Improving the effectiveness of project assessment - Introduction to Environmental Impact Assessment - page 345

11.3.4 Socio-economic impacts
Widening the scope of EIA to include socio-economic impacts in a much better way is
seen as a particularly important item for the agenda. While there are varying
interpretations of the scope of socio-economic or social impacts, a number of recent
reports have highlighted the importance of this area (see, for example, CEPA 1994, IAIA
1994, Vanclay 2003). SIA has been defined by Burdge (1999) as “the systematic
analysis, in advance, of the likely impacts a proposed action will have on the life of
individuals and communities”. Most development decisions involve trade-offs between
biophysical and socioeconomic impacts. Also, development projects affect various
groups differently; there are invariably winners and losers. Yet the consideration of
socio-economic impacts is very variable in practice, and often very weak. There is useful
practice and associated legislative impetus for SIA in some countries, for example the
USA, Canada and some states of Australia. Some of the procedures of international
funding institutions also give a high profile to such impacts. But in Europe the profile is
lower, and the consideration of socioeconomic impacts has continued to be the poor
relation (Chadwick 2002, Glasson 2001). The uncertain status of such impacts, plus the
lack of best-practice guidance on their assessment, has resulted in a partial approach in
practice. When socioeconomic impacts are included, there tends to be a focus on the
more measurable direct employment impacts; the consideration of the social-cultural
impacts (such as severance, alienation, social polarization, crime and health) are often
very marginal.
Yet although most of the environmental receptors listed in EC and UK regulations are
biophysical in nature, the inclusion of “human beings” as one of the receptors to be
considered in EIA would appear to imply a wider definition of “the environment”,
encompassing its human (i.e. social, economic and cultural) dimensions. The inclusion of
socioeconomic impacts may help to better identify all of the potential biophysical impacts
of a project, because socio-economic and biophysical impacts are interrelated (Newton
1995). Early inclusion of socio-economic considerations in the EIA can also provide an
opportunity to modify project design or implementation, to minimize adverse socio-
economic effects and to maximize beneficial effects (Chadwick 2002). Inclusion of
socioeconomic impacts in the EIS also allows a more complete picture of a project's
impacts, in a consistent format, in a publicly available document. Failure to include such
impacts can lead to delays in the EIA process, since the competent authority may request
further information on such matters.
The fuller and better consideration of socioeconomic impacts raises issues and
challenges, for example about the types of impact, their measurement, the role of public
participation and their position in EIA. One categorization of socioeconomic impacts is
into: (a) quantitatively measurable impacts, such as population changes, and the effects
on employment opportunities or on local financial implications of a proposed project, and
(b) non-quantitatively measurable impacts, such as effects on social relationships,
psychological attitudes, community cohesion, cultural life or social structures (CEPA
1994). Such impacts are wide-ranging; many are not easily measured, and direct
communication with people about their perceptions of socio-economic impacts is often
the only method of documenting such impacts. There is an important symbiotic