In the spirit of the conference theme, join the Ghosts of Impact Assessment Past and Present, and contribute to crafting the messages that the Ghost of Impact Assessment Future should deliver to to-day’s impact assessment policy makers and process designers.
This interactive session uses a collaborative game to evaluate the same project across different territories and regulatory contexts. The summaries prepared by experts will serve as a guide for comparisons with Latin America, showing how context, systems thinking, and professional judgment influence decisions.
Two decades after grievance mechanisms became standard safeguard practice, do they deliver access to remedy; or manage risk for proponents? Drawing on resettlement, property damage, and land rights disputes, this session examines when operational mechanisms work, when they fail, and who bears the cost of pursuing justice.
This session will further discourse around what impacts were predicted and what impacts occurred in major project impact assessments. This session asks the question: How do we learn from the previous examples to better understand and address impacts to Indigenous rights and interests?
This workshop advances the evolution of impact assessment toward long-term Indigenous governance and stewardship. Participants will leave with practical planning tools, new perspectives, and adaptable approaches that can strengthen Indigenous-led cumulative effects management in diverse jurisdictions around the world.
This session explores how AI, Indigenous knowledge, and adaptive impact assessment can strengthen sustainable decision-making. Through global case studies, participants will examine innovative approaches to climate change, biodiversity, cumulative impacts, and resilient, inclusive environmental governance.
This session will explore the legacy of impact assessment, how it has been amplified by impact assessment practitioners, and where it might evolve to. It draws on the UN Conventions as the 'conditions precedent' for impact assessment, emerging trends and instruments including TNCD and TNFD.
This session explores the application of IFC Performance Standards (PS1–PS8) to dredging and reclamation projects, providing a practical framework to assess and manage environmental and social risks, including water quality, biodiversity, livelihoods, community impacts, and cultural heritage.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming impact assessment practice. This session will discuss use of AI in conducting strategic environment assessment of climate mitigation interventions, focusing on challenges, innovations, benefits, and safeguards for responsible use in ex-ante assessment, monitoring & evaluation.
The advancement of remote sensing technology and information technology, spatial analysis with a variety of environmental, social and economic items received a big attention in AI era. This session will focus on IA examples which support the strategic decision including SEA and utilized the well-organized spatial scale anal
Drawing on the IAIA27 theme Ka mua, ka muri, this session challenges participants to consider rapid shifts in our natural environment – what are baseline conditions, how do we reliably make predictions of the future, and how to measure project effects in changing world.
This session explores how Social Impact Management Plans can evolve from static outputs to adaptive management tools. Through case studies, it examines embedding SIMPs into project and corporate systems, enabling monitoring-led adaptation, and responding to changing social contexts to improve organisational accountability.
As nature-positive commitments become mandatory, how do we guarantee their integrity and de-risk market investments? This session explores the role of independent assurance mechanisms in bridging the gap between impact assessment and credible biodiversity outcomes, offering practitioners a roadmap for scaling transparency,
A working session on attributing societal change to media and cultural narratives through longitudinal and panel methods. Two short framings — methodological pitfalls and the real (versus overstated) role of AI — followed by hands-on group work to draft a practical attribution checklist for narrative interventions
Impact assessments operate as a downstream exercise—designs are advanced, then handed to environmental practitioners to characterize effects and propose mitigations. This World Cafe will explore what would change if avoidance through design was prioritized and not a mitigation afterthought.
Using a fictional coastal (Black Sea) energy transition case study, participants will rediscover alternatives as the heart of impact assessment and learn to apply holistic, systems thinking to strengthen impact assessment and improve decision-making in an increasingly interconnected world.
Public participation in IA is under great threat in many jurisdictions through attempts to make IA more efficient. Papers in this session will explore the impacts of streamlining, techniques of engagement that counter such action and the need for new approaches such as adopting anti-SLAPP legislation.
CAO Advisory's interactive solution room focuses on how lessons from 25+ years of accountability casework can strengthen IA. Participants will examine real-world shortcomings, develop practical recommendations, and explore whether current approaches remain fit for purpose and effective in strengthening E&S outcomes.
Has impact assessment become better at influencing decisions and outcomes, or simply better at producing assessments? This session explores why long-standing challenges around integration, implementation and outcomes continue to endure.
A hands-on foresight game where participants test how memory, local knowledge and changing baselines reshape impact assessment decisions. Teams navigate a fictional river landscape, weigh plural evidence, face future shocks and harvest design principles for adaptive, legitimate and community-grounded monitoring.
When impact assessment frameworks are designed for clarity, credibility, and efficiency, everyone benefits. Developers gain greater certainty and more predictable timelines, regulators can make informed science-based decisions, and Indigenous communities and stakeholders are more meaningfully engaged. The result is faster r
The session would explore how Pacific practitioners have approached cultural heritage impact assessment in real projects and what lessons have emerged for the future of impact assessment.
This session explores lessons from decades of resettlement and livelihood restoration practice. It welcomes papers on successful approaches, implementation challenges, and emerging solutions. Together, participants will identify insights to strengthen future resettlement practice and outcomes for project-affected people.
This interactive session explores how stakeholder concerns and grievance processes are sources of learning for adaptive social performance management to improve project outcomes. Through fireside chats and practical case exercises, participants will discuss root causes, engagement strategies, negotiation approaches.
Impact assessment has evolved from a compliance tool for predicting and mitigating harm into a strategic process that can shape better development decisions. This session explores whether IA can move beyond mitigation to drive regenerative outcomes, placing people, planet, and place at the heart of future practice.
The session explores the transformative potential of tools developed by iwi Māori practitioners for use in impact assessment and planning in Aotearoa New Zealand, and considers what the next decade of Māori-led impact assessment might hold.
Aligning with "Ka mua, ka muri," this session examines how PSS tools leverage past spatial data for future carbon-neutral and climate-resilient urban decisions. Via AI and digital twins, it highlights integrating carbon tracking with environmental baselines to navigate future climate risks.
Social impact practitioners often struggle to gain organisational support for social issues. This interactive workshop explores tools, influence strategies, and engagement approaches that embed social impact into organisational decision-making, build internal champions, and strengthen commitment to meaningful outcomes.
Linear infrastructure underpins sustainable development, yet countries often face environmental and social risks that deter investment. The panel highlights how informed stakeholder dialogues can build trust, improve ESG outcomes, and de-risk projects to unlock finance and deliver resilient and sustainable impact.
This panel asks if impact assessment can deliver verifiable outcomes in major developments. It explores how governance, regulation, independent verification and digital innovation can strengthen accountability, transparency and long-term environmental and social performance, from planning through operations and stewardship.
Nature-positive design is often seen as an environmental aspiration rather than a business strategy. This workshop asks whether nature-positive approaches can create measurable business value through risk reduction, resilience, stakeholder trust, streamlined permitting, and stronger financial and operational performance.
Join the CE Section’s interactive Solution Room where participants brainstorm solutions to challenges raised by IAIA members on the online CE Section Hub. Network with colleagues from other nations capturing solutions to advance the effectiveness of CEA in Impact Assessment.
Regulatory changes aimed at economic recovery, increasing demand for critical minerals, and the energy transition prioritize the development of extractive projects over protected and conserved areas. This session will examine experiences, governance challenges, socio-environmental risks, good practices, and lessons learned.
This session draws on the experiences of professionals who range from earlier to late career (10 to 30+ years in this industry), to hear their stories and how assessment frameworks and methodologies have evolved while staying true to theoretical foundations of social sciences.
This session will bring together representatives from key departments of the Government of Canada to discuss proposed changes to legislation, regulations, and policies to ensure project decisions are made in a timely manner while maintaining strong environmental protections and respecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
This paper session examines conflict as a source of learning in impact assessment. Drawing on past practice and current challenges, contributors will explore how leadership, trust, institutions, professional judgment, and competing knowledge systems shape the future of assessment.
The session explores how cultural knowledge baselines and Indigenous-led IA capacity can strengthen assessment, monitoring, legitimacy, and reconciliation. It links “looking back” through Traditional Knowledge and cultural studies with “moving forward” through knowledge governance, skilled employment, and decision-making.
This World Café explores integrating local science from project inception to ensure climate data supports daily life and traditional practices. Through Alaskan case studies, we discuss moving beyond mere "safety" to preserve culture and food security, emphasizing tangible community actions and Indigenous data sovereignty.
Join us for a panel discussion on advancing Indigenous-led approaches to impact assessment, including the development of Indigenous-led indicators and meaningful participation in resource development decisions that affect their lands and communities.
Discusses the evolution of social and environmental risk assessment/impact assessment within the financing decisions of development banks (World Bank etc) and UN agencies. Also focuses on the challenges facing such agencies, as they confront both new and old risks.
Drawing on the experience of ADB E&S safeguard experts and the Accountability Mechanism, the session examines the continuing relevance of the principle of “do no harm”, explores why impact assessments may fail to adequately identify risks and impacts, and analyzes the root causes of safeguard implementation shortcomings.
This session explores New Zealand's experience applying the EcIA Guidelines, SEV/ECR, BOAM and BCM to assess ecological values and manage effects on these values. Speakers will share lessons from practice, implementation challenges, and insights for improving ecological impact assessment and effects management.
Economic impact assessment is fundamental to major project decision-making but continues to face recurring methodological challenges. This session brings together international case studies for a multi-disciplinary audience to not just demonstrate good practice but display innovative and practical ways to engage and inform.
This session will focus on creating dialogue around how traditional knowledge is incorporated into cultural heritage impact assessments. How can we more effectively consult with indigenous groups and elevate indigenous voices during the impact assessment process to achieve better outcomes for all parties?
Papers from both researchers and practitioners are invited on the application of cumulative impact assessment in jurisdictions where the practice is emerging. We aim to foster knowledge exchange, highlight lessons from real-world experiences and case studies to advance cumulative impact assessment across diverse contexts.
Pros and cons of an impact assessment encyclopaedia (published in January 2027 by Edward Elgar).
What happens when Indigenous engagement begins early? Join speakers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Peru as they share practical lessons on moving engagement upstream to improve impact assessment, enable co-design, strengthen community capacity, and create better outcomes for people and projects.
An interactive and participatory session to contribute to design of an Environmental Governance Platform (EGP) for any country to more efficiently and effectively manage and integrate impact assessment, permitting, compliance and enforcement and learn about advances in the use of GIS, digital technology and AI .
AI-driven data centres are consuming vast quantities of electricity, water and land, with hidden impacts across critical mineral supply chains and energy generation. This panel—jointly convened with UN, industry and EIA sectors—will explore how to update EIA practices and upskill practitioners.
Cultural heritage has been part of impact assessment since the 1970s. This panel explores the evolution of cultural heritage standards and practice among international lenders through brief presentations, discussion, and Q&A. Panelists represent multilateral lenders, academia, the private sector, and community perspectives.
Over recent years, impact assessment has shifted sharply in the US and Australia — NEPA upended by amendments, deregulation, and court rulings; Australia's 2025 reforms drawing both praise and criticism. This session compares both trajectories, their origins, implications, and likely future direction.
Using Canada’s DGR as a case study, Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation will share lessons from exercising Indigenous jurisdiction through its Regulatory Assessment and Approval Process (RAAP), including community engagement, data governance, regulatory coordination, and Anishinaabe governance in contemporary regulatory frameworks
Project changes are often under-analysed through impact assessments. This session will capture lessons on community safeguarding prompted by project changes caused by changing relationships, financing or ownership, and reflect on how good practice, loan and community agreements need updating to better manage these risks.
This session explores how SIA can recognise and strengthen outcomes from community-led projects, including conservation, climate adaptation, economic regeneration, placemaking, and heritage protection. Papers will examine practice lessons that advance more inclusive, integrated, community-led, and future-focused assessments
Invited speakers to share their thoughts on the session topic as set out above.
Fast-track approval systems for projects are expanding across jurisdictions. This session compares models for accelerating major projects and asks what safeguards are essential to keep impact assessment credible, rights-aware, transparent, and environmentally effective.
Interested in current trends to streamline or simplify IA but concerned about IA efficacy and fairness? Join this interactive workshop on a draft IAIA FASTIPS on how IA can be made more efficient without undermining its efficacy, credibility or opportunities for meaningful engagement.
Fifty years after impact assessment became global, biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution keep worsening. The session asks whether IA has managed project impacts while missing planetary drivers, exploring adaptive assessment, changing baselines, and monitoring innovations to keep IA fit for the Anthropocene.
From Consultation to Co-Governance: Advancing Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Self-Determination and Free, Prior and Informed Consent in Impact Assessment
How should we teach impact assessment for its next 50 years? This session asks what education in the field must preserve, transform, and build, sharing curriculum mappings, surveys, and pedagogical innovations from around the world to set a research agenda and grow a global network of educators.
This session critically examines whether the expansion of formal SIA guidance is improving practice or unintentionally constraining it, and the ability to influence better social outcomes. The session reflects on the evolution of SIA from its practitioner-led and adaptive roots to its current structured and auditable form.
What’s driving initiatives to streamline IA? How has project-level IA evolved from a helpful tool to a perceived hindrance? Can we reconcile different views on streamlining to ensure IA remains useful for decision-making? Panelists will share perspectives on streamlining and engage in dialogue about finding common purpose.
Impact assessment should extend beyond identifying impacts to determining who benefits, who contributes, when investment is needed, and how climate adaptation can be financed across changing generations and adaptive pathways.
This session reflects on lessons from PS6 implementation to assess how no net loss has performed and whether shifting expectations toward nature-positive outcomes require evolution in impact assessment practice.
Impact assessment is built on prediction, but what can we learn from actual outcomes? This panel explores lessons from monitoring, follow-up and implementation, asking how experience from past projects can help improve future assessments, strengthen accountability and deliver better environmental and social outcomes.
How do project activities translate into health outcomes? This interactive workshop examines pathways linking environmental, social, cultural, and economic effects to changes in health and well-being. Participants will use an online Tool to directly connect project activities to potential health impacts. Bring your laptop!
Moving from silos to systems, IA must evolve to address increasingly complex environmental, social, and health challenges. Applying a decolonial planetary health lens broadens IA beyond project-level impacts to interconnected systems. This session explores where the field is headed and the transformative approaches needed.
This session explores Next Generation of Impact Assessment through adaptive learning, AI-enabled decision support, dynamic baselines and inclusive knowledge systems to strengthen resilient, equitable and sustainable environmental decision-making in a rapidly changing world.
From breakthrough ideas to lessons learned, explore the innovations reshaping linear infrastructure assessment. Hear practitioners share real experiences, then join an interactive Innovation Exchange to uncover the tools, technologies, and approaches delivering better, faster, and more efficient assessments.
How can scenario planning support scalable governance in complex social-ecological systems? Using the Great Barrier Reef as a case study, this Solutions Room explores lessons from marine and terrestrial contexts to identify adaptive approaches to regional cumulative-effects assessment, governance and management.
An interactive Solution Room using participant case studies and facilitated discussions to identify recurring social impact assessment challenges, compare lessons across contexts, and co-create practical actions for the future of SIA.
Historical case comparison has long guided impact assessment, but climate change and new extraction technologies in mining and oil and gas are straining that assumption. This session asks when past-case learning still works, when it misleads, and what should replace precedent when it fails.
This panel explores a Psycho-Social Impact Assessment of geothermal energy in Hawaii focusing on neighbors of existing facilities and Native Hawaiian Pele Practitioners. Discussion covers the PSIA, its origin, reactions to its release, and its implications in Hawaii and beyond for the future inclusion of PSIA in IA.
Health co-benefits offer a compelling pathway to accelerate climate action. This session explores emerging methods and practical experiences in assessing, quantifying and valuing the health impacts of mitigation actions to strengthen decision-making for climate measures, investment planning and their implementation.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Acknowledging historical impacts for culturally focused & grounded decision making and empowerment within Mushkegowuk communities.
This session is seeking papers and case studies to support the Global Commons Alliance and other planetary recovery institutions in applying systems-thinking IA to assess mitigation/regeneration plan alternatives and co-develop actionable plans to minimize planetary environmental, social and financial risks and uncertainty.
The five 'Fit for Future' Panels from IAIA '26 will be reconvened to review progress in supporting planetary recovery institutions and proposed solutions. Delegate's will then be asked to recommend next steps in applying IA and systems-thinking methodologies to assessment of mitigation/regeneration plan alternatives.
Why Human Rights Impact Assessment? Who should lead it? Which approach to apply when and how? How should be done? Engage in the debate of the present and future of a HRIA in an age of transitions.
The session seeks to spark interdisciplinary dialogue on systems-thinking assessments of climate-inclusive mitigation/regeneration alternative actions, "glocally". It explores advances in applying IA tools to address climate risks through improved mitigation and regeneration planning at all levels of decision making.
This focuses on the role of IA tools for policies, plans, and projects in the transition to urban sustainability. Can traditional IA address urban sustainability challenges? How has IA contributed to integrating decision-making for urban sustainability transitions towards sustainable, smart, resilient, and inclusive cities?
IAIA TEST
Join us in a panel discussion to examine the evolution of IA policy and practice in resource development, identifying successes, gaps, and overlooked lessons and come out with practical solutions to address environmental and social challenges in today’s rapidly changing science policy landscape.
As environmental laws in Australia & New Zealand undergo massive reform—from bioregional plans to replacing the RMA—practitioners face core tensions: speed vs. thoroughness, certainty vs. flexibility, & cumulative impacts vs. streamlined approvals. Join our expert panel to explore what works, critical gaps, & new pathways.
This session explores shifting IA from managing development impacts to reducing its risks and enhancing community resilience, investigating how IA can engage communities and enhance their resilience for DRR and climate action outcomes. This session contributes to establishing a leading role for IA in sustainable development
AI infrastructure is exposing gaps in traditional impact assessment. Through a collaborative Solution Room, participants will explore data centre impacts, water and energy demands, social licence and environmental justice, generating practical solutions to modernise impact assessment practice.
Impact assessment for hydroelectric projects has improved but has it become better and more effective? Projects still confront familiar past concerns, exacerbating community/NGO opposition. This session will demonstrate how these challenges have been managed and what role impact assessment has played in their resolution.
World Heritage sites increasingly face the impacts of spatial development. This session explores the application of impact assessment in the context of World Heritage by discussing lessons learned from specific cases and exploring how impact assessment can contribute to a balance between protection and development.
This session examines impact assessment in terrestrial and deep-sea mining, bringing together environmental, social, strategic, and integrated IA perspectives. It explores how lessons from past practices inform decision-making, how experience supports emerging approaches, and how knowledge transfer can strengthen IA.
After more than fifty years of practice, does Impact Assessment remain fit for the Anthropocene? This session explores how IA can evolve to address cumulative impacts, planetary boundaries, environmental justice, Indigenous knowledge, and transformative governance for more equitable and sustainable development.
We explore how climate adaptation interacts with mitigation pathways in future energy systems. IA methods and case studies will integrate climate projections, uncertainty, and equity to evaluate resilience, decarbonization and cumulative impacts, offering practical frameworks for decision ready impact assessments.
This session focuses on the synergistic impact assessment on cultural heritage and natural heritage, with a particular emphasis on mechanisms for incorporating traditional and local knowledge, as well as relevant policy and legal arrangements, with a view to promoting the holistic conservation of heritage.
Development cooperation is shifting towards large investments, simplification and strategic priorities. This demands new tools, skills and closer cooperation between environmental and finance experts to address 'do no significant harm' and nature-positive impacts. Contribute to discuss the challenges and opportunities.
Impact assessment (IA) has changed substantially over the past four decades, but has it become better and more effective? Join us in a fast-paced debate between intergenerational practitioners answering provocative questions on the past, present and future practice of IA - back to the future and forward to the past.
Ocean governance connects law, science, data and knowledge across boundaries. This open paper session asks what five decades of impact assessment have taught us and how new instruments, data methods and coordinated approaches — BBNJ, cumulative effects, climate risk, One Health — can shape a blue future.
Cross‑sector paper session exploring how learning from past SIA practice in high‑income countries can inform and improve future approaches. Contributors examine past learning, gaps, lived experience, and justice‑focused methods to support more meaningful, community‑centred social outcomes.
Strategic and systems thinking are well placed to assess planetary recovery, capable of guiding transformative action in a learning and governance process. With this session I seek to call upon those outthere thinking strategically and in systems in IA to share their practices and learnings.
The session aims to generate practical insights for advancing impact assessment processes that are credible, inclusive, culturally informed, and capable of supporting better outcomes for Indigenous communities, project proponents, and society.
Test a live impact challenge through an Indigenous assessment architecture. This interactive session invites participants to discover what becomes newly visible, where established methods are stretched, and how Indigenous knowledge can generate practical insight across contexts.
Preparatory work by Indigenous communities to express their values, laws, and priorities can shape Indigenous-led assessments and negotiated agreements. The session will explore how preparatory work shapes the evidence gathered, determination of significance, identification of mitigations, and negotiated outcomes.
This session explores impacts of regulatory process shortcuts on Indigenous-led Impact Assessments and shares good practices within a Canadian context that have broader relevance for international practitioners. Experiences adapting the IAIA framework for Indigenous-led assessment will be discussed.
Reframing Impact Assessment explores how Indigenous leadership and shared professional responsibility can transform assessment practice. Māori practitioners and non-Indigenous allies will discuss centering culture, creating space for Indigenous leadership and creating a more equitable approach.
Grounded in Ka mua, ka muri, this story circle brings together an Anishinaabe Law Keeper (Manito Aki Inaakonigaawin) and a Māori Elder to examine how ancient legal frameworks deconstruct colonial systems, assert economic sovereignty, and reclaim inherent jurisdiction over lands, waters, and future IA processes
There is wide variation globally in the use of Health Impact Assessment (HIA). Institutionalisation concerns the extent to which it is applied routinely and systematically. In this participatory workshop, participants will apply a framework to identify and prioritise actions to support institutionalisation of HIA in their o
Integrating First Nations and technical knowledge through co-constructed frameworks and processes can facilitate inclusive, coherent, and comprehensive impact assessment and management, focussing efforts on mutually affirmed, sustainable outcomes.
This session will critically examine the legacies of past resource extraction and the structural barriers that have historically prevented affected frontline communities from exercising meaningful agency over decisions that shape their lands, livelihoods, and futures.
Is IA keeping up with evolving environments, wide-ranging and unprecedented project types, and changing regulatory frameworks? In these rapidly changing environments, is IA able to accurately predict future baseline conditions and resultant impacts in a unforeseen future? Can mindful regulatory foci help guide the process?
Experience Storywork as a rigorous qualitative tool. This interactive 90-minute workshop uses live narrative immersion, qualitative coding exercises, and table discussions to equip practitioners with practical tools for integrating trauma-informed community narratives into standard IA framework
Follow-up is a critical but neglected EIA area in most jurisdictions. This renders EIA incomplete, assessment efforts in vain, a paper exercise, not contributing any environmental benefits. Learning from the past, the session will reflect on follow-up evolution, remaining challenges and promising improvement opportunities.
Embodying the conference theme of Ka mua, Ka muri: Inclusion of Traditional Knowledge is a best practice in modern environmental assessments; using examples from around the world, we will explore the successes in including TK in environmental assessments for mining projects.
A live game, played twice. A narrator runs a fictional mining project; expert witnesses answer unrehearsed; the audience votes its fate at six decisions — conventional sequence, then consent-first. No preparation, no role-play, no group work: watch, vote from your seat, and see when the project really dies.
A facilitated World Café on leadership in contested impact assessment. Participants will examine trust, authority, professional judgment, competing knowledge systems, institutional responsibility, misinformation, and technological change, generating practical recommendations for future practice.
This interactive workshop explores how Indigenous ways of knowing can strengthen impact assessment by focusing on relationships rather than isolated impacts. Using a Native American Medicine Wheel framework, participants will develop an action plan for their own impact assessment practice.
"Hello, my name is ('Max') and I survived an IA disaster". We learn most when things go wrong. Through sharing personal stories (and laughs) from experience, we derive solutions for future IA practice. Come and sit on the therapist's couch, or simply listen to the stories of others. All welcome!
Governance is crucial for effective IA follow-up, a critical component of best practice. IA follow-up governance incorporates all the processes and arrangements required to enable its implementation. This session will be discussing the link between governance and follow-up and see how these shape IA future.
Effects on community mental health from environmental disruptions have been recognised for decades. Yet, systematic reporting and support for effective responses are not common. How can we make psycho-social impacts legitimate in the eyes of key decision-makers in assessment firms, with clients, and with governments.
As New Zealand replaces its environmental legislation after 35 years, this panel reflects on what its assessment framework achieved and where it fell short. Practitioners with experience across the Act’s lifespan explore its legacy and the lessons the international IA community can carry forward.
Legacy impact assessment is an emerging practice for addressing historical environmental, social and human rights impacts. The Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment is a valuable case study with broad relevance, showing how the process can build understanding and inform remedy responses for complex legacy impacts.
How can IA translate sustainability ambitions into practice? This session examines how policy objectives and targets are used in IA processes, from scoping to setting evaluation criteria, judging significance and informing decisions. The focus is on making IA a more effective tool for supporting sustainable development.
Integrating global biodiversity data with site-level EIAs can bridge the gap between corporate reporting and on-the-ground mitigation. We introduce the IUCN RHINO approach and the IBAT module to calibrate site actions, enabling rapid, high-integrity decision-making aligned with global goals for a nature-positive future.
Exploration of AI in Health Impact Assessment drawing on past best practice and future innovation to empower communities. Examples include community use of AI to level the playing field in access to technical expertise; and how use of AI could better integrate cultural and technical models of health (with a Māori example).
Using the evolution of social impact assessment as a lens, this World Café will explore what impact assessment should become. Participants will reflect on what has genuinely changed, what has been forgotten, and what must be done differently to create more credible, inclusive, adaptive and outcomes-focused practice.
Environmental Assessment has changed profoundly in the last 30 years, with many legacy projects permitted without a modern EA or scrutiny – following the conference theme of Ka Mua, Ka Muri, how do we re-assess these projects being respectful of both the history of the project and modern standards?
Environmental safeguard systems have shaped planning and regulated developments for over three decades. Through a progression from safeguards to lessons learned and future directions, this session explores how integration of environmental safeguards in impact assessment can address biodiversity concerns and social equity.
This session explores how Indigenous-led studies and assessments can strengthen impact assessment outcomes. Participants will examine collaborative approaches that support meaningful participation, respect Indigenous Knowledge, and align assessment results with Indigenous values, priorities, and stewardship objectives.
'Major Projects and Big Decisions: Impacts on Indigenous Peoples and Territories' is a new book release in Canada. Select authors and other speakers critically examine megaprojects conducted in Indigenous territories to explore how we can foster better development decisions in Canada and internationally.
The session will be structured in two parts: i) a series of case study presentations highlighting key challenges encountered during ESIA preparation; and ii) a panel discussion to examine these challenges in greater depth and identify practical lessons for future processes.
Impact Assessment (IA) and the Circular Economy (CE) can reinforce each other. IA tools can evaluate both CE initiatives and the effects of policies, plans, and projects on circularity, while CE principles and strategies can enhance IA processes and practice, making IA itself more circular and resource-efficient.
Join us for the ultimate impact assessment-themed "pub quiz" with irreverent questions and silly prizes but some serious messages underneath.
Are you considering writing an article or professional practice paper (PPP) on impact assessment but aren’t sure where to start? The editorial group of IAIA’s journal, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, will present ways to write a good article and get it published. Bring your questions and ideas for articles!
This panel discussion draws on case studies, expertise, and ‘live’ audience input to test a model for credible, rights-respecting, evidence-based and implementable practice under constrained economic and geopolitical conditions.
The Rights of Nature - giving Nature in various forms standing as a legal persona, is a rapidly growing movement worldwide. Join us in determining how to incorporate RoN – enabling Nature’s participation as an I&AP in development decisions which affect it – within IA practice, catalysing a radical change in approach
Nature-based solutions can play a pivotal role in environmental impact assessment and management. This session aims to learn from different case studies related to the design, implementation, monitoring, and/or performance evaluation of nature-based solutions.
This session will host panel discussions that highlight the paradigm shift of Indigenous involvement in major projects, specific to the Environmental Assessments the projects undergo. It is no longer acceptable for Indigenous communities to take a backseat in these decisions.
This session will provide a forum for discussion on the necessity for the evolution of impact assessments in the offshore energy sector to address regional-scale development, transboundary effects, cumulative impacts, biodiversity conservation, Indigenous knowledge, and lender/stakeholder expectations.
This session examines how AI is transforming impact assessment practice—from predictive modelling to automated reporting while exploring how to balance innovation with the enduring principles of rigor, trust, and community-centred practice.
How do ADB and its development partners apply safeguard requirements adapted to the Pacific’s unique social, economic, environmental, and capacity constraints? This session will explore the differentiated approaches, partnerships, and practical solutions used to achieve effective and sustainable safeguards outcomes.
Showcases practical applications of open-source tools and approaches in IA, including geospatial analysis, modelling, open data, and AI and ML. It explores how open-source practice supports transparency, accessibility, knowledge sharing and capacity building, helping make IA more equitable, transferable and resilient.
This session explores the interface between national EIA permitting practices and lender biodiversity safeguards. Speakers will examine how biodiversity-inclusive EIA can better support bankable, credible and implementable project outcomes beyond legal compliance.
IAIA is more than just an annual conference. Learn more about this global network, the resources available to you, and the practical ways you can get involved – with the conference and beyond – to share your expertise and help advance the practice of IA worldwide.
A panel discussion of emerging issues with respect to the Precautionary Principle and its use or misuse in impact assessment and decision-making, followed by a workshop to start preparing IAIA guidelines
This panel explores how the evolution of protected area management in Africa can inform future conservation and impact assessment practice. Drawing on conservation, finance, implementation, and community perspectives, it examines lessons from past approaches, governance models, and community rights to support inclusive, res
This session examines and discusses different approaches to effectively measuring and reporting on impacts and benefits to indigenous communities across the world.
This workshop explores how Indigenous peoples are drawing on their worldviews and knowledge systems to develop new tools, methods, and practices of IA. A panel shares examples of Indigenous-led IA then leads a discussion on innovative approaches to support Indigenous communities in addressing their priorities and values.
This session will focus on the latest EIA advances and policy implications in regional environmental assessment and zoning management, and will explore the future trends of IA through practices and global sharing.
IA reports should support regulatory decision-makers to identify and balance trade-offs, leading to a better sustainability focus. However, there is a gap between theoretical trade-off frameworks and practice. This session will present background research on this gap, before opening to audience input and reflection.
This interactive World Café invites participants to collectively reimagine the Next Generation of Impact Assessment and identify practical pathways for strengthening environmental decision-making in a rapidly changing world.
When displacement protects rather than harms, standard impact assessment frameworks fall short. This paper examines the Salvador SBN Project in Brazil, where resettling ~770 households from certified landslide and flood zones is itself the risk-reduction instrument.
For ACFN, reclaiming the land is reconnecting with its Spirit. This knowledge grounds our work as we develop cultural and spiritual indicators, assess cumulative impacts, and prepare to manage the impacts of climate change in a province determined to ignore the lessons of the past as we move into the future.
How can impact practitioners better understand lived experience at scale? This workshop explores the use of AI-supported social research, sentiment analysis and structured social outcome frameworks to strengthen social impact assessment, community engagement and ongoing monitoring.
Road safety is systematically underassessed in impact assessment, not only for infrastructure, but across virtually any project generating traffic exposure. Drawing on IFC PS 4, this session examines road safety as a shared, cross-sectoral responsibility and proposes a practical framework for assessing it consistently.
The session explores how impact assessment can better safeguard intangible cultural heritage through adaptive, rights-based and community-led monitoring approaches that place Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the centre of decision-making.
This session explores the progress, challenges, and opportunities for Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) implementation in Cambodia and the Mekong countries. It highlights legal developments, regional experiences, and practical approaches to strengthening evidence-based and sustainable development planning.
This panel explores how impact assessors, development banks, developers, governments, communities, and civil society can better understand one another’s roles, constraints, and expectations. The session will identify practical ways to reduce mistrust, improve collaboration, and support sustainable development outcomes.
Has progress in IA benefited everyone equally? Drawing on the Indigenous principle of Seven Generations and Culturally Relevant GBA+, this workshop explores practical approaches to creating more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable impact assessment processes.
The panel will discuss and engage the audience on practical approaches for moving beyond Indigenous consultation towards collaborative design and shared decision-making. The session concludes with a transferable Indigenous Participatory Design Framework that practitioners can adapt for major projects worldwide.
IAIA’s 2015 SIA Guidance document is now over 10 years old, and needs updating. This table-based discussion workshop is an opportunity for SIA practitioners and stakeholders to nominate what changes should be made to this key SIA resource.
Developing countries have established distinctive systems for assessing and governing the social impacts of investment projects. This session will trace the evolution, examining how international knowledge has been adapted, localized, and transformed into a comprehensive governance framework.
Social impact assessment (SIA) is going to space. And we need you to navigate the journey. Join this highly interactive Pecha Kucha session to boldly go where SIA has never gone before (that we know of!). We'll explore the needs, challenges and opportunities for extraterrestrial SIA.* *space puns guaranteed!
Urban renewal too often displaces the communities it should serve. This session asks how social impact assessment can translate policy into action—revisiting lessons from past projects and Malaysia's statutory experience to make engagement, livelihood restoration, and monitoring deliver real outcomes.
Public participation is a cornerstone of democratic environmental governance that, together with social justice, promotes inclusive, transparent, and equitable decision-making in environmental management. Within EIA processes, EAPs should facilitate meaningful engagement as they communicate technical information.
Social License to Operate emerges from decisions made under uncertainty rather than isolated engagement activities. In this interactive Decision Lab, participants navigate a complex territory, negotiate with stakeholders, allocate limited resources, and explore how professional decisions shape project legitimacy.
This interactive panel combines real-time Mentimeter polling with expert commentary across underwater, terrestrial, and societal acoustics. Each round polls audience knowledge and perceptions; a panelist then presents current evidence and regulatory context; facilitating discussion about acoustic impact assessment practice.
This session examines Korea’s statutory Climate Change Impact Assessment system, covering institutional development, GHG mitigation, climate risk and adaptation, and follow-up. Drawing on early experience, it highlights key lessons and priorities for more effective climate integration in impact assessment.
Can experts reach different conclusions using the same evidence? In this interactive simulation, teams evaluate an identical project through a series of decisions. Compare outcomes, challenge assumptions, and explore how judgement, uncertainty, and values shape impact assessment.
Using PechaKucha format, this session will explore how livelihood restoration programs under infrastructure projects can better integrate local knowledge, meaningful participation, and community institutions to deliver sustainable, resilient livelihood outcomes.
Systems thinking is gaining attention in IA, but implementation depends on demand. This workshop explores, using a systems approach, how proponents, governance actors, finance and IA practitioners can interact to create demand and move systems thinking into commissioned IA practice for a future within planetary boundaries.
This session highlights innovative practice from the Pacific region for disability inclusion in impact assessments. The objectives are to learn from and discuss experiences of disability inclusive climate action in the Pacific, exchange knowledge and reflect on good practice in disability inclusive impact assessments.
The "Technological Trends Shaping the Future of Impact Assessment" panel explores how digital innovations—like automation and real-time data—are redefining assessments. The session addresses technical benefits and risks, how to measure progress, required ethical guardrails and essential human oversight.
Naming institutional blind spots prevents derailing IA value, ensuring IA finds its way into decision-making to support successful projects and land-use outcomes. In 2026, we shared success/failure stories. In 2027, we ask why and how we prevent IA from being shortchanged, a performative construct, or passed over entirely.
This session provides a space to consider how assessing the impacts of disaster, conflicts and other crises are different, in conceptual approaches, content, execution and results, from normal impact assessments. Presentations dealing with impact assessments linked to disasters, conflict or crises are very welcome!
This session will provide a forum for discussion on the evolution of biodiversity impact assessment (BIA), including how integrated approaches that consider ecosystem function, connectivity, resilience, ecosystem services, cumulative effects, and biodiversity outcomes are changing the future direction of BIA.
How do we build the next generation of impact assessment professionals? Discover real-world lessons from certification and professional recognition programs worldwide. Explore the successes, failures, and governance strategies shaping stronger competencies, greater credibility, and lasting trust in the profession.
A panel audit of stranded projects, consent failure, and revival by authority, not pressure, turning the graveyard of failed approvals into foresight for impact assessment.
This session explores the intersection of impact assessment, nature-related credit markets and claims, and disclosure frameworks. It examines shared concepts, emerging differences in measurement approaches, and opportunities for mutual learning, including how IA can contribute to the development of robust nature markets.
An interactive simulation where participants act as finance, businesses, workers, communities, and policymakers to navigate the transition to a low-carbon economy while balancing financial returns, social equity, and resilience.
Traditional cumulative effects practice often emphasizes stressors and thresholds. This interactive workshop explores a relational approach, where cumulative effects are understood through relationships among people, place, generations, and governance, culminating in a collaboratively created Living Landscape Map.
This Panel session will explore the importance of being human in a world that is becoming increasingly digital. This session will focus on the role of frontline planners and other experts involved in consenting processes in a NZ context but will be applicable to other contexts.
With over 50 years of IA experience, and as new legislation is being developed, can we take the lessons of the past and shape the future of IA in New Zealand? From development control to spatial plans and climate change adaptation, how will IA of all types contribute?
The session explores how impact assessments work with and through the historical and territorial legacy issues tied to their projects, exploring frameworks, methods of practice, and case study interventions that demonstrate the productive value of historical legacy for both affected communities and project sustainability.
Using short case-based provocations and facilitated discussion, participants will connect wellbeing, biodiversity, governance and implementation to support more inclusive, nature-positive urban development and inform future IUCN and IAIA work.
This session discusses efforts to simply or streamline impact assessment from around the world. It invites reflection on not only the risks of regulatory change undermining the effectiveness of EIA, but also the opportunities. How can the future of impact assessment be better as well as simpler?
The session will use inclusive approaches such as storytelling to draw on the wisdom of cultural knowledge to understand how low-lying countries are experiencing climate change and to find collaborative solutions for the future. The session will showcase innovative approaches to SIA that respect different knowledge types.
This session reviews non-standard and novel approaches to assessing the environmental impact of deep-sea polymetallic nodule mining. It presents technological developments and/or application of approaches utilized in other areas but not yet adopted in deep-sea assessments.
This session aims at taking stock of the state-of-the-art of IA and transport infrastructure development that is facing huge challenges. Presenters are invited to discuss experiences and practices with participants. This session is part of the developing an international handbook on IA and transport infrastructure.
This panel examines landscape-level turning points in mining, from pollution incidents and regulatory shifts to corporate biodiversity commitments that force offset strategies to be rebuilt at scale. Case studies explore how catalysts reshaped closure and restoration planning and drove stronger NNL and NG trajectories.
Impacts and grievances do not respect the project calendar: livelihood gaps, unmet commitments and residual effects often surface after formal instruments expire. Using grievances as its organizing lens, this session looks back at closed projects to examine what persists beyond closure and what that reveals about assumption
The workshop shows how three tools of argument can help people guide and monitor the work of Artificial Intelligence. They help professionals use the powerful features of AI while maximizing their professional expertise to find and correct the errors and simplifications that AI can introduce.
What can carbon project developers and practitioners learn from both failures and successes in impact assessment across other sectors to adaptively shift course and avoid predictable mistakes. Carbon offset projects continue to face growing scrutiny over social harms, exposing gaps in VCM safeguards.
This panel explores frameworks that recognize the interconnected environmental, social, cultural, health, and economic effects of development projects. Speakers will examine systems-based approaches and consider their relevance, transferability, and role in advancing more integrated, equitable, and effective assessments.
Here in Canterbury NZ we developed an Integrated Assessment tool and use it. We’ll describe our guide, outline how we practice, and present the outcomes. There’ll be some short presentations, hands-on work with the method, and a panel discussion/ questions. You’ll have enough information to practice it back home.
Co-led by two practitioners working on Indigenous-Led IAs in Canada, this session examines barriers to genuinely embedding IK in IA—epistemological mismatches, rigid timelines, false promises, tokenistic consultation, and capacity gaps—and explores what meaningful integration requires as Indigenous-led assessments grow.
Was impact assessment designed for a world that no longer exists? This session invites practitioners and researchers to rethink the assumptions, institutions, and practices that should shape the next generation of impact assessment.
This interactive World Café invites participants to reflect on lessons from the past and identify the principles, knowledge, and practices that should shape the future of impact assessment. Opening reflections from industry and Indigenous leaders will ground the discussion in practical experience.
This session provides a human-centered space for practitioners to reflect on their identity and collaboratively build strategies for professional wellbeing, agency and alignment.
An interactive World Café centring women’s stories across impact assessment development, implementation and post-implementation. Participants will look back on progress, barriers and uncomfortable truths, then identify practical actions to build a safer, more equitable and inclusive profession.