Session Description
More than fifty years of formal impact assessment have produced sophisticated methods, regulatory systems, professional standards, and extensive experience with public participation. Yet assessments continue to encounter conflict, institutional mistrust, contested evidence, and disagreement over whose knowledge and interests should shape decisions.
Consistent with the IAIA27 theme, Ka mua, ka muri: Looking back for the future of impact assessment, this session asks what the field’s history can teach us about leadership in contested processes. It begins from the premise that conflict is not simply an obstacle to be managed. Conflict can reveal important information about values, rights, authority, institutional design, professional practice, and the distribution of project risks and benefits.
The session invites empirical, conceptual, and practice-based papers on leadership and conflict across impact assessment systems. Topics may include regulatory leadership, interdisciplinary disagreement, Indigenous-led and community-based assessment, professional hierarchy, institutional culture, psychological safety, public trust, misinformation, digital technologies, and the relationship between technical evidence and social or political legitimacy.
Papers may revisit earlier approaches, identify neglected lessons, or examine emerging challenges requiring new forms of leadership. Particular attention will be given to work that considers how leadership affects whether disagreement is recognized, suppressed, escalated, or used to improve assessment and decision-making.
The session will open with a framing paper, followed by selected presentations and a moderated synthesis.
Session Summary
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.
Additional Information
Submissions are encouraged from researchers, regulators, consultants, proponents, Indigenous practitioners, community-based professionals, and public participation specialists. Comparative studies, historical reflections, case analyses, and practice-based papers are welcome.
Session Chair
Tracy Hart
Retired from World Bank
United States