Jenny Pope

Sustainability assessment: the state of the art

Sustainability assessment is a recent framing of impact assessment that places emphasis on delivering positive net sustainability gains now and into the future. It can be directed to any type of decision-making, can take many forms and is fundamentally pluralistic. Drawing mainly on theoretical papers along with the few case study examples published to date (from England, Western Australia, South Africa and Canada), this paper outlines what might be considered state-of-the-art sustainability assessment. Such processes must: (i) address sustainability imperatives with positive progress towards sustainability; (ii) establish a workable concept of sustainability in the context of individual decisions/assessments; (iii) adopt formal mechanisms for managing unavoidable trade-offs in an open, participative and accountable manner; (iv) embrace the pluralistic inevitabilities of sustainability assessment; and (v) engender learning throughout. We postulate that sustainability assessment may be at the beginning of a phase of expansion not seen since environmental impact assessment was adopted worldwide.

Strengthening impact assessment: a call for integration and focus

We suggest that the impact assessment community has lost its way based on our observation that impact assessment is under attack because of a perceived lack of efficiency. Specifically, we contend that the proliferation of different impact assessment types creates separate silos of expertise and feeds arguments for not only a lack of efficiency but also a lack of effectiveness of the process through excessive specialisation and a lack of interdisciplinary practice. We propose that the solution is a return to the basics of impact assessment with a call for increased integration around the goal of sustainable development and focus through better scoping. We rehearse and rebut counter arguments covering silo-based expertise, advocacy, democracy, sustainability understanding and communication. We call on the impact assessment community to rise to the challenge of increasing integration and focus, and to engage in the debate about the means of strengthening impact assessment.

The state of the art of impact assessment in 2012

This special issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal aims to present the state of the art of a number of impact assessment tools. It is timely given that environmental impact assessment is now 42 years old (beginning on 1 January 1970 when President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act in the USA). It updates the last International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) overview of the field that was published in 1995 (Vanclay and Bronstein), which preceded the 1996 International Effectiveness Study (Sadler 1996). The Effectiveness Study itself has been updated, but, at the time of press, any conclusions are still pending. The initial problem for the editors was to decide the appropriate focus for papers, as only six could be selected, which suggests we have made judgements about the relative importance of various types of impact assessment. We decided not to include papers that dealt with generic types of impact assessment, or components of impact assessment, that could be applicable to any process, so cumulative effects assessment was not included, nor was public participation, despite our acknowledgement of their importance. Several of the papers in this special edition do address these concerns in relation to their specific topics, however. Determining which forms of impact assessment should then be the focus was no easy choice; we considered ecological impact assessment, climate impact assessment and technology assessment among others. We acknowledge that our choices could have been very different, and some readers may not agree with them, but we chose to consider some forms of assessment originally covered by Vanclay and Bronstein for which we were aware there was extensive practice globally, as well as two newcomers that we believe have now achieved this status. So this issue covers the state of the art of environmental impact assessment (EIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA), policy assessment, social impact assessment (SIA), health impact assessment (HIA) and sustainability assessment, where SEA and sustainability assessment have emerged as significant bodies of theory and practice since the publication of Vanclay and Bronstein (1995). We have left open the possibility of producing a further issue dealing with some of the impact assessment processes we could not consider on this occasion. Having identified the topics, our next challenge was to identify appropriate authors to be invited to write each paper. We extended invitations to the Chair(s) of IAIA Sections where possible, and to others who have demonstrated leadership in their fields, for example by the publication of recent articles or books. Inmany cases the invited authors also drew upon the expertise of others; the HIA paper, with its 10 authors from that IAIA Section, represents a particularly collaborative effort. We are extremely grateful to all the authors for their tremendous hard work and responsiveness throughout the 12-month process that is behind this special edition. In the interests of academic rigour and continuing the spirit of collaboration among a broad range of contributors, we relied on three anonymous peer reviewers for each paper rather than the standard two. All of the reviewers engaged deeply with the material andmade significant contributions to the final forms of each paper.We set aword limit of 7,000 words per article, which every paper failed tomeet (they are all closer to 8,000 words in length). This is partly because the remit for each paper is very large as we are asking authors to sumup everything there is to knowabout the state of the art, a topic for which there has been 17 years of practice since the Vanclay and Bronstein (1995) book. We also considered what the focus of each paper should be. To allow some overview to be taken of the state of the art of impact assessment in general, we tried to standardize the content, asking for:

Applying sustainability assessment models

Three sustainability assessment models are applied to a major Australian resource proposal — the Gorgon gas development. ‘Environmental impact assessment (EIA)-driven integrated assessment’ resulted in significant environmental resources being ‘traded’ for socio-economic benefits. ‘Objectives-led integrated assessment’ seeks to maximise social, economic and environmental objectives set by decision-makers. The Gorgon assessment focused on meeting the proponents strategic objectives, thus missing an opportunity to maximise benefits for the wider community. ‘Assessment for sustainability’ uses sustainability criteria determined by society. The Western Australian Government has recently begun to derive such criteria and the Gorgon proposal would have failed to meet some of them. The actual Gorgon assessment was conducted within a sustainability framework, but the EIA-based approach used did not result in sustainable outcomes. An ‘assessment for sustainability’ approach offers the most promising avenue for future applications.

Contributing to sustainability as an environmental impact assessment practitioner

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is the pre-eminent regulatory tool used worldwide in the name of sustainable development. Whilst it may not be perfect for this purpose, and recognising that project- based EIA has been soundly criticised for its perceived failings, it remains the preferred and most widely used tool for project-level assessment and the key (if not only) sustainable developmentoriented tool in many countries. Drawing on examples and experience from Southern Africa and Australia, we urge practitioners to raise the bar on day-to-day EIA activities that will push the vectors of sustainability. We can all achieve positive gains for the environmental, social and economic parameters of development proposals through informed professionalism and the pursuit of best practice. Given that EIA is well enshrined in legislation worldwide, it is our responsibility as practitioners to use this important tool to maximise opportunities for sustainability.

Exploring the psychology of trade-off decision-making in environmental impact assessment

Dealing with trade-offs lies at the heart of environmental impact assessment (EIA). However, there has been scant reflection to date on the concept of trade-offs within the EIA literature. This paper aims to contribute to the thinking about trade-offs by distilling key learning points from research conducted within the field of psychology. In particular, the paper explores three interrelated questions namely: When are trade-off decisions difficult? How do we react when faced with difficult trade-off decisions? And how can we deal with difficult trade-off decisions? The research confirms that EIA functions within a very difficult trade-off decision-making context and that observed behaviour related to these difficult decisions can be explained from a psychology perspective. In order to deal better with trade-off decisions, it is helpful to be able to predict decision difficulty and anticipate resultant behaviour. Moreover, the way we present and frame decisions affects their outcomes.

Demonstrating the benefits of impact assessment for proponents

This paper is a call for more studies that explicitly demonstrate the benefits of impact assessment to proponents. While the community of impact assessment practitioners generally believe that impact assessment is beneficial (to all stakeholders), empirical demonstration of this, particularly to project proponents, is warranted, and especially in financial terms. While many impact assessment benefits are intangible in nature, learning from the business and management literature shows how such benefits can usefully be measured based upon perceptions of managers within proponent agencies in tandem with archival material. A framework of the nature of impact assessment benefits for proponents, and their relative tangibility, is presented along with a five-step methodology for determining benefits. We now call upon impact assessment researchers and practitioners alike to use this framework and methodology to structure investigations from practice that will contribute to an empirical database for demonstrating the benefits of impact assessment to proponents.

Handbook of Sustainability Assessment

The Handbook of Sustainability Assessment introduces the theory and practice of sustainability assessment and showcases the state-of-the-art research. The aim is to provide inspiration and guidance to students, academics and practitioners alike and to contribute to the enhancement of sustainability assessment practice worldwide. It emphasises how traditional impact assessment practices can be enhanced to contribute to sustainable outcomes. Featuring original contributions from leading sustainability assessment researchers and practitioners, it forms part of the Research Handbooks on Impact Assessment series.

A conceptual framework for sustainability assessment

Extract In Chapter 1 we described the burgeoning use of the term ‘sustainability assessment’, and the many different applications of sustainability assessment that can now be found in the literature, some of which are forms of ex ante impact assessment and some which take an ex post evaluation approach. There is also variety in terminology used to refer to the sustainability assessment that is a form of impact assessment, including sustainability appraisal (particularly in England), integrated assessment, integrated sustainability assessment and sustainability impact assessment. The point has not yet been reached at which there is universal consensus as to what any of these terms mean, much less a commonly understood process for conducting them. International practice varies considerably depending upon the legal and governance structures in place, the broader policy context and the form of decision making to which the assessment is applied. This variety is evident in the recently published book Sustainability Appraisal: A Sourcebook and Reference Guide to International Experience (Dalal-Clayton and Sadler, 2014). Given the variety of practice and lack of a standardised approach, the first challenge faced in any discussion of sustainability assessment is to articulate how it can be meaningfully distinguished from other forms of impact assessment and other environmental governance processes. It has been pointed out that ‘the common cause shared by all environmental assessment and management tools [is] that of sustainability, even though many did not start out with that as the underlying purpose’ (Sheate, 2009, p. 19).

International perspectives on the strengthening of impact assessment through integration and focus

This paper consolidates international responses to the argument that there is a need to strengthen impact assessment (IA) through greater integration and focus. It is based on invited reflections by various international authors in the field of IA. The main conclusions are that power and context are important underlying reasons for the diversity of IA types; that in certain instances IA legislation works against achieving integration and focus; and that there is a pressing need to be able to measure and demonstrate added value and effectiveness in practice. The paper concludes by setting a research agenda reflecting the need to better understand why diversity exists in IA, what stakeholders expect from the process and how to improve practice based on greater understanding of what the various types of IA deliver.