ID: 1568
Presenting Author: Tara Howse
Session: 676 - Public Trust and Social Impact Assessment: Lessons learned from major projects
Status: pending
Examines how trust, stakeholder responsibilities, monitoring, and grievance systems interact to shape credible, inclusive SIAs and lasting outcomes for building credibility.
Trust fundamentally shapes how SIA unfolds, from initial scoping to long-term monitoring to adaptive management. Using Social Licence to Operate as a practical expression of trust, this presentation examines how trust (or its absence) affects every stage of SIA and explores the differentiated roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders -companies, governments, communities, and civil society- in building trust, with an emphasis on marginalized populations.
Drawing insights from contested resource projects to demonstrate what the absence of trust looks like, this analysis distinguishes between institutional, relational, and calculus-based trust to demonstrate how different forms of trust influence community willingness to participate in SIA processes, share sensitive information, and engage with ongoing monitoring systems or grievance mechanisms. The presentation examines how monitoring can build or erode trust, depending on whether they reflect genuine shared responsibility among all parties. It explores how different stakeholders have distinct by interconnected obligations: companies must demonstrate transparency; government must provide credible oversight; communities need meaningful access to information and remedy; and civil society requires space to facilitate accountability.
This contribution offers practitioners a means for considering trust conditions early in processes to develop collaborative accountability mechanisms that support sustained engagement throughout project lifecycles.
Tara Howse is a socioeconomic practitioner & researcher specializing in gender inequities & Indigenous rights, bridging equity research & community practice for inclusive decision-making.