On the usefulness of guidelines and instructions for environmental assessment – a qualitative study of the helpfulness perceived by Polish practitioners

Guidelines and instructions for Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment (together referred to as EA here) are developed to improve the quality of legal requirements’ implementation and to support EA procedure accomplishment. However, to date, it has not been checked whether they are useful for practitioners. Therefore, the aim of the study underlying this paper was to verify, based on the experience of Polish EA experts, whether guidelines and instructions are useful in their everyday work. A qualitative study comprising of a questionnaire survey and interviews tested whether (1) EA practitioners know and use the Polish and EU guidelines, (2) how EA practitioners evaluate the validity and usefulness of such instructions, and (3) in which areas there is a lack of instructions and guidelines. The results show a low level of knowledge of national and EU handbooks. Those guidelines focusing on legal procedures, road investments and designing animal passageways are considered to be the most useful. Moreover, practitioners indicate that EU guidelines should be translated into Polish. Most important for practitioners is the linking of guidelines with the EA procedure, so that they can become a platform for dialogue of all stakeholders.