ID: 1502
Presenting Author: Jos Arts
Session: 523 - Public participation in IA follow-up for ongoing communication and providing sound information
Status: pending
This paper discusses evolving practices to engage stakeholders during IA follow-up. Country case study examples are mapped on the spectrum of best practice public participation in IA follow-up.
Impact Assessment (IA) is crucial for well-informed decision-making about plans and projects, at which careful executed public involvement is vital. In current practice, however, information about developments, impacts and associated decision-making is often contested. Careful IA follow-up is needed that produces sound information about risks and uncertainties, to challenge disinformation and to include stakeholders via ongoing meaningful participation. Currently, however, all too often public participation fades away after the approval decision. If monitoring and evaluation is done as follow-up to the IA during implementation, this is usually limited to interactions between professionals and experts, while other stakeholders are left out. Greenwashing, misinformation and disinformation must also be avoided. For improving practice, the Best Practice Principles for Public Participation in IA Follow-up have been issued by IAIA (2023) to fill in this gap in knowledge in both public participation and follow-up fields.
This paper aims to discuss evolving practices with public participation in IA follow-up stages to meaningfully engage stakeholders, and to communicate and share information on monitoring, evaluation and management. We discuss recent experiences with public participation in: the Netherlands, Australia, Indonesia and China. Thereby relating to practice cases related to such sectors as infrastructure development (ports), renewable energy (offshore wind). Country case study examples are mapped on the spectrum of best practice public participation in IA follow-up.
Jos Arts is full-professor of environment and infrastructure planning, University of Groningen (NL), and Extraordinary Professor Northwest University (SA).
Coauthor 1: Angus Morrison-Saunders