Environmental and Social Impact Assessment at Project and Strategic Levels

The course introduces impact assessment as an integrated and interdisciplinary process. It discusses how it supports sustainable development by informing stakeholders about the trade-offs among (negative) impacts and benefits expected from human interventions on the environment and their consequences on people. Participant’s case studies and experiences are used to discuss and experience how the conventional disciplinary approach for conducting the assessments contributes to externalities that affect the environment and society, and how a system thinking approach can reduce externalities to increase sustainable outcomes. Skills are developed use cumulative effects and ecosystem services as key methodological tools for EIA and SEA, to identify trade-offs among environmental and socio-economic impacts and benefits for stakeholders at different scales. Main concerns to be integrated (methods to apply, depending on the case study) include climate change, biodiversity, ecosystem services and water quality/environmental flows. Conceptual models are used to analyse linkages to wellbeing and livelihood, human rights, vulnerability, and other cultural and socio-economic aspects. Participants are trained to use a qualitative and quantitative methods to determine the significance of impacts and discuss how the methods influence the determination.