Session Description
Calls for impact assessment to be simplified, streamlined or simply made more efficient are regularly made, often by governments and proponents seeking faster project approvals. EIA has been a target for such reform almost since its inception in the late 1960s with various rationales offered, the current impetus being the need to accelerate the energy transition and increase the uptake of renewable energy. Whatever the reason, history suggests that calls for reform will continue to be part of impact assessment practice into the future.
Over time, numerous researchers have raised concerns about simplification efforts ‘watering down’ impact assessment through regulatory changes that remove crucial steps, reduce opportunities for public participation, and generally undermine the effectiveness of impact assessment as a decision-aiding process. However, the simplification agenda also offers opportunities to improve not only the transactional effectiveness of impact assessment, but also its procedural and substantive effectiveness. This requires looking beyond regulatory change to also consider changes in administrative processes that reduce the burden on proponents, regulators and the community, and to changes in praxis – the way in which we do what we do as impact assessment practitioners.
This session invites papers exploring the simplification of impact assessment in different jurisdictions. What forms of simplification are being proposed, and why? What are the risks and opportunities associated with these? What can we do as practitioners to ensure that learnings from decades of impact assessment regulation and practice inform processes of reform into the future?
Session Summary
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?
Session Chair
Jenny Pope
Integral Sustainability
Australia