25 years of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal (IAPA): Collection of the Best Paper Awards
Dear Readers,
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal (IAPA) started its journey in the year 1998 combining the two journals of ‘Impact Assessment’ and ‘Project Appraisal’. IAPA just completed a quarter of a century and hence in celebrating this landmark occasion we wanted to share with our readers a collection of articles, which over the years have received the ‘Best Paper Award’. In this collection we have a total of 27 articles, which were awarded during 1998 to 2022. It should be noted that two papers received this award in the year 2011 and in 2017. As I write this introduction, the 2023 award winner is yet to be announced. By making this collection available, we hope to share with you a glimpse of this amazing journey showcasing how Impact Assessment (IA) research has evolved over the years. The papers in this collection have been provided in chronological order starting from 1998.
Spanning 25 years, these 27 articles come from 62 authors. Kindly note, in adding up the numbers I have specifically taken into consideration that some of our authors have featured on this list more than once and even up to 3 times. Robert Gibson and Alan Bond deserve special mention here. Two of the papers on this list are from guest editors of special issue. These include: a) ‘The state of the art of impact assessment in 2012’, by Alan Bond and Jenny Pope and b) ‘Social licence to Operate and Impact Assessment’ by Sara Bice and Kieren Moffat. If the titles of the 27 papers are taken into consideration ‘Environmental Assessment’ has been used six times and ‘Environmental Impact Assessments’ or ‘EIA’ has featured seven times. The focus on EA and EIA has also been consistently maintained over the years, i.e. they feature in the title of the Best Papers first in 2000 and then as recent as in 2022. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has been used in the titles three times, first featuring in 2009.
Apart from the emphasis on EA, the second most repeated term over the years within the titles have been ‘Social’ and ‘Social Impact Assessment’, featuring eight times in total. Other forms of IA that have featured in these award-winning papers include Integrated Assessment; Sustainability Assessment; Health Impact Assessment, Social and Economic Impact Assessment. These articles from IAPA below certainly highlight the role that IA and especially EA has played in serving as a lens to look at other topical issues such as climate-change, sustainable finance frameworks and sustainable development goals. IA will to continue to play an imperative role in delivering sustainability to our decision-making process and IAPA takes pride in bringing and disseminating such cutting-edge research to our growing wider audience.
Enjoy Reading!
Edited by
Dr Urmila Jha-Thakur(School of Environmental Sciences, Environmental Assessment and Management Centre, University of Liverpool.)