Proportionate EIA: New Skills for Impact Assessors with Josh Fothergrill
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Summary
In this episode of The No Nonsense Sustainability Podcast, host Ildiko Almasi Simsic welcomes Josh Fothergrill from Fothergill Training & Consulting to discuss the evolving field of environmental and social impact assessments (EIA). The conversation centers around the need for proportionate EIA, a concept aimed at making impact assessments more effective and focused.
Josh Fothergrill explains the challenges of current EIA practices, such as the overwhelming length of reports and the commoditization of the process. He emphasizes the importance of streamlining assessments to focus on key environmental and social issues, rather than producing exhaustive documents that may not serve decision-makers effectively.
The discussion also touches on the role of digital tools and artificial intelligence in transforming the EIA process. By leveraging these technologies, impact assessors can focus more on meaningful engagement and decision support, potentially leading to more sustainable development outcomes. The episode concludes with a call for the profession to evolve and embrace new skills and methodologies.
Highlights
Josh Fothergrill discusses the concept of proportionate EIA to improve assessment effectiveness.
Current EIA practices often result in lengthy reports that may not aid decision-making.
Digital tools and AI can streamline EIA processes, allowing for more focused assessments.
The commoditization of EIA has led to a loss of focus on key environmental and social issues.
Impact assessors need to evolve their skills to include digital and communication capabilities.
Proportionate EIA aims to reduce unnecessary information and focus on significant impacts.
The episode emphasizes the need for collaboration among stakeholders in the EIA process.
Key takeaways
1. Proportionate EIA seeks to make impact assessments more effective by focusing on key issues.
2. Current EIA practices often produce lengthy documents that may not be useful for decision-makers.
3. Digital tools and AI can help streamline EIA processes, enhancing focus and efficiency.
4. Impact assessors should develop skills in digital tools and effective communication to improve outcomes.
5. Collaboration among stakeholders is crucial for a successful and focused EIA process.
Timestamped breakdown
[0:09] — Introduction to Proportionate EIA: Host Ildiko Almasi Simsic introduces the concept of proportionate environmental impact assessments with guest Josh Fothergrill.
[0:51] — Understanding Impact Assessment: Josh explains the basics of impact assessment and its importance in evaluating future projects.
[1:55] — Proportionate EIA Explained: Josh defines proportionate EIA and its goal to streamline the assessment process.
[3:23] — Challenges with Current EIA Practices: Discussion on the excessive length of current EIA reports and the need for more focused assessments.
[5:12] — Legislative Context of EIA: The role of legislation in shaping EIA practices and the need for compliance in project development.
[8:23] — Decision Support in EIA: Josh discusses the decision-making process and the role of EIA in supporting informed choices.
[10:33] — Skills Required for Impact Assessors: Exploration of the diverse skill set needed for effective impact assessment.
[16:37] — Training and Competency in EIA: Challenges in training impact assessors and the importance of experience and judgment.
[27:41] — Proportionate EIA Process: Josh outlines how a proportionate EIA process differs from traditional methods.
[39:02] — Future of EIA and Digital Tools: Discussion on the potential of digital tools and AI to transform the EIA process.
Edited transcript
Welcome back to the No Nonsense Sustainability podcast. Today we're covering something truly buzzworthy, proportionate environmental impact assessments. Bear with us. I have someone here who can explain it to us in real words. Josh Fodgirl from Father Consulting. Welcome to the show, Josh.
Josh: Thank you very much. Nice to be here, Ilico. Thank you for inviting me.
Ildiko: Thank you for coming. So, can you give a brief explanation on what you're doing as part of your consulting?
Josh: Yeah, certainly. So, um I'm I guess a specialist in impact assessment. Um probably worth explaining that I guess initially. So, um impact assessment is basically a process that's applied to look at the potential consequences of a future action. So that might be a project, a new airport, an urban expansion, or it might be a plan, you know, a large scale city map, that type of thing. And it's looking at those environmental consequences um or the social community kind of societal consequences and trying to reduce the negative effects and promote the positive effects before we actually get, you know, kind of boots on the ground uh and damage occurring.
Ildiko: That's very nice. that it's leading us into the first segment of the buzzer battle. Let me explain how this works. So, in the show, I have my friend Bob, who does not really like the buzzwords. He just goes off. It's more of a gentle nudge for you to understand and explain the words in more clarity to give more context.
Josh: Absolutely. So in this segment I want you to explain 60 seconds proportionate EIA.
Josh: Absolutely. Okay. So proportionate EIA. Absolutely buzz word. Absolutely. We've already buzzed that. Let's get another one out there. Streamlining. I'll buzz myself for that one. What it means is really about making impact assessment effective. So it's really about getting the right information um to the right people at the right time. So that could be the designers to make sure that as they're coming up with the design and the idea for this project, they're recognizing social and environmental risks and trying to avoid them or finding opportunities. It could be the financiers or decision makers in terms of when they're actually coming to make that decision, making sure they understand really what are the key environmental and social issues here.
Josh: And I guess the reason we use that term proportionate EIA or proportionate impact assessment is because we have a problem in existing practice obesity effectively of the documentations um disproportionate kind of levels of assessment. So we're gathering lots and lots of information um about lots and lots of different topics when we could be far far more focused and that would help us deliver um a better outcome. I think
Ildiko: I really like that. I really like that. And I must say when you first sent me this uh diagram of what this is, I wasn't really sure if the proportionate section referred to the length of the document because we're seeing 500-page documents. Y or if it refers to the actual information that's collected for that particular project.
Josh: Yeah, absolutely. So uh the document that is generally seen by the financiers in if it's in a financial institution situation environmental social impact assessment side of things um they may be 500 pages when we're getting to things like um some of the UK developments highspeed 2 the amass documents of the environmental statement came to about 65,000 pages. So and regularly for offshore wind farms we're seeing 10,000 page plus documents. These are the tip of the iceberg that is being seen by ministers, being seen by financiers, being seen by others. And that's why it's the cause to celeb I guess in terms of trying to reduce the length of the documents. But the reality is that they're the output of the process.
Ildiko: Yes.
Josh: So we can't simply reduce the length of the document. We have to go back into that process and say, well, how did we get here? How do we actually improve the process so that we're more focused in what we're assessing? We're deciding on what information is key and needs to be in the main document rather than maybe an appendix or even supporting information. And that pushes back even further as to what are the processes, what are the norms that have been developed in practice over 30 or 40 years that are holding us back and gets into I guess one of the topics we'll probably talk about today quite a bit which is about the skills of the impact assessor both in terms of the individual but also how an organization needs to set itself up to apply things.
Ildiko: Yeah, exactly. But before we do that, maybe let's contextualize because that's why I always call other people's out for. and now it's time for me to call myself out. So these environmental assessments or EAS, they're uh a response to legislation for new construction or expansion projects. So developers need to prepare these documents, submit to the authorities to get their environmental and construction permit. Right.
Josh: Yes. Certainly in a in a national basis that's that's absolutely how they're used. um started in the uh late 1960s, early '7s over in the US um and then spread across the world. In Europe, it's been around since the mid1 1980s. Um and there's been an expansion of that application into strategic planning as well. So before we get to the projects, the kind of plans and policies that lead to those there is of course an application in the international finance sector. Um an area that you obviously started off in. So maybe back to you to uh to just explain that that context a little.
Ildiko: I think it's a it's a very very similar like structure where the lenders require the developers to have these assessments ready and proportionate to the risks of the project uh and they make financing decisions based on that. Yeah.
Josh: So, in a way, even if there's companies that do not care about the environment for some of their operations, they just have to care about this EIA because otherwise they have no permit and they can't proceed.
Ildiko: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know out of that will come some ongoing responsibility in terms of perhaps action plans to manage uh biodiversity and ecology issues or maybe if their project has had to go through an existing community there might be a need to resettle people and recognize um you know how that is going to be managed and and make sure that uh people aren't out of pocket and those type of things.
Ildiko: Okay. So once these documents are ready, they're submitted to the competent authorities. Although a lot of people argue that they should be incompetent authorities. But what we're going to talk about today is the other side. The consultants who are preparing these documents, who are advising the developers, who are going through this process and eventually delivering 10,000 pages worth of incredible information. Well, not 10,000 pages of incredible information. I think there's probably 30 or 40 pages of incredible information in there. And I think that is the challenge of of, you know, that's what we want to get to with the proportionate assessment is we're going to have some of the bulk, but how do we use um digital tools that are developing? How do we use um storytelling and narrative? uh how do we apply effective communication skills to get that key information forwards and to contextualize it properly. I think one of the challenges we've seen with the consultancy sector and the use of so many consultants is effectively EIA has become a commodity.
Ildiko: Exactly. You order the document. Absolutely. It's like conveyor belt consultant comes in 3 days on site, 5 days on site, you deliver the report and that's it.
Josh: Exactly. And the whole point of that process is it's meant to be about decision support. So it's
Ildiko: which decisions?
Josh: Well, that's a really interesting one. So in terms of the legislation, the decision is seen as that decision to consent or if it was a financial institution that would be the decision to make the loan or make the investment. But actually there's many more decisions that we need to recognize in that process. So oftentimes uh the decision as to which site we're going to go for, the decision as to what type of technology we might deploy, the decision as to whether the noisy bit of that site is going to be on the eastern side or the western side. All of those kind of things are key implications for or can be key implications for environment and society and often the complex interaction between those. So something we might touch upon today uh maybe is cultural heritage and that's often where issues can really come together and you know it it's unless we contextualize and bring the key information for that project in that context forward in the impact assessor forward in the impact assessment to the right people at the right time then we can end up locking in problems and then that's where impact assessment I guess uh becomes more difficult because if we've already locked in a problem to the project, but that project is still seeking consent. How do we unravel that? How do we resolve that? Or are we simply in a process of trying to minimize harm and mitigate rather than avoid the harm uh that we could have done if we'd have been more effective earlier?
Ildiko: Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny you bring in uh the cultural heritage because that's typically something that we would like cover under the social part of these impact assessments, but even the environmental part, it's so many different topics. How is it possible that an expert, a generalist can cover all of these when I know we talked about it in the social impact sphere? You have the labor people, you have people for resettlement, the strictly speaking social impact assessment, the stakeholder engagement.
Josh: Yeah.
Ildiko: Like c can you just like walk through the skill set of the the environmental aspects of of an EIA?
Josh: Yeah. So I I guess the first thing to respond to that is, you know, it takes a village to produce an impact assessment. It isn't just one person. Um, and that was learned pretty early on in in uh in practice when it was implemented in different nations. So in the UK, you know, in the early 1990s, you saw individuals attempting to write these documents. And what you would find is, you know, they were a landscape specialist and there'd be a 20-page chapter on landscape and then half a page on biodiversity, half a page on noise impacts and and this type of thing. So it's been recognized over time that we do need specialist knowledge that needs to come into the process. So you may well have um well in a in a kind of European Union impact assessment context you'll have um population, human health, uh biodiversity, soil, air, water, uh material assets, not very well defined, but effectively resource use, energy use, that type of thing. Cultural heritage and landscape would be included. So that's where EIA would sit within a European Union context. For you, some of those would fit more on the social side.
Ildiko: Yes. Um but certainly in the international finance side, there's a lot more topics and specialisms on the social side that you wouldn't necessarily in the n see in the national systems. The national systems have tend to to grow out of the environment side of things. So you have those specialisms. If we look at an ecologist for example, you know, you may well be looking at a marine project. So you know might need some specialists who are specialists in marine mammals and then benthic communities the bottom of the sea and you know kind of what's happening there. You might need those to speak to uh hydromemorphologists and uh geologists as to how sediment might change and therefore affect those type of uh species. So there's this specialist knowledge and um the capabilities that go with those professionals. But then what's emerged over time I guess particularly on the EIA the environmental impact assessment side in national systems is I suppose almost an EIA manager or coordinator with a set of skills that is trying to keep that team together keep it up to date understand the key risks and communicate that across to uh the engineers the designers the clients um and understand and flow that information and try and package it in a consistent and uniform manner. Um, and I think you probably see because of the commodification the consultancy use, you probably see more people coming out of the national systems in the consultancies into the financial institution world. So that's possibly why in the with the environmental side of things, you might see more people who are generalists coming from that coordinator rather than coming from a true specialism of say ecology or um you know landscape architecture, archaeology, those type of things.
Ildiko: Yeah. And I think the question I always had is how does one person end up as an environmental impact assessor? Because as you mentioned you you use like words I don't even uh remember but like I don't even understand like hydromorphology ecologist you know biodiversity I know very well from my projects there's like very specific like marine bio biology expertise absolutely like how do these people who are trained in these specialist fields end up doing an impact assessment
Josh: there's being involved in and I guess there's doing so the being involved in is easier to understands you're a marine specialist and you're a specialist in a in a particular part of the world and a development is now being proposed in that area and someone needs to understand the risks. So they come to you to involve you in that process and that might be simply gathering the data and the information to provide about you know are there particular species there are there particular birds or or marine mammals what's the when are they there in the uh um when are they in the there in the time of year uh and various things in relation to that or it could be then moving that further forward to say well what are the implications so that's where your next step in your career might be is okay this is how they are now, but how are they going to change if we drop this wind farm into the middle of the ocean? Um, is that going to bother them? Is it not going to bother them? Um, if we do, you know, some very loud banging noises for piling to get these things in, is is that going to irritate them? How do we manage that? How do we mitigate that? Is there a time of year we should be going in? And then eventually if you do uh enough of those you might end up on a path where you're more interested in the the kind of writing up of that and the engagement with the client. And because you have so many specialists it doesn't tend to be 20 people talking to the client. You'll tend to have one person who will bring the main issues forward and then bring in a specialist as needed. So it would then potentially be an uplift or a move in your career to move into that. However, from the consultancy side, there is, I suppose, a direct route to just coming in as a coordinator of that process um and a manager of that process. Um, and that probably underplays the role that an EIA coordinator actually provides in the system.
Ildiko: Yeah, it make it sounds like it's easy peasy. you just manage other people's work like as a project manager but it's actually a lot more complex because you have ownership and like I should buzz myself for the whole document. Yes. So you're not just collecting the different pieces of information, but you follow this set methodology. It's the yeah volume, the magnitude, there's residual impacts, cumulative impacts, and it's ultimately you that's making the final call on all of that. So how do we train people to understand all of these?
Josh: That's a really good question. It's a really large question um that I guess we'll probably need to unpack in in in different ways because how you train them obviously is is changing as well as digital tools uh are coming forwards. But I think one of the big challenges is that because EIA has become commoditized and because we've become into a system where um I suppose we're kind of packaging people into you're coming in to gather this data and put it in this part of the report. you're going to now take on this responsibility of coordinating the front of the document which explains the development and how we identified what was relevant to it or you're going to bring forward the entire document and be responsible for it then we tend to see it as oh this is something you have to learn on the job you have to build up over time and I guess we've we've kind of been um as a profession um a bit lax in terms of saying what actually are the core skills, capabilities, attributes, buzz, buzz, buzz, you know. Um,
Ildiko: everybody's talking about this competency framework. Y,
Josh: but no one is explaining, okay, what is the competency? And I know there's so much you can learn from a textbook,
Ildiko: but then they drop you on a construction site. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you're that expert, and I've been uh out with the biodiversity guys. You're walking around like looking for animal prints, like looking at the birds, trying to take notes and photos all within the context of this project knowing that whatever conclusion you come to might become a legal requirement for the developer.
Josh: Yeah. and and what you haven't necessarily reflected there is the fact that you're on that site that day but the previous week you might have been in a different continent or you know um you will have 7 8 10 15 20 of these projects all going on at the same time so there are some real challenges there and I think over time and over my career this an area that I've focused on quite a lot I think there are some core whether you want to call them capabilities or skills you know it doesn't really matter But you know how to make good judgments, how to you know kind of look at risk and manage risk effectively, understand root causes of uh problems and be able to kind of cut to the quick as to what those issues are
Ildiko: what's your conclusion? How how do we make uh apply good judgment and how do we train people to learn to apply good judgment?
Josh: I think a certain amount of it is how we recognize it at the moment. it is based on experience and I think one of the challenges that we're seeing um over the last five to six years of practice is the fact that we picked up a lot of that as ourselves as juniors by being in the office and seeing how um our seniors operated and how conversations went on and how things were discussed and there is a real challenge I think these days with a lot more working at home working independently that we don't necessarily accrete that knowledge just by you know kind of being in the presence of it and and seeing that activity. So there's some challenges there. I realize I'm not answering your question of how do we do it. I'm saying what the problems. But it but it's really interesting because I used to be quite frustrated when I started that any sort of seniority or positions or promotions seem to have been based on the number of years you spent in the industry, not on the quality of your deliverables or any any sort of other KPI or any any sort of other aspect that I've seen in other industries. Yes,
Ildiko: you have these other industries where you skyrocket first if you're good, you get promoted, you get pushed to the top and then you kind of stagnate there. And in our world in this impact assessment, it's kind of like a very slow and steady rise. And whether you're good or not, if you get old, you'll get there.
Josh: Yeah. I I think it is. You have to grind it out. And I think that's one of the the challenges that impact assessment has is there are so many more so many other environment, social, sustainability jobs that are now available. Um perhaps in more dynamic industries, perhaps more um regular promotion and also there's there's so much more demand. So developers now want project managers, but project managers who understand some of the environmental and social issues. So suddenly you've got more competition. So it becomes a real challenge as an impact assessor if if there aren't the these um KPIs uh to uh to move things forward. So and I think that's one of the real challenges impact assessment has is if we are effective and we avoid we apply the mitigation hierarchy at the top of it. So the mitigation hierarchy is avoid prevent avoid the uh negative impact prevent it. So prevention would be kind of stepping in and stopping that source pathway receptor intervening so they can't reach the receptor, a human community, a particular species. So if we do what we're meant to do and avoid or prevent these effects, then they never happen. So they get mentioned briefly in passing in the documentation, but they're no longer a risk. So we've done our job, but there's no real easy KPI to respect that because, well, it doesn't exist anymore. we've taken it out of the project. We've avoided that risk. And then the consequences that we do let through the ones that we claim we're managing and we say, "Oh, this was significant, but now that we've mitigated it, we think the residual significance, the consequence after the mitigation has been applied is is going to be far less. It's going to be an acceptable consequence for that community or that habitat." So they don't happen until the project's financed and then we've got contractors and it's gone through more detailed design. That's maybe at least 6 months and then it goes into construction. And if it's an operational effect, we might not see that for 5 or 10 years on a mega project. So the KPI has I suppose inevitably focused on did the document get produced on time and did it get uh a a positive decision in terms of an investment. um or being consented, which in some ways is the wrong way to look at it because just because it get consented or financed doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't carry a lot of environmental and social risk with it. And of course, the banks see the kickback of that in terms of the grievance mechanism and complaints coming in and reputational risk. In a national setting, you see that I guess more in terms of um you know uh nimism, you know, not in my backyard. the desire, you know, to to not see development near people, which is is then a real restriction on the economy. And then impact assessment gets focused on as an area that, you know, is is to blame for that as opposed to it really being the messenger to say these are your choices, these are your implications, are you going to run with this or not?
Ildiko: And I think it's a little bit misleading when, you know, we say there is a mitigation measure. So there there are things we can put in place to stop that impact from happening or to ma minimize it to the extent possible but it doesn't mean that it won't happen and it's probably different for the environment but for people you know you can pay compensation you can talk to them more but the fact is that they will lose some of their land it's not changing is really like the the accounting in the report you know I assess the volume the magn itude. I paid for them. It's not a high risk anymore.
Josh: Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the impact assessment is never going to be perfect. um because it is before things have happened and it is fundamentally or in the vast majority of cases it is decision support and ultimately um you know on a a competent authority in a in a in a UK situation um you know the government is going to look at that information but it's also going to balance that against economic needs um maybe climate change targets and these type of things. So we are going to continue to make decisions that carry risk forward. I think the big challenge for impact assessment particularly as it's now 40 plus years old is it is very much frontloaded. Sorry it's there before the decision and then it hands that risk on to someone else. It hands that risk on to an environmental management system, an action plan. That might be a responsibility of a contractor or a different environmental professional. It's quite rare that you see that risk being carried through all the way by the same professionals and therefore the monitoring to say did that mitigation work in that context and what when it didn't work what made it fail why were the reasons for that why didn't it work so effectively that information may be out there but it's not being captured in a manner that feeds nicely back into the front of the process to say oh you know that thing we've been doing for 30 years to manage um species and habitat loss doesn't actually work very well. Maybe we should try something different. Um and I think that's one of the challenges that we're seeing now in relation to what we were talking about to begin with, that proportionate EIA, is to say, well, we've been doing this an awful lot. Why aren't we doing it better? Why aren't we uh being better at it? And that's where you get some risk with that streamlining concept that that uh concept that governments are coming up with which relates to making assessments more focused but tends to be more about efficiency. Let's have less pages. Let's do it in less time as opposed to effectiveness of saying let's make it more effective. And the outcome of that is that we're more efficient and we can bring the key information forward quicker.
Ildiko: Yeah. But I guess it's because we're not measuring our effectiveness based on any qualitative impact. Like I never had a performance review where they said I delivered the projects to good standards. It always was how many category A's per year, how many category B's and nobody cared if it was appropriate. All they cared about is someone approved it. They got accepted and it went through. Yeah.
Ildiko: So I guess what I try to understand maybe can you give me walk me through an EIA process the old way and then what would be the change if we're applying this proportionate EIA concept.
Josh: Okay that's a there's there potentially a lot to impact there but let's let's let's let's try that out. So um the the standard approach at the moment would be to say um okay we we've got an EIA the legislation sets out these eight things we must look at but we've done a bunch of these recently and we did five or six other things. So we're going to start with 14 different environmental topics. Then we're going to go and do some stakeholder engagements. those stakeholders. So that might be um uh environmental regulators, that might be the public, that might be uh environmental uh NGO non-government organizations who all provide information in. But when we're doing that engagement, we're not necessarily asking the right questions. So we're we're getting more information in. It tends to be um okay, you've got those 14 things, but you've not thought about this, this, and this. So then we add you, we may be on 18 topics then that we're looking forward to. Each of those will then tend to be um assessed and data will be gathered and in order to make the structuring of that information into the report that must be produced um efficient, we've created templates in our consultancies, but those templates then dictate and drive us. So they kind of remove our curiosity and our focus that we should be bringing to the process and have us fill in lots of different sections. So you then end up with a report where if you go to the resettlement chapter or you go to the ecology chapter, you're effectively sitting down and reading a mystery novel and you start with an introduction to the characters, you know, oh, there's this community here. There's this issue here. Then you bring in the plot. We're going to build an airport. Oo, fantastic. And then you eventually get to, you know, the the the um the gobbledegook of words that we put into the EIA process of, you know, permanent or temporary impact. Is it going to be a large magnitude or a small? Is it going to be synergistic cumulate? All these words and descriptors before we eventually get to the who done it at the end of that chapter, which in the UK can easily be three or 400 pages where we conclude there are no significant effects. But someone has spent hours and hours and hours producing that, hours and hours reviewing that if you're a stakeholder. So what do we look at in a proportionate assessment? Well, we try to look at what's gone before, but rather than looking at what's gone before to say and therefore we'll include it, we try to bring collaboration across the different parties who are involved in the process, the decision makers, the environmental regulators, perhaps some of the environmental NOS's, the consultants, the specialists, and we say for this type of development, are these issues appropriate? Should they be in this assessment? Are there other parts of the decision-making process that also require this information? So, this is something that's gone on in Scotland with the onshore wind sector um where they've done this and they've decided that soioeconomic issues are often covered in some of the planning documents. So, they no longer need that in the environmental statement, the output of the EIA process. And that'll probably save 100 200 pages. but also how do we focus on some of these other areas as to what are the significant effects we've seen in the uh in previous experience. Now that gives us a better starting point because we're more focused. We can then go out and have more useful conversations with our consultes to say um is there any reason to bring additional issues in? So, you know, justify why we should include something additional. we can then move forward into our assessment. That hopefully gives us a little bit more time to focus on the more complex problems, the perhaps cumulative effects between our project and a number of others that might have been built recently. So we can then improve the effectiveness because we're spending more time, more resource on the more complex problems rather than having a fixed budget and a very small slice for that. Then when we come to write that up, we can use far more narrative to try and tell a story in the front end of here was the concept that could have been built here and here are the types of risk that are generally associated. Here's what we came up with as an actual project and that removed these risks because we weren't in these particular areas. But then here's how we engaged with the community. Here's how we looked at the environment to de-risk as much as possible and build in opportunity so that by the time we actually get to the assessment chapters and the write up, we're really focused on what's left. what are the actual problems or opportunities with the project seeking consent rather than the idea that was 18 months ago and talking about all that implication in every single chapter. And digital can help us with that in terms of um uh making the documents more accessible so that they're not simply in hard copy. We can navigate our own way through them. And something we haven't touched on yet, but I know we often have conversations about is AI. Well, actually some of the writing of some of the bulk of that AI can now do and then we can act as impact assessment professionals to make sure that's contextually appropriate. Make sure um that it's communicated well, make sure that the key issues then taken to the crit critical decision makers wherever that might be in the process.
Ildiko: Yeah. Because the the reality is that some of these like information and data gathering exercises they take 6 to 12 to 18 months depending on the bird species, the protected areas, the environmentally sensitive areas. So this is a very long process. You spend 6 months to two years sometimes just to gather the information, write up this document. And it's not only the amount of topics to include because we often have a vocal minority that's very passionate about one topic. Y and it just ends up in the report. Yes. And nobody's really questioning the legitimacy of that of that issue. Yes. And sometimes they're right, other times not so much. But it's also, as you pointed out, about how much under each chapter we include and and AI could definitely help out making things more concise. But I also feel like and and we've had this conversation before sometimes we're doing this to ourselves. Like we're so used to speaking in these like buzz words, we can't even have a conversation without them. And there's an expectation from the developers and the lenders that we'll hit all the right words in our reports. Y and somehow there's value attached to producing something long. Y as if it was better. Yeah. By some metrics. Mhm. But it's not necessarily true. So are we doing this to ourselves? And how are we stopping the next generation from going in circles going in circles like us?
Josh: So, are we doing it to ourselves? I don't think we're doing it intentionally to ourselves, but I think the the norms that have become how impact assessment is practiced have become too entrenched. Um and we really need to look at you know refreshing the impact assessment process um both for the rapidity that we now need to make decisions. So with the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the need to transition infrastructure to that. We're seeing a lot um a lot more projects coming forwards that are arguing, you know, well, we're inherently good. This is a renewable energy project. It's to hit a climate target. Therefore, we shouldn't have to look at our environmental and social risks. Well, that isn't necessarily true, but at the same time, we are definitely behind where we need to be with that type of infrastructure. So, if we go down this commoditization side of things, uh, and, um, we keep doing what we've been doing, we're going to find it very hard to meet those timelines. So I think we really do have to challenge ourselves as practitioners to say well what are our key benefits that we bring and where are the areas in the impact assessment process that there are technological solutions or business efficiency and process solutions that we can bring from outside and build them into our systems to make them more effective. So you were talking about the baseline.
Ildiko: Yes.
Josh: You know, there are a huge amount of satellite uh images now that exist and have existed for a long time at a very good level of detail. So we may not have ecologists who've been to the site for the last 2 years, but we can potentially look at some of this information from satellites and digital technology and at least get a reasonable understanding of what has been developed uh and what are the implications. Has the habitat been uh uh improving? Has it been reducing? What are the trends? And how can we combined with still having humans on the ground? How can we use those together to be more efficient and judge the risk as to where we need to actually collect two years of new data versus the projects where actually some satellite information and some site visits are, you know, maybe a site visit or a couple of site visits over 6 months is is more appropriate. In terms of how we um help those coming into the profession, arguably I'd say it's those coming into the profession that need to help us because they're the ones who have the digital innovation. They're the ones who've grown up with this technology who understand it much more. So I think you need a two-way streak. You need the coaching coming down from the senior leadership in terms of getting those right behaviors into people, sharing knowledge, discussing case examples. how did I make this judgment? Having open challenge uh and time to reflect on projects but then you also need the juniors or the people who do understand the digital technologies or those who've transferred into the uh the profession from other professions that have applied process efficiencies to come in and be heard. And I think that's one of our big challenges as you were alluding to earlier is if we slowly grind our way up and don't get recognized for our expertise when we're earlier in our profession then how are we going to make this change and unfortunately we're going to you know lose a lot of very good people who come to the profession for a few years and say no one's listening to me I'm going to go and you know make the influence make the change have the environmental social impact that they want from their career elsewhere
Ildiko: is an environment mental impact assessment still a good tool or is there a better one? Is there EIA 2.0 that's better than how we did it before? Because as you say, there are a lot of people who are trying to make a difference. They're trying to do the right thing, but then they go to a big company that's actually implementing some things and they feel much better about themselves and much more fulfilled professionally.
Josh: Mhm. Because as you said, we deliver this CIA and then as a consultant we're off the project. Yeah. It stays with the developer and then somebody else uh will implement or not. Y is there a better tool?
Josh: Is there a better tool is a really good question and that's what a number of governments and activities around the world um are kind of trying to tackle at the moment. the UK or England within the UK has been talking about replacing EIA with environmental outcome reports and much more of a focus on what's the actual outcome to the environment and let's focus on predicting that. They've been talking about it for 3 years. We still have no detail as to how that process will work. And ultimately, if you break impact assessment down to its most core components, it's about having evidence-based decision-m. And I think if we're well the consent decisions, projects moving forward based on information from the real world that we've gathered and that is you know um justified and understood as opposed to um you know just guesses you know off the top of our headers or what we would like to see in the future. So I think there are some interesting developments coming through in some tools. Biodiversity net gain.
Ildiko: Yeah.
Josh: That said, how do you explain that without the buzzwords? Um the idea behind it is that um a project leads to a better outcome for species and habitats after it's been built than was available on the site or in the surrounding area before it was built. So that's the idea of a net gain, an overall gain in biodiversity. In some areas, particularly in the UK, it's been turned into a a tool, a digital tool, a metric. Um, and it's therefore numbers of habitats, waiting on values on those, and then, you know, effectively playing these sums out and then saying, okay, this project needs to provide 10 extra units. Those units could be over of relatively low quality uh habitats over a large area or it could be an improvement to a very high quality habitat area. So there are these tools coming forward that could be useful to the system. But I think ultimately you're still going to need some way of saying what are my environmental and social risks and what are my opportunities in relation to this project and how do I manage those risks and maximize those opportunities after I've chosen to make that investment. And if we don't have some process that's doing that, an impact assessment is effectively that process, then we're going to carry a lot more reputational risk and we're going to carry a lot more implications for the environment and society into those future developments. So I think we still need it. I think what we need to really do is evolve the tool and keep up with where society is. So digital innovation I did a study on uh digital uh within impact assessment or digital impact assessment. There we go. Let's buzz myself. Um which is really about using tool digital tools digital software digital approaches to make impact assessment more effective. So not just using them because they're there um and they you know cut out a certain process but actually improve the impact assessment process. So in that report I identified that there were some homegrown tools that were developed by impact assessors using digital approaches and then there was a lot of adoption of external tools into the system and I think a real clear um trajectory we've seen over the four five years since that report is particularly around artificial intelligence we've seen a huge acceleration in that coming to the marketplace and being available. And what we don't see um is the impact assessment profession moving fast enough in relation to that.
Ildiko: Exactly. I'm uh intimately familiar with this issue. Absolutely.
Josh: And it's you know the the availability of tools is one thing but then the skill to use them. Yes. And how to transfer like transform what we thought of as a good impact assessor.
Ildiko: Mhm. to like 2025 because before when you were good you had a number of years of experience you've been on project site you've accumulated this lived experience and you applied your judgment based on that but now with some of these digital tools we can learn everything about every project like the tools that I developed y I use them I I use this exact same logic what information did I access when I was early career and clueless like what did how did other people get information? How did they make those decisions? How that was incorporated in these documents?
Josh: Yeah.
Ildiko: And like I that's how I learned everything that I know. But then you know the core is these tools can only produce what they're programmed to produce. M so when you mentioned environmental assessment providing positive benefits like I had this idea how resettlement could be a development opportunity for people and most often that's not what's happening.
Josh: Yeah.
Ildiko: Because a reply like an EIA is a reply to a legal requirement. Yes. So most people most developers bare minimum we meet the threshold we meet the requirement we're fine. But then, you know, there's this aspect of they could actually make meaningful change if they went beyond those minimum requirements. And that's often not captured on a contextual level and on like the theoretical level. We're not even pushing in that direction.
Josh: Yeah.
Ildiko: Unless there's a very vocal NGO who thinks otherwise. And I think that's where, you know, we were talking about the profession evolving. I think that's one of the areas where we could. So if um you know some of these digital data tools can save the time we're going to spend in the field capturing information, if artificial intelligence um large language models type uh artificial intelligence can help write our documents in at least a reasonable draft format um which saves a huge amount of time. Then that frees up a lot of the environmental and social specialist time to potentially have these conversations to talk about the opportunities to the financier to the project designer um to the client and these kind of uh uh the these different audiences. The real risk is that because the legislation, you know, has that focus, as you say, generally on uh adverse and mitigating adverse positive is there. We're meant to look for in the European Union at least significant effects on the environment, be they positive or negative. But if they're negative, we're then meant to apply the mitigation hierarchy, avoid, prevent, reduce, as we discussed earlier. Whereas if they're positive, silence. there's nothing in the legislation to take that forward and to have a hook for the environmental or social professional to continue that conversation. So I think that's where I suppose we've got to try and evolve our role in the team is to be an environment and social project team member um who can have that conversation and be respected in the decision m in the whole project moving forward rather than being seen as oh well we're going to buy an EIA and we'll have that amount of this time and then the document will come through and we're going to have to pay some costs but it'll tick a and we can move forward and I think a certain amount of that can't just come from the profession itself that's where we get into wider environment and sustainability skills about um leadership and how you know is good governance in sustainability and how does that trickle down through um financiers and managers and uh various other aspects but that will be for another day
Ildiko: I would I would buzz all of this but I think I want to conclude on this high note y that the way forward is for us humans to free up our time and thinking space with the use of AI and actually have those conversations about how to make positive change proactively beyond just mitigating adverse impacts.
Josh: Absolutely. and and get the voices of the environments that are the critical issues and the voices of the community that are the critical issues really into the decision-m process so that those who are making the decision the financiers the uh competent authorities that they can really understand these are the crucial issues if you move forward without these management uh measures these are the risks that will happen but also if you don't require these opport you know if you don't listen then there won't be these opportunities to make greater gains and I think if we're going to move to sustainable development we still need to understand the risk of harm but we also need to be far more curious about the opportunity for positive change that can come from development um otherwise what are we doing the job for
Ildiko: yeah exactly thank you Josh for being here and for making creating some clarity around proportionate EAS
Josh: thank you
Ildiko: thank Thank you.
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