Session Description
Social Impact Assessment (SIA) has developed within established regulatory and planning systems with changing expectations around environmental, social, economic, and health outcomes. Despite decades of practice, many longstanding challenges remain unresolved across contemporary assessments. This proposal sets out a cross sector paper session exploring what practitioners in high income contexts can learn from past approaches to improve future practice. The session will be co-chaired by Laura Walker (Equality Impact Consulting), Dr James Beard (Mott MacDonald) and Dr Angela Curl (University of Otago). The co chairs bring extensive experience across sectors where social considerations are routinely assessed, including transport, the built environment, water, and energy.
Drawing on insights from these sectors, contributors will examine past approaches, where gaps remain, and how future SIA could move from distributional assessments towards approaches that involve communities and address restorative and epistemic justice, improving social outcomes rather than mitigating social impacts. Papers will be sought exploring topics such as: How regulatory, planning, and organisational cultures have influenced SIA;Which approaches have been most successfully adopted in practice; How equity, distributional impacts, and lived experience have been integrated or overlooked; Approaches that move beyond distributional assessments and consider restorative and epistemic justice; and
The role of participatory decision making and Indigenous knowledges.
The session will be relevant to all seeking to understand how SIA practice has changed over time and where it can add value in the future
Session Summary
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.
Additional Information
additional co-chair Dr James Beard at Mott MacDonald
Session Chair
Laura Walker
Equality Impact Consulting
United Kingdom
Session Co-chair
Angela Curl
University of Otago
New Zealand