Health and impact assessment: Are we seeing closer integration?
Health has always had a place in wider impact assessment activities, from the earliest days of the National Environmental Policy Act in the United States. However, early thinking tended to focus on health protection and environmental health issues, especially in relation to the effects of pollution. The adoption of wider models of health was reflected in impact assessment circles from the early 1990s, with particular emphasis on an integrated approach to impact assessment, especially at the project level, which would see health impact assessment benefiting from working with other forms of impact assessment, such as social and ecological. Yet twenty years later, integration still seems a distant prospect in many countries. In this paper I examine the case for integrating health considerations within the wider IA process, discuss some of the problems that have historically restricted progress towards this end, and explore the degree to which impact assessment practitioners have been successful in seeking to improve the consideration of health in IA. In New Zealand, project-level impact assessment is based on an integrated model under the Resource Management Act. In addition, HIA was recognised in the early 1990s as a valuable addition to the toolkit for project assessment. Since then policy-level HIA has grown supported by extensive capacity building. If health is being integrated into wider impact assessment, it should be happening in New Zealand where so many enabling conditions are met. Three major project proposals from New Zealand are examined, to characterise the broad trends in HIA development in New Zealand in the last ten years and to assess the degree to which health concerns are being reflected in wider impact assessments. The findings are discussed in the context of the issues outlined in the early part of the paper.
- OSTI ID:
- 21499701
- Journal Information:
- Environmental Impact Assessment Review, Vol. 31, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1016/j.eiar.2010.03.009; PII: S0195-9255(10)00061-2; Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; ISSN 0195-9255
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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