Social Impact Assessment: A Literature Review

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) was developed in the 1970s as a complement to Environmental Impact Assessment. Guidelines for SIA have been developed, for example, by the World Bank and the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA). SIAs are appraisals of the likely impact in which operations might have on the societies of host countries, regions and communities. An effective SIA optimizes the operations to account for potential social consequences. The primary purpose of SIA is to bring about a more sustainable and equitable biophysical and human environment. An SIA is a risk management tool informing and encouraging timely decisions on projects. SIA can influence project design and improve the quality of decision making. Communities engaged in or identified by the SIA process also benefits through a variety of ways which are vividly discussed in the paper. There are a number of activities and principles specific to SIA. Chief among them is that equity considerations should be a fundamental element of SIA and development planning. The paper then describes what a comprehensive SIA process should be in its entirety and then concludes by describing the various methods for predicting future impacts. This are important for any SIA practitioner and are at the heart of any SIA process. Care must be taken to ensure the quality of methods and data, and to provide for critical review. This involves investigating the probable social impacts in terms of predicted conditions without the actions (baseline condition) and anticipated conditions with the effects and the predicted impacts.