Impact Assessment and Sustainable Development: An Introduction

The United Nations (UN) Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 successfully established the concept of sustainable development as an underlying principle for strategic policy and planning. But the translation of the principle of sustainable development into practice has presented new challenges in finding workable solutions to the complex trade-offs that can arise between the different, and often conflicting, dimensions of sustainable development. The growing complexity of policy-making in terms of the goal of sustainable development has encouraged a growing interest among researchers and practitioners in developing a practical and evidence based approach to public policy appraisal and evaluation. As a result, impact assessment, defined as the systematic assessment of the potential or actual effects of a public intervention on the economic, social and environmental ‘pillars’ of sustainable development, is now used as a tool for policy-making in the European Commission, most member states of the European Union (EU), other OECD countries, and in a growing number of developing countries and transitional economies.1