Session Description
Governments around the world have adopted ambitious sustainability commitments, from net-zero targets to biodiversity commitments and the SDGs. Impact assessment (IA) is expected to play a central role in translating these political ambitions into informed decisions about plans, programmes, and projects. Yet an important question remains: how are policy objectives used in IA processes, and to what extent do they influence decision-making? This session is a response to the practice-based and academic interests for objective-led, rather than baseline-driven, IA approaches that put sustainable development and substantive purposes of IA at the forefront of practice. It focuses on how policy goals are incorporated into IA frameworks, used to define assessment criteria and indicators, inform evaluations of alternatives and impacts, and support conclusions about sustainability performance. Key questions addressed are: How are the most relevant objectives identified? How are they translated into assessment and/or significance criteria? To what extent do they enhance transparency, legitimacy, and effectiveness of IA in supporting a sustainable development? The session welcomes abstract submissions regarding theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions examining the use of policy goals and sustainability commitments in environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment, social impact assessment, and related IA approaches. By showcasing these perspectives, the session aims to provide inspiration for objective-led approaches to practice and identify pathways for strengthening the contribution of IA to sustainable development.
Session Summary
How can IA translate sustainability ambitions into practice? This session examines how policy objectives and targets are used in IA processes, from scoping to setting evaluation criteria, judging significance and informing decisions. The focus is on making IA a more effective tool for supporting sustainable development.
Session Chair
Emilia Ravn Boess
The Danish Centre for Environmental Assessment (DCEA), Aalborg University
Denmark