require­ments. Spe­cial atten­tion was giv­en to the need to address insti­tu­tion­al and capac­i­ty bar­ri­ers to con­duct high-qual­i­ty assess­ments and to inte­grate SEA find­ings into pol­i­cy and invest­ment pro­gram­ming.

The dis­cus­sions also stressed the rel­e­vance of SEA for sec­tors such as water sup­ply and waste­water man­age­ment, where secure and sus­tain­able ser­vices are cen­tral to pub­lic wel­fare. Con­sid­er­ing envi­ron­men­tal impacts ear­ly in the plan­ning of invest­ment pro­grammes can help avoid lock-in to high-emis­sion, resource-inten­sive infra­struc­ture and reduce future costs.

Over­all, the work­shop under­lined that inte­grat­ing SEA into recov­ery plan­ning is essen­tial for build­ing a sus­tain­able, cli­mate-resilient future on Ukraine’s path towards EU mem­ber­ship.

FELICITY II is an inter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive sup­port­ing sus­tain­able urban infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment in East­ern Euro­pean and Cen­tral Asia coun­tries, aim­ing to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. The pro­gramme pro­vides tech­ni­cal and ana­lyt­i­cal assis­tance to munic­i­pal­i­ties to help them design and imple­ment cli­mate-friend­ly invest­ments in water sup­ply, waste­water man­age­ment, and ener­gy-effi­cient build­ings. 

FELICITY II is imple­ment­ed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH in coop­er­a­tion with the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank and with the sup­port of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, under the frame­work of the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).