Necessity and method of public participation in strategic environmental assessment of China

Public participation has been one of important problems in the strategic environmental assessment (SEA). In this paper, the origin and the present research-conditions of public participation in SEA were analyzed. And the necessity of public participation was illuminated from following three aspects: 1) the public participation in China’s SEA is a key method of gaining the public support; 2) the public participation is one important source of gaining information; 3) the public participation is a good way to overcome the obstruction in the traditional mechanism of making strategy decision. Effective public participation should be involved in the whole process of SEA, and the public participators should include the public representatives of the groups affected by environmental change, the specialists in SEA and relevant fields, persons who are interested in the strategy and media, and so on. Various methods of public participation in SEA, including the methods of obtaining information and information feedback or consultation, were discussed. Further, the function, the advantages and the disadvantages of each method were discussed in detail, too.