Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

Welcome to this special JEAPM issue on impact assessment (IA) research, which — besides this introductory paper — includes 16 short papers contributed by a wide range of leading IA researchers from around the world. These papers provide for an overview of achievements, gaps and future directions for IA research. The collection of papers is the outcome of a targeted call to researchers representing a wide range of IA areas and regions. This has resulted in what we believe is an impressive compilation of contributions on environmental impact assessment (EIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA), health impact assessment (HIA) and social impact assessment (SIA) as well as theoretical, applied and normative aspects of IA, with a particular focus on sustainable development from European, North and South American, Asian, African and Australian authors.

This paper reflects on the state of cumulative effects research in Canada and future directions and challenges. The assessment and management of cumulative effects has been an enduring theme in the impact assessment literature, and scholars have consistently identified the challenges to assessing and managing cumulative effects under regulatory, project-based impact assessment. Current research on cumulative effects is focused largely on the development of frameworks and methodologies to advance cumulative effects assessment and management from individual projects to broader regional scales, and on developing the science and tools for assessing and monitoring cumulative effects. Ensuring that scholarly research continues to shape cumulative effects practice in the future requires that scholars not only attempt to improve practice under current existing regulatory processes, but also push the boundaries to ensure that decision processes also evolve so as to be accommodating of new and innovative approaches to cumulative effects at regional scales. This requires interdisciplinary approaches and sustained research funding, both of which present practical challenges to scholars, and research programmes that are developed in collaboration with industry, governments and communities.

Reflections on impact assessment research scholarship are presented drawn from our experiences as journal editors and academics with respect to the nature of impact assessment research and the quality of impact assessment research writing. We support the call for more empirical impact assessment research studies, especially large and longer-term studies. While the international field of impact assessment research is healthy overall, we would like to see better international and multi-disciplinary collaboration. We also urge careful attention be given by impact assessment research writers to having clear aims, robust methods accounts and to write rigorously and insightfully for the international impact assessment journal readership.

Over 150 forms of impact assessment can be identified using Google searches, with several new forms appearing since 2003. Since then, the popularity of the various members of the impact assessment family has changed, partly in response to legislative and regulatory changes, and general trends in society. The information explosion and expansion of the internet has resulted in a 32 fold increase in the number of hits for "impact assessment", now over 12 million. The conventional methods most frequently mentioned in 2003 had relatively low proportional change over the last 10 years but remain amongst the most frequently mentioned in 2014: risk assessment, public participation, cost-benefit analysis, public involvement, environmental monitoring, and project evaluation. The terms with highest proportional change (i.e. the super-hot topics) were primarily social concerns, including: equality impact assessment, welfare impact assessment, mental health impact assessment, disability impact assessment, human impact assessment, social impact assessment, and social risk assessment. Other terms that had high proportional change included life cycle impact assessment. Information about the relative popularity of the various forms of impact assessment is used in this paper to discuss issues and trends in the broad field of impact assessment.

This statement aims at giving an overview of the research on impact assessment in Sweden. It takes a point of departure at the introduction of impact assessment in 1991 describing the Swedish research until today. Since the introduction of EIA in the Swedish legislation in the 1990s, a large number of PhD dissertations have been dealing with various aspects of impact assessment. An estimation based on the literature search is that about 20 PhD theses, in which the core of the research is related to EIA or SEA, have been produced since 1990. The research follows four main themes: (i) EIA and SEA as a tool for integration of environmental and sustainability aspects in planning and development, (ii) EIA and SEA as a tool for integration of ecological aspects in planning, (iii) research on the basic concepts of EIA and SEA, and (iv) the relationship with other assessment tools for sustainable development.

This article provides a statement on the state of the research context for Health Impact Assessment.

This short paper makes the case that most impact assessment (IA) has sustainable development as the stated goal, but that it doesn't deliver sustainable outcomes. A key pillar of sustainable development is equity, both intra-generational (defined after Lamorgese and Geneletti (2013, p.119) as ensuring "equity of opportunity for everyone, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community and seek to create a good quality of life for everyone") and inter-generational equity (defined after Gibson et al. (2005, p. 235) as favouring "present options and actions that are most likely to preserve or enhance the opportunities and capabilities of future generations to live sustainably"). Notwithstanding the importance of intra-generational equity, this paper focuses on the problem that inter-generational equity presents to IA both because of the prevalence of short-term planning, and because approaches developed to deal with inherent uncertainty associated with impacts considered in the long term are overly resource intensive and therefore impractical. A research focus on IA processes that can deal with inter-generational impacts cost effectively might provide the basis on which to develop an IA tool that actually delivers on its stated goal and fits in with current decision-making norms.

Incorporation of impact assessment in undergraduate academic curricula has remained underdeveloped in both Ireland and Spain, with the subject commonly narrowed down to a general introduction to impact assessment legislation and procedural stages supported by a number of illustrative case studies. This approach is often transferred to postgraduate level, with a limited number of Masters programmes including impact assessment as a subject, and fewer being dedicated to impact assessment alone. This, in turn, has resulted in limited research in the area and more importantly, in very few academic research publications. At Master's level, research has mainly focused on the quality of EISs (often focusing on controversial sectors such as wind energy or mining) and public participation related issues. At the doctorate level, a limited number of EIA/SEA related PhD dissertations can be found, and the range of issues covered is quite varied and sparse. The largest drivers for SEA research are government initiatives and research calls. This commonly translates into publication of extensive normative guidance on EIA, SEA and Appropriate Assessment, as well as on current practice review reports and good practice recommendations. Relevant dissemination activities can also be found in Ireland and Spain, including provision of platforms for knowledge exchange and learning on impact assessment methods and tool. More efforts and funding are however needed to promote empirical academic research, and thereby advance impact assessment research and practice in relevant sectors and areas, including impact assessment theory and governance, public participation effectiveness, cumulative effects assessment or environmental limits.

There is a growing interest in the use of theory in order to move the field of impact assessment forward, hereunder to advance our understanding of effectiveness and make impact assessment influence decision-making. However, the extent of use of theory is uncertain. This article examines the use of explicit theory from other fields in impact assessment literature and analyse how research uses theory along a continuum from use of non-attached theory to theory building. A sample of research articles (n = 177) published in the Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management from 1999–2014 was reviewed to determine whether, how and which theories was used. Of the articles 32% incorporated theory, of which 28% only mention theories in the introduction or literature review, but without explicit evidence that the theory is used to any other purposes than to establish legitimacy or support the author's ideas of "non-attached theory" and 40% in which theories are used to inform and focus the design of the study. The results show no significant changes in the use of theory in the period 1999–2014. The most often used theories were political and learning theory. The article concludes that there is a broad scope for future use of theories from other fields to mature research and practice of impact assessment. There is no lack of relevant theories, so the underlying reasons for the found results shall be found elsewhere.

This paper provides an overview of current IA research in Brazil, considering its extension, lessons learned and the quality of its practice, as well as barriers to research, current gaps and future research endeavours. Despite the big effort devoted to IA research in the country, there is a small number of groups dedicated to the systematic research of IA instruments, its procedures and methods, the assessment of its effectiveness and the evidence to support good practice, the study of the organization of IA systems and their influence on decision-making. In our opinion, the lack of a well structured and distinct field of training and research is one of the major barriers to IA research. Similar to other countries, IA research is not recognised by scientific agencies/committees as a proper field of research, which means the majority of IA research grants is being evaluated/approved by committees with a small or no background in IA. There is, however, a significant contribution to be offered by research to foster IA development in Brazil. Besides the systematic assessment of IA effectiveness and the definition of procedures, methods and approaches to fill the currently well-described gaps, future research efforts should include the study of learning processes through IA practice and their influence in decision-making, the connections between IA and planning, and the benchmarks to environmental governance coming from IA practice.

This paper aims to provide an overview of German Environmental Assessment (EA) research over the recent decades. Likely reasons for previous developments as Germany's post-Cold War challenges, ongoing case study research endeavours and further prospects are outlined. This involves research on large-scale SEA making, an enhanced EA theory building and a move towards "best available science" research. Last but not least, a stronger research oriented conference series is proposed.

This paper is a "statement" for the March special issue of JEAPM on "Impact Assessment Research: Achievements, Gaps and Future Directions".

Research on the theoretical aspects and practice of impact assessment (IA) is increasingly viewed as significant in enhancing its effectiveness. Several research articles have been published on various aspects of IA practice in Pakistan, but perhaps not well shared through a unified platform. This article presents an analysis of the areas well covered, identifies barriers and gaps in current research and what needs the most urgent attention in future endeavours. Most research to date has focused on the EIA process/system, public participation and the quality of EIA reports using evaluation criteria. There is a need to do more research on methods and techniques of assessment, environmental impact assessment follow-up, monitoring and possible application of strategic environmental assessment.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) research have been performed in a wide range of topics over 40 years in Japan. The study underlying this paper reviewed the achievement of Japanese EIA research through the academic database survey and identified which areas would be required for future EIA research. As a result, whilst there are only 30–50 EIAs conducted per year under EIA Act and genuine SEA is currently not practiced, there is a noticeable research interest with over 30 associated research papers published in the professional Japanese literature every year on average. Most of EIA articles could be classified into five groups; (a) systems and laws, (b) methods, (c) Theme-oriented Studies, (d) Sector-oriented Studies and (e) Case Studies. The following three main areas were identified for future EIA research; (1) studies on pro-active sound decision making for sustainability; (2) effectiveness of EIA from a proponent's viewpoint, leading to enhance public acceptance, for example; and (3) substantive and methodological aspects, including the use of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods.

One of the main gaps in current SEA research is the limited development of analytical methods to predict and assess environmental effects, which are tailored to plans, programmes and policies. The scientific literature is producing new standards and evidence-based conclusions on a number of issues that are potentially relevant for SEA, including health, land take, ecosystem fragmentation and energy needs and supply. However, research in SEA is hardly keeping the pace in terms of "translating" these findings into operational recommendations that can be applied in typical SEA contexts. As a result, the analytical content of SEA is often disappointingly low, and the assessment of impacts is still largely based on qualitative descriptions and general statements. Future research should be directed at innovating SEA methods, by promoting the use of appropriate spatially-explicit and (semi)quantitative approaches, which can be based on advances in relevant disciplines, and the increasing availability of data and technology.

In this paper I advocate SEA as an instrument of change towards more sustainable patterns of behaviour and development, by following strategic thinking and constructive approaches. I recommend that the future research agenda of SEA should contribute to make SEA a matured, full-fleshed instrument with a clear identity, and coherent functions and forms. This may be achieved by exploring how to engage all actors in a fundamental new attitude in understanding and addressing the complexity of strategic processes, enabling dialogues towards mutual understanding, offering flexibility, ensuring a long-term and large scale perspectives when exploring development options.

In this paper we briefly review the state of academic research in the UK in the field of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). Through consideration of the number of articles related to EIA and SEA published in academic journals and the contribution of post-graduate students' (PhD and master level) dissertation theses we aim to understand where activity has occurred in the field over recent decades. Simple literature and database searches reveal that the UK is an active environment for researchers and students in the field with numerous universities engaged in research and teaching (although not always both activities). However, we have also collected evidence to suggest that research funding is lacking and that there is variation over time in the number and scale of research projects being funded in the UK.