Editorial

This issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal (IAPA) provides a series of papers with a special topic focus on understanding and managing trade-offs in impact assessment, as well as three other papers on a range of impact assessment topics submitted to us in the normal open process. It also marks the publication of a complete volume of IAPA (vol 30, no's 1-4) with our new look cover and updated paper format by Taylor & Francis.

Firstly, why a special topic focus on trade-offs? Trade-offs undermine the sustainability potential of impact assessment. It is therefore important to understand what gives rise to trade-offs during impact assessment and how they can be effectively managed. To borrow a phrase employed by Cashmore et al. (2004) in relation to effectiveness, trade-offs are an interminable issue in impact assessment and yet are not all that often openly discussed in the literature. The recent debate on trade-offs was first introduced through a paper by Morrison-Saunders and Pope (2013) aimed at conceptualising the topic along with paper and discussion sessions on ‘Managing Trade-offs and Offsets in Impact Assessment Decision-making’ at both the 2012 annual conference of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) conference in Porto (May 2012) as well as the subsequent annual conference of the South African affiliate of IAIA in Cape Town (August 2012). The call for submissions to this issue of IAPA emphasised papers that provide new insights or practical experience with respect to improving understanding and management of trade-offs in impact assessment.

The first paper comes from Robert Gibson, a renowned leader in the field of sustainability assessment. Using the benefit of hindsight, he provides two historical case study examples from Canada in which significant potential trade-offs were successfully avoided. The second paper is a contribution of our own, co-written with Davide Geneletti and Jenny Pope, in which we share key learning points from a psychology perspective with the aim of providing pointers to practitioners on how difficult trade-off decisions might be approached and managed. We thank Alan Bond for acting as guest-editor for this paper with respect to handling the independent peer-review process.

The remaining three special topic papers focus on trade-offs within the context of off-sets and compensation. Susie Brownlie, Nicholas King and Jo Treweek address the alarming trend for biodiversity loss and trade-offs in favour of short-term socio-economic benefits of development. They provide some practical guidance for practitioners on how biodiversity offsets can be effectively handled to curtail and ideally reverse biodiversity loss. Next, Marie Brown, Bruce Clarkson, Barry Barton and Chaitanya Joshi also address biodiversity offsets, presenting a detailed empirical analysis of regulatory compliance with ecological compensation conditions in New Zealand. This is one of the few follow-up studies of offsets and the authors provide some valuable understanding of the nature of non-compliance in practice. Finally Carlo Rega provides an empirical analysis of ecological compensation provisions within Italian spatial plans, one of the first studies of offsets in strategic levels of impact assessment that we are aware of. He shows that while there is increasing use of this approach within spatial planning in Italy, methodological and operational aspects appear to be weak and he provides some suggestions for fostering better implementation through better stakeholder collaboration during ecological compensation design.

Moving away from the trade-offs topic this issue of IAPA is rounded off with three regular papers addressing important issues related to cumulative effects and social impact assessment.

Looking back, we can report that the transition from Beech Tree Publishing to Taylor & Francis has been very smooth. In particular we are, as editors, greatly appreciative of Glyn Lavers and his copy-editing staff who handle all aspects of the publication process once we receive a final version of each paper from the author. Based on the success of the first full volume of papers with the new publisher we are excited about the future of IAPA and look forward to going from strength to strength in 2013.