Session Description
In 1985, impact assessment practitioners gathered in Wellington to discuss challenges that remain familiar today: integrating impact assessment into planning and decision-making, building trust with communities, addressing cumulative effects, managing uncertainty, and ensuring monitoring and follow-up. These themes were captured in a paper co-authored by former IAIA President David Marshall, who will join this panel more than forty years later to reflect on what has changed, and what has not.
Impact assessment has evolved significantly since then, with advances in social, equality and climate assessment. Yet many familiar frustrations remain. Social impacts can still be secondary to environmental and technical considerations, engagement can become a compliance exercise, and assessment findings do not always influence design or decision-making.
This session asks a simple but provocative question: why are we still grappling with many of the challenges identified more than forty years ago?
Bringing together perspectives from Canada, the United Kingdom, Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider impact assessment community, the panel will explore where progress has been made, where barriers persist, and what lessons remain relevant today. Themes include participation and community influence, social and equality outcomes, cumulative effects, climate resilience, adaptive management, monitoring and follow-up, and turning assessment findings into better decisions and outcomes. Contributors are invited to share case studies and reflections on what the profession can learn from different approaches.
Session Summary
Has impact assessment become better at influencing decisions and outcomes, or simply better at producing assessments? This session explores why long-standing challenges around integration, implementation and outcomes continue to endure.
Additional Information
This session revisits themes identified in Environmental Management and Impact Assessment: Some Lessons and Guidance from Canadian and International Experience (Marshall et al., 1985), available at https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/acee-ceaa/En105-71-12-1985-eng.pdf
Confirmed panellists include David Marshall, former IAIA President (Canada), Corinne Marti, Senior Associate, Social Outcomes, Beca (New Zealand), Sarah Marshall, Senior Principal Consultant, Social Impact, Mott MacDonald (United Kingdom)
Session Chair
Sarah Marshall
Mott MacDonald
United Kingdom
Session Co-chair
Corinne Marti
Beca
New Zealand