Session Description
Impact assessment professionals regularly work where evidence is incomplete, authority is distributed, values differ, and public confidence is uncertain. In such settings, formal procedures do not always provide sufficient guidance on how leadership should be exercised.
In keeping with the IAIA27 theme, Ka mua, ka muri: Looking back for the future of impact assessment, this World Café will draw on participants’ experience to identify what the profession should retain from past practice, what it should recover, and what it must change.
Participants will rotate through facilitated discussions built around practical dilemmas. These may include consultation processes that meet formal requirements but provide limited influence; conflict between institutional mandates; tensions among scientific, Indigenous, local, and experiential knowledge; declining public trust; misinformation; and the growing use of artificial intelligence in evidence review and decision support.
The purpose is to develop collective professional judgment. Participants will consider how responsibility should be shared, what leadership is required when no single institution controls the process, and how practitioners should act when compliance, legitimacy, and trust do not align.
Table hosts will document areas of agreement, disagreement, and uncertainty. A plenary synthesis will identify practical principles and recommendations for regulators, consultants, proponents, Indigenous and community practitioners, researchers, and professional associations. The findings will inform a post-conference white paper on leadership in contested impact assessment.
Session Summary
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.
Additional Information
Participants will rotate through facilitated tables, each focused on a distinct leadership challenge. Table hosts will use a common recording template and contribute to a plenary synthesis. Movable seating, round tables, flip charts, or shared digital note-taking tools are preferred.
Session Chair
Palash Sanyal
Governing Water Consulting/University of Calgary
Canada