News: Sep 30, 2022
During a one-week visit representatives from six universities in Bangladesh, Laos and Vietnam joined forces with their European counterparts to build courses on Strategic Environmental Assessment at master´s level. After being postponed due to the pandemic, the long awaited visit was finally made possible.
During a one-week visit, September 22 – 28, to the University of Gothenburg and Aalborg University, partners in the Erasmus+ SEA ASIA programme joined forces to continue their work on building new courses on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) at master’s level.
The Erasmus+ SEA ASIA programme, coordinated by Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development (GMV), has been running since 2020. The pandemic forced the programme partners to initially work online, but last week the consortium of nine universities from Bangladesh, Denmark, Laos, Portugal, Sweden, and Vietnam finally met in person for the first time.
Professor Pam Fredman, Director of the Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development and prof Mette Sandoff, pro-vice Chancellor at the University of Gothenburg met with and welcomed the representatives from the partner universities. During the last decades Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has developed into a scientific field of inquiry, higher education and a useful tool and approach to assess policies, plans and programs from an environmental point of view, and to suggest appropriate mitigation measures. However, low-income countries presently lack the capacity, functions, actors, legal frameworks, education, and research to work functionally with SEA. The result is thus often that policies, plans, and programs lack necessary and appropriate environmental considerations and actions.
Universities are a key actor to build the necessary capacity for adequate SEA practice. The collaboration of all nine universities in the Erasmus+ SEA ASIA programme is currently strengthening capacity to deliver high-quality SEA education focusing on teachers and students. During the visit to the University of Gothenburg and Aalborg University, all nine partners universities jointly worked on development of SEA curricula for courses at master’s level. The visit also offered a platform for partners to learn more about and get the competence in using Problem Based Learning as a learning method in the SEA courses.
The visit was very productive and encouraging. By the end of the programme in November 2023, it will have strengthened the cooperation between universities in the EU (Denmark, Portugal and Sweden) and Southeast Asia (Bangladesh, Laos and Vietnam) and strengthened the capacity of universities to carry out high-quality higher education in strategic environmental assessment.
Read more about Erasumus+ SEA ASIA on the programme website: Erasmus+ SEA ASIA programme - Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development, GMV