ID: 2134
Presenting Author: Paul Lawrence
Session: 526 - The Truth Tangle: Untying Misinformation in Impact Assessment
Status: pending
Effective stakeholder engagement requires prioritising clear communication, responsiveness and listening over lengthy reports.
Stakeholder engagement is a widely recognised in impact assessment. However, its implementation often varies in practice. This paper posits that the lack of accessible impact assessments is largely attributable to practitioners' insufficient consideration of how the materials will be perceived and understood by affected individuals. Elderly residents living near highways, farmers adjacent to landfills, or small tourism business owners observing changes to rural landscapes are an afterthought during document preparation.
And when stakeholder engagement is conflated with public relations — selling a particular project or organisation — or when it is equated with discretionary social or community investments, the integrity of impact assessment is compromised. The sustainability report may have photos of the lasts school sponsorship, but this fails to address the genuine concerns of those directly impacted. This challenge is further exacerbated by the prevalence of misinformation and the influence of social media campaigns, the “public relations” response from project opponents.
The solution is not an additional training session or guidance note. Instead, there is a need to reaffirm the foundational aspects of stakeholder engagement, often under-resourced once the permitting phases conclude. Core competencies include listening, strong administrative and communication skills, and the ability to manage complex projects involving diverse technical, environmental, and social considerations. This paper aims to clarify the building blocks underlying meaningful stakeholder engagement.
Paul Lawrence is a social impact assessment and stakeholder engagement practitioner working on civil society and social development issues.