~ I2S Director Sara Bice with contributions from I2S Research Fellows Dr Ruth O’Connor and Dr Emerson Sanchez
The I2S Team distils their top dozen insights from the recent 42nd annual International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) conference in Kuching, Malaysia.
IAIA’s conference theme, ‘Resilience through Impact Assessment and Leadership’, sparked debate, discussion and sharing about how we can meet the climate, geopolitical and social challenges of our time while securing quality of life for future generations. Almost 700 impact assessment practitioners, clients, researchers, investors and regulators from 92 countries shared the insights, trends and cases shaping major industry and project delivery.
I2S team members Sara Bice, Emerson Sanchez and Ruth O’Connor chaired sessions and delivered presentations on raising the profile of the ‘S’ in ESG, social risk management, and environmental and social performance of major infrastructure projects. I2S also teamed up with the World Bank to organise a stream of three sessions focused on the social aspects of major infrastructure projects.
Here are a dozen emerging issues we think you should know about:
1. Social inclusion: Social inclusion, attention to diversity and integration of vulnerable, marginalised and indigenous groups appeared in all of the sessions we attended. I2S’ session, ‘Putting the ‘S’ in ESG’, included World Bank Global Director Social Sustainability and Inclusion Dr Louise Cord who shared the social sustainability framework developed in her recent co-authored book, Social sustainability in development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century, available open source here. By attending to social inclusion, social cohesion and resilience through process legitimacy (think, the procedural fairness commonly associated with a social licence to operate), Louise and her co-authors deliver a robust and clear framework to drive social sustainability. This was definitely a must-read coming out of the conference!
2. Ensuring voice and representation of indigenous and First Nations’ peoples in self-determined and culturally appropriate ways: IAIA walked the talk when it came to promoting indigenous people’s concerns this year. Every session we attended integrated these concerns into the mainstream conversation, while a conference stream focused specifically on these issues. Australia, New Zealand and Canada emerged as three countries regarded as sound leaders on indigenous issues with a lot of interest in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
3. A fair and just energy transition: From our first session at the World Banks’ pre-conference program to the closing plenary, a fair and just energy transition and the shift to renewables regularly took centre stage. Complexities of the transition were writ large with rigorous debate about nuclear as part of the energy future. Interestingly, American colleagues were new to the term ‘fair and just transition’, while those from the Asia-Pacific region, Africa and Latin America speak of it as a regular part of doing business.
4. Climate urgency meets social sustainability: The trade-offs and decision-making that form efforts urgently to address climate change divided some audiences. While all agreed that trade-offs must be fair and informed, the processes, regulations and options for how best to take these decisions – from top-down regulation to public participation—were keenly debated.
5. Social cohesion: As one of the first major in-person events post-pandemic, many conversations focused on the changing nature of communities with concerns raised about the loss of social cohesion and the ways in which digitisation, changing work lives and shifting populations are affecting our societal make-up, regardless of country of origin.
6. Social risk and ESG: I2S’ Dr Emerson Sanchez presented our latest work on social risk identification and modelling, generating conversations that lasted throughout the conference. Multilateral developments banks and many major government departments, including Indonesia’s Ministry of Finance, appear to be renewing their interest in ESG and are looking for more systematised social risk management to support this.
7. Social procurement and the role of contracting in delivering positive social outcomes: I2S’ Dr Ruth O’Connor introduced the IAIA crowd to our latest work on the ways in which major infrastructure contracting processes influence the capacity of community engagement teams to address social risks and, more broadly, for projects to deliver social value. Dr O’Connor’s work highlighted how social risk is often be de-prioritised at the very early stages of major projects.
8. Social value: The capacity and processes for major projects to deliver social value, especially within complex or intensive project environments, is a key, emerging global issue. Opportunities for social impact assessment (SIA) techniques to better inform social value delivery, and also to evaluate it during- and post-project were also key issues discussed. Watch this space- we predict a focus on social value as an emerging, global development trend.
9. Increasingly complex project environments: Everything. Everywhere. All at once. The theme couldn’t be clearer. From least to most developed countries, participants shared case studies, questions and learnings of the challenges they are facing as project environments increase in complexity, scope and scale.
10. Accreditation and training in social/community practice: A standing-room only session saw SIA, community engagement and social practitioners hotly debating the merits (or otherwise) of certification for social practitioners. Australia and New Zealand recently took the lead, with the Certified Environmental Practitioners Scheme offering a world-first certification for SIA Specialists. I2S’ Sara Bice served on the Advisory Board which developed the certification scheme. Read more about social practice certification in our region in I2S’ report commissioned by the World Bank, ‘SIA Accreditation and Certification in East Asia and the Pacific.’
11. Rare earth minerals: The growth in rare earth minerals requirements for contemporary technology, their regulation and current concentration in certain countries led discussions of emerging sectors. Deep sea mining was also a hot topic and highly contested. This will be an area fraught with tension in coming years as we continue to increase our dependence on these resources.
12. Lack of jobs in renewables: Labor forces, employment and socio-economic development through growth in the renewables sector rounds out our dynamic dozen conference highlights. Filled with tension, these discussions focused on the reality that renewables usually require fewer employees than traditional mining and fossil fuel-derived energy production (once out of the construction stage) and that there will be communities that experience deep losses and difficulties as a result of the shift to renewables. Like all sessions at IAIA, the question then became, how do we get the best evidence possible to take informed decisions about the trade-offs necessary to a sustainable planetary future?