This seminar focuses on the environmental assessment of development, particularly internationally, both at the policy and practical levels. Participants will develop skills for analyzing and evaluating environmental assessment systems while exploring their relationship to wider policy issues like climate change and sustainability. The following questions will be considered: What are the components of a successful process? How do politics, the public, and the courts effect the outcome? What are strengths and weaknesses of various approaches? How are issues like climate change and sustainability incorporated into the environmental assessment requirements? The class will briefly consider the planning context for environmental assessment in California, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). CEQA and NEPA have been important models internationally for developing legislation and policy. They will be used to compare assessment practices in other countries, the European Union, and at the World Bank. Real world case studies will be presented to exemplify the workings of the process. Participants will choose a country to concentrate on, and prepare a detailed analysis and evaluation of its environmental assessment process.