Session Description
A Christchurch Carol will adapt the theme of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” fable to the current economically-driven trends towards faster, less participative and more restricted impact assessment. An advocate for those trends will have their enthusiasm for “fast-track” IA procedures challenged, first by the Ghost of Impact Assessment Past, who will point out the original reasons for the establishment of IA as a disciplined process. The Ghost of Impact Assessment Present will then summarise current best practice IA and highlight how it benefits better decision-making.
In a World Café format, the audience will work at tables to discuss and formulate key messages in favour of robust modern impact assessment, with a view to persuading the advocate to reconsider their position. The tables will then collectively develop a message from the Ghost of Impact Assessment Future, pointing out how acknowledgement of lessons from past and current experience can inform best future practice, and the environmental, societal and economic risks of disregarding those lessons.
The conference theme will resonate in the session as it draws together threads of integrated practice over decades to question the validity and utility of abbreviated procedures designed to reduce scrutiny and to deliver pre-determined outcomes. Pitches from the “ghosts” and from the “fast-track” advocate will be brisk and entertaining, fuelling critical discussions at the World Café tables. Rounds of movement between tables will inject energy into the formulation of insights for the future. What responses to modern pressures and tensions can lead impact assessment towards a Dickensian “happy ending”?
Session Summary
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.
Additional Information
While we have nominated World Café format for this session proposal, it will have elements of other formats, including a debate and a workshop.
Session Chair
Jack Krohn
Krohn Environmental Sense
Australia
Session Co-chair
Tanya Burdett
Tanya Burdett and Associates.
Australia