The Promise and Peril of Public Participation in Social Impact Assessment

Abstract

The interrelationships between the fields of public involvement and social impact assessment (S.I.A.) have only been pointed out occasionally in past work, and practitioners in the two areas have often been relatively isolated from one another in the past. A public participation program basically asks how people view a proposed development; a social impact assessment asks what the development is likely to do to them. Public participation programs also have other advantages which are specific to environmental impact statements and to social impact assessments in particular. Despite all of those points of mutual relevance, however, there are potential risks involved in S.I.A.-related public participation programs--and the risks are inherent in the programs' very strengths. Public involvement programs have numerous advantages, and they clearly deserve to be continued--both as public participation per se, and as a carefully utilized aspect of social impact assessments.