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AREAS OF FOCUS AND SUGGESTED ANSWERS
1. Briefly explain the following terms
• Social impacts: Consequences on human populations that alter common ways of living • Economic impacts: Factors that causes diversion of resources to uses that would not have been necessary in their absence (price increase, devaluation, inflation) • Mitigation: Ways of trying to minimize the negative effects of a project in order to maximize the positive aspects of the proposed project (regulatory, educational awareness, technical, reduction, remedial actions, avoidance and compensation) • Systems thinking: a set of thinking, diagramming and computer modelling tools on how components behave and predict the future. It involves at identifying parts and their relationships, recognizing solutions that can cause more problems, focusing on the whole system, avoiding actions that are favorable now but harmful later, timely decision making/no delays (linear and exponential growth of challenges) and seeing what is really there instead of what is expected) • Strategic environmental assessment: It is a concept that is used on policy & program level 2. Using examples discuss four categories of social and economic impacts • Health and wellbeing (social, mental, physical, nutrition, stigmatization, fertility). • Quality of the living environment (quality, safety and hazards, change in the environment, leisure and recreation, aesthetic quality, availability and quality housing). • Cultural impacts (change in values, violation of culture, exploitation, loss of local language, change in lifestyle). • Family and community impacts (social networks, family violence, community connections/cohesion, crime and violence, inequity, social differentiation). • Institutional, legal, political and equity impacts (distribution of resources, participation in decision making, access to legal advice and institutional change). • Gender relations (division of labour, independence, access to resources and facilities, political emancipation of people). • Economic impacts & material wellbeing (Workload, economic change, standard of living, property values, demographic change, economic prosperity, resilience and dependency). 3. Social impacts vary in accordance with stages of project life cycle. Briefly discuss the impacts that can be experienced at each stage of the project cycle. • Planning stage (fear, changed expectations, increase or fall of property prices, selling of land, migration of people, real estate speculation and different concerns; environment) • Implementation (traffic congestion, noise/dust/hazards, influx of temporary workers, strain on community infrastructure). • Operation and maintenance (though relatively stable but there is pollution or health hazards). • Decommissioning and abandonment (change people`s wellbeing) 4. Discuss 5 problems that may be encountered in SIA • Methodological problems • Societal mentality • Cultural and practices constraints • Poorly funded • Legal constraints • Political constraints • Feasibility (long and costly) • Time • Lack of experts (outsiders doing SIA) • Poorly trained consultants • Pre- project focus of SIA leaves important areas of focus. 5. Social impacts are not impacts on themselves but they are the results of social change process. With this understanding discuss 5 processes that may lead to social impacts. • Demographic process (migration, resettlement, displacement) • Economic processes (inflation, concentration of economic activity, economic globalization) • Geographic processes (urban sprawl, urbanization, gentrification, physical splintering, enhanced transportation) • Sociocultural processes (segregation, social disintegration, cultural differences, social globalisation) • Technological processes (social media, internet, innovations). • Gender relations (woman`s physical integrity, personal autonomy of women, gendered division of labour, access to resources) • Emancipation and empowerment processes (democratization, marginalization and exclusion, capacity building, empowerment activities for the youth and women) • Institutional & legal processes (decentralization, centralization and institutional globalisation, privatization)
6. Why is it important to conduct SIA?
• To come up with sustainable development • To make informed decisions • To avoid P5 (Poor Planning Produces Poor Performance) • To mitigate social impacts • To achieve competent, proactive and strategic planning 7. Discuss the general principles in conducting SIA • Flexible; practical; done by experts, future oriented and objectives led. 8. Discuss three steps to be followed in conducting SIA • Screening: Describes the need to conduct SIA based on: the nature of the strategic proposal and the nature of the social impact • Scoping: To what extent & what details. In other words, what are the critical issues (i.e., stakeholders, time horizon, boundaries, targets, objectives, indicators, alternatives & data gaps) • Assessment: Detailed assessment of critical issues / alternatives and reporting
City Campus
1. The power of systems thinking framework is identifying the parts, avoiding actions that are favourable now and harmful later and making decisions timely, avoiding delays. Discuss 2. Discuss the common five common analytical methods used in SIA SWOT analysis, Trend analyses, Modelling, Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA), Collective expert judgement, Scenario building and Network and system diagrams. 3. Compare and contrast SIA and EIA 4. Why social impact assessment must be conducted before a project in implemented 5. Explain Steps in conducting SIA
