ID: 1787
Presenting Author: Ruth Brooker
Session: 552 - Accelerating with Integrity: Strengthening Social Impact Assessment in the face of urgency and misinformation
Status: pending
Reflections on how social practitioners navigate integrity, transparency and delivery pressures in accelerated impact processes across complex project contexts.
The pressure to deliver energy projects to tight timelines places great demands on social practitioners to accelerate assessment and consultation processes. This often occurs in contexts where information is incomplete, sensitive or confidential, and where regulatory or cultural norms do not require (or even permit) comprehensive stakeholder engagement. Drawing on experience working both as a consultant and as a client representative, this paper reflects on the tension between maintaining social impact integrity and meeting project delivery expectations.
It examines how commercial, reputational and political drivers shape decision-making and timelines, necessitating trade-offs between process depth, data certainty and developers’ schedule commitments. Through examples from recent experience in Africa and the Middle East, the paper explores practical approaches that have helped uphold quality under these constraints, including adaptive scoping and data collection, early disclosure of limitations, and strategic, targeted engagement to maintain legitimacy.
The discussion argues that “integrity” in social impact assessment does not mean resisting acceleration, but requires embedding transparency, proportionality and accountability into every stage of a fast-moving process. By recognising the shared challenges faced by both consultants and project developers, practitioners can move beyond a compliance mindset towards collaborative models where speed, quality and good practice can co-exist.
Reflecting on professional ethics, communication and trust-building within multidisciplina
E&S specialist with client and consultant experience, focused on social performance, stakeholder engagement and responsible project delivery across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and beyond.