Editorial

Dear readers,

Yesterday I attended an online workshop ‘in’ South Africa. The topic was ‘systems thinking in impact assessment (IA)’. Whilst the importance of systems thinking has been acknowledged by the IA community for quite some time, the literature on the topic is still thin (see, e.g., Fischer et al. 2015; Perdicoulis 2016). Systems thinking is based on the belief that components of a system interrelate and act differently when considered in isolation from their context and that there are feedback loops with reinforcing and balancing forces. All IA tools grapple with issues related to systems thinking as impacts are usually not one-dimensional and simple, but multi-dimensional and complex. Systems thinkers’ ambition is to approach situations not in terms of straight lines, but rather in terms of ‘loop structures’. This is because they believe that a system’s behaviour can be explained from the structure of its feedback loops. The challenge for IA to embrace systems thinking is that those involved/taking an interest in policy, plan, programme and project making usually ask for simplicity in IA which, putting a systems thinker’s hat on is very hard or even impossible to achieve. The last contribution to this issue (a letter to the editor) also advocates systems thinking in IA.

This issue includes seven full paper and a letter to the editor with authors representing eight countries (India, Portugal, China, Canada, UK, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands). Subjects covered include project monitoring and auditing, social licensing, translocation of species to avoid negative impacts of projects, health impact assessment (HIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA), corporate social responsibility and systems thinking.

In the first paper, John Glasson, Bridget Durning, Martin Broderick and Kellie Welch (all Oxford Brookes University, UK) elaborate on the monitoring and auditing of the local socio-economic and environmental impacts of the early-stage construction of a Nuclear Power Station (Hinkley Point C) in the UK. Next, Tianhe Jiang, Guoqing Shi (both Hohai University, Nanjing, China) and Yu Pu (Nanjing Institute of Technology, China) reflect on how a single community grants multiple social licences for a problematic metro project, focusing on one metro station in Nanjing. The third paper by the Portuguese authors Daniel Filipe Pires (BIOTA Gaeiras), Joaquim Reis (University of Lisbon), Liliana Benites (EDP Porto) & Patricia Rodriguez (BIOTA Gaeiras) deals with translocation of species for minimizing impacts on biodiversity. In this context, the authors focus on freshwater mussels and dams. Next, Adithya Pradyumna (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru), Andrea Farnham, Jürg Utzinger and Mirko S. Winkler (all University of Basel and Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland) report on a HIA of a watershed development project in southern India. In a fifth contribution, Gardenio Diogo Pimentel da Silva (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) assesses corporate social responsibility of hydroelectric companies in Canada. In a further contribution on India, Urmila Jha-Thakur (University of Liverpool, UK), Fatemeh Khosravi (University of Leeds, UK), Giamila Quattrone, Soumyen Bandyopadhyay, Ian Magedera and Supriya Garikipati (all University of Liverpool, UK) explore the role of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in cultural heritage tourism planning, looking at Srirangapatna-Mysore region. Finally, Vincent Wretling (KTH Stockholm, Sweden), Christina Hörnberg (Environmental Law and Development Centre Sweden), Ulrika Gunnarsson-Östling and Berit Balfors (both KTH Stockholm, Sweden) reflect on SEA screening practice and the inclusion of environmental objectives in Swedish energy and climate planning. This issue is rounded off by a letter to the editor by Ivar Lyhne, Lone Kørnøv (both Aalborg University, Denmark) and Hens Runhaar (Utrecht and Wageningen universities, The Netherlands) ‘Can Tour de France inspire SEA effectiveness? An analogy to encourage a broader systems thinking’.

Enjoy reading!