Impact Assessment for measurable positive change

Dear readers This year’s 38th annual International Associatio for Impact Assessment (IAIA) meeting was held in Durban, South Africa from 16 to 19 May and was attended by about 1000 participants, of which 400 were from the host country. The conference themewas ‘Environmental Justice in Societies in Transition’. Not unexpectedly, many presentations revolved around the numerous economic, societal and environmental challenges faced by countries in transition in general and South Africa in particular. Whilst – and interestingly – when discussing those problems and challenges, an explicit connection with Impact Assessment (IA) was not always made, a strong implicit messagewas that IA instruments such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), Social Impact Assessment (SIA), Sustainability Assessment (SA), Health Impact Assessment (HIA) and others should help solving them. For IA researchers in particular, this is an important reminder that ultimately the success of IA is measured by its ability to lead to positive, substantive and measurable change. Unfortunately, however, dealing with IA’s substantive effectiveness is frequently avoided when researching IA (Fischer and Noble 2015). Whilst there are undoubtedly good reasons for focusing on more easy-to-grasp issues such as procedural effectiveness, ultimately, and in particular in the current era of post-factualism, IA will only be taken seriously as a decision support instrument if it can prove its contribution towards meeting environmental, social and other objectives and change. Numerous lively discussions were held during the conference, including on the question as to whether you have to be well off in order to be green, i.e. environmentally aware. It is very clear that you don’t and it is well documented that the less well-off people are usually more seriously affected by a poor or damaged environment, as well as by social and economic crises. However, and importantly the narratives of the main actors of current day post-factualism often revolve around attacks on the ‘urban (and environmentally and socially aware) elites’ that, it is claimed, are either unable to understand or simply ignore the problems of ‘normal’ (i.e. less well-off) people. That the sources of these post-factual claims are usually associated with those that are – economically – very well off and powerful are frequently left unmentioned and associated motivations are only rarely questioned (Mitropoulos 2016). This issue of IAPA consists of seven research articles and one viewpoint letter, covering a diverse range of topics. These include Environmental Assessment (EA) mitigation, the European instrument of Territorial Impact Assessment, urban sustainability indicators, Project Appraisal, Social Impact Assessment, IA of buildings, multi-project EIA and the potential impact of Brexit on EA in the UK. Authors represent institutions in Denmark, Greece, China, the UK and Brazil. Hope you enjoy reading!