Determining sustainability impact assessment indicators

Abstract

Sustainability impact assessment (SIA) can enlighten the decision-making process for major public investment projects. This paper addresses the use of SIA on projects, and suggests that since policies constrain plans which constrain projects, it is necessary to assign SIA indicators to the strategic, tactical and operational levels. We have examined (1) what indicators are actually chosen as being the most significant and (2) how assessors should choose their indicators. We let 538 of our students – assembled in 121 groups – identify indicators for an SIA of a major road project, and analysed the propensities of an exemplar SIA. We observed a lack of predictability in the students' choice of indicators, and that the exemplar SIA bore similar characteristics. Predictability in a tool designed to assure enlightened decision-making is essential, since lack of it can entail challenges concerning – just to mention some – transparency issues, governance, stakeholder participation and effectiveness. Discussions related to choice of indicators for SIA concern their commensurability and whether it is possible to price them or not. We point out that first step should be to make sure all relevant indicators are considered. Afterwards we propose a framework with nine different categories that will help assessors to identify an exhaustive indicator list. Our main argument is that indicators should be assigned to the strategic, tactical or operational level, as well as to one of the economic, social or environmental dimensions.

Keywords::

• indicator
• sustainability
• assessment
• strategic
• tactical
• operational

Notes

^1. SIA (sustainability impact assessment, based on three pillar thinking) should not be confused with social impact assessment – also abbreviated SIA – which reviews only the social effects. We consider SIA (sustainability impact assessment), as described by OECD (2010), to be one of several possible sustainability assessment tools.

^2. For a discussion on the visual representations of sustainability, see Adams (2006).

^3. A wide array of definitions exists. In fact, their multiplicity illustrates not only how complex the concept of sustainability is to define, but also the widespread experienced need for a definition. Hasna (2010) enlist 67 definitions from the plethora (strangely omitting the OECD definition, which constitutes the conceptual framework of our work).

^4. This paper is inspired by a three-year research project, examining how and to what extent sustainability is taken care of within concept appraisal for public investments in a quality assurance scheme governed by the Norwegian Ministry of Finance. Today, public investment projects with estimated cost surpassing NOK 750 million (approximately $130 million) are subjected to scrutiny. We refer to projects of this magnitude when we in the following use the term investment project.