Applied History for ESHIA: Building New Registers for Evidence

By Manishankar Prasad,

​Date of Publication: 10 May, 2020

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In Environmental Planning practice, there is a professional predisposition to perform our work in a technical approach adhering to best practices as consistency evokes confidence and validity in a post truth era. The global nature of the Environmental, Social and Health Impact Assessment or ESHIA practice, demands a neutral narrative as this practice can be applied across the board. The intersectionalities of ESHIAs with health impact and social licence to operate, requests for appreciation of the intervention context, as there is no reality as purely objective when it comes to critical decisions regarding investments that lead to long term impact on people’s lives. 

ESHIA is a developmental planning framework, whose analysis and evidence informs policy decision making. ESHIA as a social scientific planning report embeds relevant scientific studies such as air quality modelling and environmental baseline monitoring data for noise, air, soil and groundwater along with social consultations in an interdisciplinary approach, benchmarking against local and international standards. The cumulative impact rating and ranking process is eventually qualitative and dependent on expert knowledge and judgement. Quantitative data sets are the science informing the analysis. 

The International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standards or IFC PS, are voluntary standards or soft laws which frame the edifice of the climate finance agenda. IFC PS 2 deal with Human Resource’s, IFC PS 5 sets out resettlement and land acquisition, and IFC PS 8 defines indigenous people and cultural rights. These soft laws are anchored in the values of environmental and social justice, coded up into neat guidance for application. 

Each intervention for development will have a context, a ‘history’ with a small ‘h’. The technocratic de-historization, is a critical missing link in order to understand how a major intervention will pan out in ripples through the region. The contours for stakeholder engagement are traced as per the political economy of the country. Detailed community perception surveys are expensive and time consuming. High level community engagement of key players is possible before the project especially in Oman and Kuwait, however crucial understanding can be overlooked if the local history of the area is not factored in, at least at the data sense making or triangulation level especially in data poor project environments.

The secondary data sources for social impact assessment are primarily government or international socio-demographic data sets, and primary research are the community voices gathered through focus groups, unstructured interviews and town halls. However, there is a mid-stream data source which is overlooked as a register for evidence, which is an extensive body of readily accessible research from universities and think tanks in terms of previous studies which can include local histories of survey data and cultural information in publications such as peer reviewed journals, books and media reportage.

In the course of preparing a national waste water masterplan’s socioeconomic perception report for a Gulf country, the mandate included only high level stakeholder engagement, however my research team, of which I was the lead expert; reviewed hundred plus research papers and books to create user case studies from ten countries in the region as well as internationally to develop an alternative evidence register of voices to inform the assessment. This register lays out the genealogy of perceptions in the functional and geographical area, by applying applied history where detailed surveys cannot be performed.

In the post pandemic world, where community level surveys or any in person social consultation will be a challenge, it will be a useful tool to inform our assessments by reviewing the published evidence with us to inform the precious windows for in person conversations, albeit digitally to make the most of our interactions. 

We should remember the maxim, that History or Tarikh in Arabic repeats itself.  

For more information regarding this applied history approach to stakeholder engagement, please reach out to me at manishankar@yahyaengineering.net