Sustainability

5Sustainable Impact Assessment

L.R. Kumar, Anita Talan, and R.D. Tyagi

INRS, Université du Québec, Québec, Canada

5.1 Introduction

An increasing growth of the interest in “sustainability” or “sustainable development” over the past 20 years and the challenges perceived by scholars have led to the redesigning of the concept of “impact assessment” (IA). Designed in the later 1960s and early 1970s, the main focus of IA was on assessing the environmental influences of a proposed project. However, to incorporate sustainable development along with social and economic impacts of a project, the term “impact assessment” has been redefined in the past few decades (Bond and Pope 2012). Sustainable impact assessment (SIA) is a tool that can guide policy and decision makers in considering the needs of future generations while framing a policy or taking any decision (Devuyst 2001). The objective of SIA is to ensure that the “plans and activities” of any proposed project make a substantial contribution to sustainable development (Bond and Pope 2012). This chapter includes defining SIA, its advantages and contribution to society, how it's different from other types of IA, and how it is conducted and reviewed, followed by some case studies reported in the literature.

5.2 Types of Impact Assessment (IA)

5.2.1 Environment Impact Assessment (EIA)

EIA is a predictive tool that will manage the environmental impacts of any proposed project. Previously, the main concern of EIA was to solve the problem ...