IAIA is the Annual Conference of The International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), a leading global network on best practice in the use of impact assessment for informed decision-making regarding policies, programs, plans and projects.
This year’s theme is all about Misinformation, Disinformation, Communication, & Impact Assessment and we are excited to be joining industry colleagues at this renowned event.
ERM will be joining close to 1,000 delegates sharing insights, advancing best practices, and driving meaningful change in environmental assessment communication.
ERM at the conference
Session ID: 526 - The Truth Tangle: Untying Misinformation in Impact Assessment
In an era of information overload, the integrity of impact assessment processes is increasingly threatened by misinformation and disinformation. Whether intentional or accidental, false narratives can distort public perception, polarize communities, and derail evidence-based decision-making. This panel explores the complex web of challenges posed by misleading information in environmental, social, and health impact assessments. The session will encourage critical reflection on the role of assessors as communicators and trust-builders and explore how practitioners can strengthen resilience against falsehoods. Attendees will leave with practical insights and a deeper understanding of how to protect the credibility and effectiveness of impact assessments in a post-truth world. Chair: Sue Kaner
Session: 550 - (Re)building trust and transparency to navigate complex energy transitions
As energy and carbon-intensive projects move through closure and transition, misinformation about timelines, retraining, employment, and future opportunities often intensify uncertainty and associated socioeconomic risks. Drawing on practitioner experience in Canada and internationally, this paper examines how misinformation and limited information can undermine workforce transition planning and future regeneration opportunities—fuelling anxieties, false expectations, and sometimes driving community conflict and social division. Case studies from our work demonstrate that unclear, misleading, or infrequent communication has material social and economic effects at local and regional scales, which often compound existing vulnerabilities and can erode trust in industry operators and government organizations. We argue that misinformation or limited information in transition contexts represents a distinct type of socioeconomic impact and propose practical approaches to risk management and impact mitigation. In particular, we highlight opportunities in partnership and co-development approaches with workers and communities. Embedding these practices within transition governance can support informed consultation and participation, strengthen trust, and mitigate social and economic risks associated with (mis)information management. Presenting Author: Gillian Gregory
Session ID#: 585 - Café: Improving how we define and assess temporal boundaries.
This interactive session will explore how temporal boundaries shape impact assessment and influence Indigenous and public trust. Through real-world examples and collaborative dialogue, participants will challenge conventional project timelines and examine how far back and forward assessments should extend to meaningfully capture generational, cumulative, and legacy impacts. Using a rotating roundtable format, attendees will co-develop new perspectives on defining temporal boundaries, sharing insights on integrating historical context, future uncertainty, and cumulative effects into more transparent, trusted, and forward-thinking impact assessments. Chair: Jonathan Ward
Session ID# 591 - Managing The Right To Privacy In Impact Assessment
This session will explore how companies are managing the right to privacy during an impact assessment, recognizing that impact assessments provide the public with important information about a project, and can also share information about affected communities and under represented groups. Increasingly, information is in the public domain and companies are the holders or transmitters of personal or community information (e.g., community health, demographics). Additionally, public meetings are being heavily documented or streamed, without processes for documenting consent. All of this information is also now available to be used by platforms that incorporate AI learning. This session will present good practices and lessons learned for how proponents can advance impact assessments while respecting the right to privacy, including in relation to Indigenous knowledge, gender-based analysis and health information. There can be discussion of how principles, such as OCAP, may support privacy and data management. Chair Zoe Mullard
Session: 639 - Contested Narratives: Misinformation, Mobilization and Impact Assessment
In today’s digital landscape, social impact assessment practitioners face a growing challenge: how to communicate complex, nuanced information in environments shaped by scrolling culture, fragmented attention, and rapidly evolving social media platforms. These conditions demand brevity, emotional resonance, and algorithmic visibility—often at odds with the depth and deliberation required for meaningful engagement. This presentation explores MapChat, a geospatial engagement platform, as a case study in reimagining digital dialogue. MapChat anchors conversations in place-based contexts, allowing users to interact with project information spatially and transparently. We’ll discuss principles for designing digital engagement strategies that respect attention limits while preserving the integrity of impact assessment processes. Presenting Author: Lindsey Bungartz
Session: 653 - Biodiversity Impact Assessment: Information Disclosure, Risk Identification, and Legal Regulation
In high-altitude mining regions, environmental monitoring of water quality is often limited to regulatory compliance, missing its potential to inform biodiversity risk and ecosystem management. This study presents a modeling framework that integrates physicochemical monitoring data with limnological and trophic information to define resilience thresholds for biodiversity in aquatic systems. Focusing on carbonate system dynamics (CO₂–H₂O–HCO₃⁻–CO₃²⁻), the research demonstrates how pH-driven changes in carbonate speciation control nutrient availability, metal solubility, and primary productivity, key processes underlying ecosystem stability. By coupling multi-seasonal monitoring datasets with carbonate equilibrium modeling, the framework identifies functional thresholds that can serve as early-warning indicators under mining-induced stress. Translating these hydrochemical–biological linkages into decision-support metrics allows Biodiversity Impact Assessments (BIA) to evolve from descriptive reporting to predictive, threshold-oriented governance. Integrating such quantitative relationships into environmental law reinforces transparency, adaptive management, and long-term protection of biodiversity and ecosystem services in the mining sector. Presenting Author: Ulises Pablo Daniel Gonzalez
Session: 678 - Advancing government approaches to effective science communication in Impact Assessment
Large-scale infrastructure and energy projects in the UK—such as High-Speed 2 (HS2), utility-scale solar farms, and emerging lithium mining ventures in Cornwall—have faced intense scrutiny and waves of misinformation. Headlines often amplify fears about environmental degradation, community displacement, and hidden costs, shaping public perception long before hearings or formal assessments occur. This session examines how misinformation was addressed during environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) for these projects, drawing on ERM’s experience with HS2 and lessons from renewable energy and critical mineral developments. It highlights strategies for evidence-based communication, early stakeholder engagement, and the use of digital tools to clarify technical findings. By comparing approaches across transport, energy, and mining sectors, the paper illustrates the evolving role of assessors as communicators and trust-builders, offering practical insights and replicable tools to strengthen credibility in politically charged and socially sensitive contexts. Presenting Author: Sue Kaner, co author Zoe Whitlock
Session ID#: 695 - Let’s talk about risk: engaging on low likelihood, high consequence events
Public engagement about risks and impacts can get hung-up on potential high-consequence, low-likelihood incidents such as oil spills, tailings dam failures, pipeline ruptures, and other headline-grabbing events. Proponents may be reluctant to share details, fearing the public relations repercussions. However, engagement about these unplanned events is increasingly important for alignment with international impact assessment standards, to meet stakeholder expectations, to plan for response and recovery, and to comply with industry requirements (e.g., GISTM). In practice, engagement about these events requires a high degree of skill in “plain language” communication to convey both the complex science of environmental, social and health impact pathways, and the objectives of a risk assessment process. It also requires tact and compassion to engage with emotion-laden content in a way that fosters understanding and constructive dialogue. In this way, effective information disclosure and engagement about low-likelihood, high-consequence events is both an art and a science. Chair: Anna Sundby
