SIA in NSW

In the absence of guidance, there were ongoing questions about the ‘adequacy’ of SIAs in the context of major resource developments. For example, the Warkworth Extension Project, the Metgasco coal-seam gas proposal, the Wilpinjong Extension Project, and the Bylong and Drayton South coal projects all attracted community opposition, partly owing to a view that social impacts were not afforded due attention in the impact assessment process (e.g. Preston 2014; Luke 2017; Askland 2018). In NSW, assessment of physical impacts, such as noise, dust, and vibration, was commonplace, whereas the experiential and more intangible impacts were largely being overlooked.

In NSW, the Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) is the authority responsible for assessing major project applications. DPE initiated the development of the new SIA guideline in 2016, following consultations with industry, community, and environmental groups for review of the State Environmental Planning Policy in 2015. The review and ensuing report (NSW DPE 2015b) indicated that, while the NSW planning system formally required ‘balanced assessment’ of likely economic, environmental, and social impacts, concerns remained that economic factors were being prioritised over other considerations.

The NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 No. 203 (current as at 15 April 2018) recognises that impacts on people are an important consideration in the assessment process for ‘State significant developments’ (SSDs).⁴ Table 1 sets out the legislative and regulatory provisions relating to social impacts that were in place in early 2016, when the SIA guideline project was initiated.⁵ It shows that the Act intends the term ‘environment’ to incorporate social and economic considerations.

As Table 1 shows, the legislative and regulatory framework required proponents to consider the social dimensions of major project developments. However, guidance about how proponents should understand and manage social impacts, and how the state should factor social impacts into decision-making for project approvals, was absent. This left project proponents, the state, the public, and project-affected communities unsure as to exactly what was required of a SIA process. It also became apparent that the NSW Government had limited capacity to evaluate SIAs produced by proponents. Most DPE staff have qualifications in urban planning and/or environmental sciences, rather than social sciences or cognate disciplines.

The SIA component of EIA in NSW became the subject of criticism. Community members claimed that project proponents and DPE gave less weight to social considerations than to economic matters. SIA reports that were commissioned and funded by proponents were considered to be biased documents designed to secure project approval, rather than providing impartial assessments. Community members were also frustrated that the window of opportunity to participate in assessments was inadequate, and that they were poorly resourced relative to project proponents. Proponents, meanwhile, criticised the time-consuming and onerous nature of the assessment process, and the vague nature of the state’s requirements (NSW DPE 2017c). In the absence of specific guidance, proponents tended to produce voluminous documents that considered all possible impacts, rather than investing time and resources to prioritise ‘material’ issues. These lengthy documents were, in turn, a frustration for both community and government. Six key criticisms of SIA performance under the pre-existing policy regime in NSW are summarised in Table 2 and compared to internationally agreed practice as identified in the literature.

Having received stakeholder feedback about the need for early engagement of communities in development decisions, and having given a commitment to reduce ‘red tape’ under the Better Regulation Statement of 2008, the NSW Government sought to refocus policy and planning processes on people and the public interest (NSW Government 2012). The DPE Secretary declared 2016 the ‘Year of the Community’. That year, the NSW Department of Industry (2016) published an Exploration Code of Practice: Community Consultation. NSW DPE (2016) published Community Consultative Committee Guidelines and in 2017 released draft guidance on Community and Stakeholder Engagement for EIAs (NSW DPE 2017a). The Social impact assessment guideline for State significant mining, petroleum and extractive industry development was initiated in this period.

To progress the SIA guideline, DPE appointed a SIA Specialist (one author of this paper) to coordinate the development of guideline, internally. DPE determined that, in NSW, the resources sector was in most need of a dedicated SIA guideline, making projects in this sector the focal point of the SIA guideline project. DPE then commissioned The University of Queensland’s (UQ) Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (the employer of the other two authors of this paper) to consult with resource-sector stakeholders, review available guidance, and prepare advice to DPE on leading-practice SIA in the resources sector.

The prioritisation of the resources sector reflects events in NSW. The social impacts of major projects were raised in submissions on the draft Integrated Mining Policy in 2015. Furthermore, several major resources projects, mentioned above, had been opposed on the basis of social impacts being overlooked. The Warkworth Extension Project was the site of local opposition, as well as legal challenge, partly owing to potential social impacts on the local community of Bulga. The Metgasco coal-seam gas proposal also attracted widespread dissent, and was opposed not only by community and environment groups but also by farmers and local councils. In more general terms, extractive industries induce a diverse set of impacts that can polarise communities (Bice 2015; Harvey and Bice 2014; Kemp and Vanclay 2013; Owen and Kemp 2017; Petrova and Marinova 2015). This reflects a general sentiment that ‘extractive industries are usually unpopular and generally mistrusted’ (Harvey and Bice 2014, p. 331). In an attempt to address this malaise, DPE’s SIA guideline project team, and its advisers, sought to reflect leading-practice SIA principles both in the process of drafting the guide, and within the guideline itself. The following sections provide insights into process and content.

Defining ‘community’

When consulting about a new policy, an immediate challenge is defining the ‘community’. Too narrow a definition risks a tokenistic approach that excludes and marginalises certain groups. To broad a definition risks the process becoming unmanageable. SIA principles recognise the right of affected and interested stakeholders to be heard (e.g. Vanclay et al. 2015). Policy development in Australia can be a unilateral, technocratic affair, with perfunctory forms of minimalist consultation that do not achieve meaningful community input (Gregory et al. 2008). Acknowledging this, the project team sought to listen to the views of affected and interested stakeholders, to focus on mining-intensive regions and sectors, and to facilitate opportunities for different groups to have input.

Since the locations of existing and likely future resources projects in NSW are known, two rounds of community consultation, eight months apart, were held in these regions. Round one comprised eight workshops, during which representatives of various interest groups were invited to discuss expectations and aspirations of the proposed guideline. As the draft guideline was on public exhibition by round two, open meetings were held in four of those same regions. Attendance at these meetings was unrestricted, with no requirement to pre-register.

In addition to the regional meetings, at various times the project team held sector-specific workshops and meetings with industry, Indigenous representative bodies, community and environmental groups, researchers, SIA consultants, and other government agencies. Further, during the three-month public exhibition period, any group or individual was entitled to lodge a written submission. Ultimately, the process solicited input from a broad range of affected and interested stakeholders. It aimed to accommodate both geographic and other legitimate interests.

Heterogeneity

Leading-practice SIA aims to consider a diversity of views relating to a project or initiative, and to ensure that marginalised and vulnerable people are able to participate. Yet policy development, when it does involve consultation, tends to cater for the ‘articulate, the vocal and those with vested interests’ (Gregory et al. 2008, p. 3), who may not represent broader values or interests. To enable heterogeneous voices and perspectives to be incorporated into the process, representatives of a diverse range of groups were invited to attend the first round of consultations. These meetings provided an opportunity for interactive small group discussions, with each participant given time to share expectations of the SIA guideline, drawing on their own or their group’s experiences, values, and interests. The project team encouraged people to highlight flaws in SIA practice, and to suggest how the SIA process could be improved. During the public consultations, any individual or group could offer an opinion on the draft guideline. The drawback of public meetings, however, is that prominent voices dominate proceedings (Brackertz and Meredyth 2009) and this was the experience during the largest of the four round two meetings.

The project team read all the material generated from the consultation phase – including notes from meetings, workshops, and written submissions. From this material, key points were extracted for further analysis. Points were organised against sections of the draft guideline and discussed among the project team. The team decided whether to (a) accept the point and incorporate it in a revision; (b) partially accept the point and adjust the draft accordingly; or (c) reject the point. When the guideline was released, the project team published a report (NSW DPE 2017c) summarising the 650 key points raised in these fora, and the Department’s response. This report explained where points were not accepted or incorporated into the guideline. The team sought to respect and respond to every point on merit, regardless of authorship.

Articulating interests

Judge Preston’s third challenge is that people rarely commit to writing or formally express their expectations of how businesses ought to operate, until those expectations come under threat. This highlights the need for structured, deliberative processes to stimulate expression of deeply held values, and reflection on how an initiative might reinforce or threaten those values. Gregory et al. (2008) note that, while deliberative processes are assumed to be institutionalised in Australia’s policy-making approach, genuine deliberation is the exception, leaving many communities cynical and distrusting towards governments.

The various workshops and meetings for the NSW SIA guideline project, while not explicitly designed as deliberative processes, did endeavour to encourage participants to reflect on their values, through dialogue, and to critically assess how those values might be reflected in the guideline. The round one community workshops were facilitated by the NSW Land and Water Commissioner – a person with considerable credibility and experience in engaging with rural communities about contested, resource-related issues.

A leading authority on community engagement, accredited by the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2), facilitated the four open meetings in round two. During these sessions, the facilitator invited participants to consider each section of the draft guideline, and, using various engagement techniques, prompted them to think about issues that were important to them. This encouraged participants to reflect on their experiences with mining and other large-scale projects, and to articulate how the guideline could improve the assessment and management of social impacts in future.

The strategy of placing a draft guideline on public exhibition was a more passive approach to soliciting feedback, since it relies on people knowing about the initiative and responding in writing. As part of the suite of engagement strategies, it was constructive in that it prompted additional feedback. The project team received 63 formal submissions, many of which were lengthy reports that involved substantial work by the authors. A specialist consultancy, for example, effectively provided a peer review voluntarily. Of the 63 formal submissions, 61 expressed support for the initiative.

Change over time

Judge Preston’s final challenge is that community expectations change over time. This can be pronounced in mining-affected communities, which may experience profound social change, over generations. While the eight-month gap between the two rounds of community consultation provided an opportunity for people to digest the information discussed in round one, and check or adjust their views, documenting changes in views and expectations was not part of the consultation process. Nonetheless, in the various discussions, the long timeframe of most large-scale mining projects was a prominent point of discussion. This had implications for how the guideline itself sought to address long-term impacts.

SIA that puts the project into context

The project team sought to develop a guideline that was universal enough to offer consistency, yet flexible enough to enable SIAs to be tailored to specific contexts (Suopajärvi 2013). The guideline defines SIA as an iterative process requiring continuous improvement and adaptive management systems that account for complex impact pathways and interactions in particular contexts. It emphasises the importance of ongoing SIA, and continuing to assess, monitor, report, and manage social impacts over time, during the mine-life-cycle, and beyond closure and relinquishment.

Rather than prescribing how to conduct SIA, the guideline encourages proponents to apply methods that are appropriate to the context, and to describe and defend their choice of methods. Understanding context includes understanding the social, environmental, and historical trends. The guideline expects proponents to ‘document the trajectory of a change over time and give a dynamic benchmark against which potential impacts can be assessed and any change monitored’ (NSW DPE 2017b, p. 39). The guide notes that the scope of the study should be determined on a case-by-case basis, and that impacts may extend beyond a single project locality.

The guideline stipulates that SIA should be proportionate to the nature and scale of the project and its potential impacts. It encourages proponents to conduct SIAs that are responsive to material issues, where materiality considers the extent, duration, and severity of the impact, and levels of stakeholder sensitivity and concern/interest. The guideline also asks proponents to pay attention to changing circumstances, and to recognise that predictions may not always be accurate.

SIA that recognises interlinkages

The EP&A Act 1979 requires consent authorities to consider the likely impact of project developments ‘on both the natural and built environments, and social and economic impacts in the locality’ (s. 79C (1)(b)). The Act does not indicate how the interrelationships between these dimensions should be assessed. There are many ways in which social impacts interact with environmental and economic impacts. For example, health impacts may be linked to air and water-quality; impacts on the built environment can affect quality of life; and employment has economic and social dimensions. In NSW, SIAs form a sub-section of an EIS. This approach has been criticised because it renders social considerations subsidiary to environmental considerations, and it de-links SIA from other assessments (Esteves et al. 2012). The new guideline (NSW DPE 2017b, p. 7) requires these linkages to be made explicit, through synthesis, integration, and cross-referencing between social, environmental, economic, and other specialist assessments.

While the guideline encourages disciplinary linkages, other linkages could be strengthened. For instance, the guideline encourages individual proponents to assess how impacts could accumulate if numerous projects are situated in a particular locality, but gives limited practical guidance as to how an individual proponent can achieve this. Considering the impacts of a single project or action rather than the full range of stresses on the social context is insufficient to keep the total effects of all stresses at acceptable levels, and to enhance opportunities through co-ordination (Franks et al. 2010). In the context of the pre-existing policy framework, however, placing the onus on proponents to assess the combined impact of various activities over time is not feasible. For the moment, the single, stand-alone and individual approach to project assessment remains intact in NSW.

Assessing positive and negative impacts

Leading-practice SIA considers adverse impacts, as well as benefits that may accrue to local communities. Vanclay et al. (2015, p. 11) advocate that ‘sustainable social development’ should be the goal of project development, suggesting that the positive versus negative reading of impacts creates an unnecessarily binary assessment framework. However, in NSW, comprehensive assessment of both positive and negative social impacts was not common, let alone conducting assessments through a holistic framework that accounts for future generations and impacts throughout the mine life-cycle (Michell and McManus 2013). Most resource developers restrict their discussion of positive social impacts to social investment inputs, projected employment levels, and local business opportunities, without analysing social impacts (e.g. improvements in health and wellbeing flowing from meaningful employment).

To encourage a more comprehensive approach, the guideline stipulates that proponents should identify and assess both positive and negative social impacts, ensuring that risks are adequately managed and opportunities realised and enhanced (NSW DPE 2017b, p. 19–20, 41–45). The guideline details those factors that should be considered in the analytical process. It also notes that mitigation measures should relate directly to the adverse impacts identified. In other words, proponents are required to demonstrate how proposed measures (which may include social benefits) will avoid, reduce, or mitigate negative social impacts, rather than assuming that positive contributions automatically offset negative impacts.

SIA that utilises a diversity of data

The NSW guideline defines social impacts broadly, highlighting that they can be physical and/or based on experience or perceptions, and they may be quantifiable and/or qualitative. Leading SIA practice should incorporate data generated during stakeholder participation, as well as expert scientific data. The dual objective of the SIA guideline is therefore to improve the process of public participation in SIA, and improve the data and information available to decision makers. This is a deliberate response to the view that the worst forms of community engagement in SIA are ‘little more than a feeble attempt at project legitimisation’ (Esteves et al. 2012, p. 37).

The guideline includes a dedicated section on the role of community engagement (or public participation) in SIA. It explains how proponents can enable the participation of vulnerable and marginalised groups; maximise diversity and representativeness in data collection; and engage Aboriginal peoples in culturally appropriate ways, at different stages in the SIA process. More broadly, it identifies the objectives of engagement in SIA, suggests methods for identifying who to engage, and offers examples of relevant engagement techniques aligned with the IAP2 (2006) spectrum of participation.

The guideline positions community engagement as a vital means of primary research to inform the SIA. It explains that engagement should consider the views of potentially affected and interested people in a meaningful way. This can include drawing on secondary data, such as previous assessments, local planning initiatives, and other technical studies, as a basis for engagement. Proponents are encouraged to use insights from community engagement to ‘inform project planning and design, mitigation and enhancement measures, and monitoring and management frameworks’ (NSW DPE 2017b, p. 12). Supporting the use of diverse forms of data, the guideline also presents 12 principles, derived and adapted from Vanclay (2003) and Vanclay et al. (2015). These principles promote ongoing stakeholder engagement, and include impartiality, inclusivity, materiality, and transparency.

While the guideline does not conflate community engagement and social research, the case presented for conducting social science research is not as strong as the case for conducting community engagement. This inadvertently may lead proponents to see community engagement as a substitute for rigorous social research, whereas both are essential inputs to SIA. Social science research can inform community engagement, and can be used as a part of engagement processes (alongside scientific research from other disciplines). Likewise, engagement can benefit from scientific research on social issues, rather than relying on stakeholder perceptions alone. Social science research has much to offer beyond engagement, and engagement processes can benefit when they use social data as inputs; that is, by helping to identify what research is needed, and by using this research as a basis for engagement.

The guideline also specifies the selection criteria for consultants preparing SIAs, in terms of qualifications, experience, and organisational affiliation. SIA lead authors are additionally required to declare that the report contains no false or misleading information. As they currently stand, these provisions do not require consultants to be independent from the proponent, leaving assessments open to perceptions of bias. However, DPE is now investigating ways to enhance professional practice requirements through a broad review of EIA, including independent peer review (NSW DPE 2018).