Project name:

Mechanisms to protect nature and the environment - strategic environmental assessment, environmental impact assessment and assessment of compatibility with the Habitats Directive

Project duration:

January 2002 - June 2003

Project description:

Development of legal and technical mechanisms in precautionary environmental protection and planning for the approval of offshore wind turbines, environmental impact assessment, the Madrid Protocol, the Habitats Directive, suggestions for spatial planning mechanisms.

The requirements of precautionary environmental protection made it particularly urgent that environmental planning mechanisms and mechanisms for coping with environmental consequences - compatibility assessment (Habitats Directive), environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment (SEA) - be adapted in the best possible way to the approvals procedures for offshore wind parks under the Marine Facilities Ordinance (SeeAnlV) and be tailored to the specific conditions of the marine ecosystem. In other words, the SEA Directive, environmental impact assessment and compatibility assessment under the Habitats Directive needed to be made “seaworthy”.

The Institute for Landscape Planning and Environmental Impact Assessment of the Technische Universität Berlin was therefore commissioned with a research project which addressed compatibility with the Habitats Directive, the SEA Directive and environmental impact assessments. It was carried out in cooperation with the Planungsgruppe Ökologie + Umwelt Hannover and the Baltic Sea Institute for Marine and Environmental Law of the University of Rostock.