International Association for Impact Assessment

The devaluation of impact assessment

  • Guest post by IAIA member Wes Fisher



    July 1 saw the official end to a stand-alone United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with devastating effects on U.S. foreign assistance to help the less fortunate in the developing world escape poverty, achieve self-sufficiency, and improve societal well-being. 


    With this U.S. Administration action as a backdrop, we welcome a guest post from Wes Fisher, former Board Member and lead author of IAIA’s Position Statement on Climate Change and IAIA’s Climate Change Action Plan. Wes worked for USAID in various capacities for over 30 years.
     



    Adam Welz of Yale Environment 360 concludes that ‘’U.S. Aid Cuts Are Hitting Global Conservation Projects Hard.” He statesThe Trump Administration’s dismantling of USAID has done more than cut off life-saving humanitarian assistance. It has also eliminated funding for environmental protection and conservation work in dozens of countries, with many programs now being forced to shut down.”

    One of the many casualties of the Administration of President Donald J. Trump has been the abrupt cancellation of USAID’s Environmental and Social Safeguarding Support Project (ES3). Well into its first year of implementation, this $93 million, five-year task order was to provide technical assistance, training and best practice reviews to USAID operating units. The implementing teams are no longer employed under ES3 and must find employment elsewhere. Approximately 70% of the professionals on these teams were to be local interdisciplinary experts. 

    As a former USAID Foreign Service Officer and consultant in the application USAID’s environmental procedures, I had the privilege of supporting the implementation of USAID’s regulations from 1995-2013 including serving as a USAID IA best practice advisor or trainer/facilitator in 21 countries in Africa, Europe, Eurasia and Asia/Near East. This role allowed me to directly support USAID’s legal EIA requirement under the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

    NEPA requires the application of environmental impact assessment in the design of U.S. government funded projects and was a source of great pride for those of us supporting the implementation of mitigation plans in USAID funded projects, ranging from schools and health clinics, to farm-to-market roads, use of pesticides, water and sanitation projects (e.g. wells and latrines)  following precautionary principles to minimize or avoid harm.  NEPA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 1, 1970. More than 100 nations around the world have enacted similar IA policies modeled after NEPA.

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality were also created under NEPA and have been restructured and their roles further diminished through recent actions by the Trump Administration.

    This is only one of many signs of disturbing political and economic changes occurring globally. 

    At the IAIA23 Conference in Malaysia, Teresa Bernhard, USAID’s Agency Environmental Coordinator, made a presentation on Leadership and Organization for Transformational Impact Assessment: Lesson for the Future, presenting the conclusions of a comprehensive independent assessment in 2022 of USAID’s environmental impact assessment processes in over 90 bilateral and regional Missions worldwide, involving a wide range of partners, including multilateral international organizations, NGOs/CSOs, host country governments, private firms, and others. Technical focus areas included: Agriculture and Food Security; Anti-Corruption; Conflict Prevention and Stabilization; Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance; Economic Growth and Trade; Education; Environment, Energy, and Infrastructure; Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment; Global Health; Humanitarian Assistance; Innovation, Technology, and Research; Nutrition; and Water and Sanitation.

    USAID staff and contractors participated actively at the IAIA24 Conference in Dublin, but no USAID IA advisors or consultants were present at IAIA25 in Bologna, as the Agency’s budgets were suspended and contracts terminated.

    While economic and social pressures from demographic growth, poverty, inequity, criminal activity, and conflict grow globally, IA oversight and mitigation are being elbowed aside, or compromised, by short time-horizon expedient political and economic actions, increasing long-term risks to the financial world, humanity and the planet.  A host of safe earth system thresholds are already being transgressed by the impact of our species on the biosphere (such as our effects on climate, biodiversity, water and soil, and our creation of novel entities from technological innovation, e.g., biotechnology and AI applications). 

    Improving our profession’s best practice is a core value of IAIA.  But at this moment in our Association’s history, it is not enough. 

    As we witness the actions to weaken or bypass the mitigation of environmental and social impacts in favor of short-term economic gains in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere, it’s become apparent that avoiding being fatally engulfed by global environmental, social, and economic impacts requires a new IAIA perspective—one where each of us fully applies our interdisciplinary skills in principled, committed alliances with other scientific, financial, legal, and educational institutions.  

    Our collaboration with organizations like IAIA’s 2025 Global Award Winner, the Global Commons Alliance, hopefully represents the beginning of a shift in our ability to communicate the value of impact assessment in decision-making as well as in the management of earth and human systems from the global to the individual project level.

    Those of us seeking formal establishment of an ‘IAIA Future Focused Initiative’ support the Board adopting a Position Statement on the role of the International Association for Impact Assessment in addressing Earth and Human Systems impacts on the Global Commons, and hope that this can be quickly accompanied by an Action Plan with a prioritized set of objectives, actions and targets. 
     

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