Day 1 - Rāapa / Wednesday 21 April

8:45 am - Registration

9:15 am - Mihi & Conference Opening by Richard Morgan, Chair of NZAIA
9:30 am - 10:30 am   Opening plenary panel discussion
SIA for improved decision making, new directions
Nick Taylor

Nick Taylor

Nick Taylor has broad experience applying social research to projects, programmes, policy and plans in New Zealand and internationally.  He was a founding director of Taylor Baines & Associates and is now an independent researcher and consultant, working on strategic and project social impact assessments, recently including land and water plans, regional economic development strategies, irrigation development and aggregate mining.  He is a senior adjunct of Lincoln University and a Past President of the IAIA.
Hirini Matunga

Hirini Matunga

Hirini is Professor of Maori and Indigenous Planning at Lincoln University.  Prior to that he was Deputy Vice Chancellor Communities, Assistant Vice Chancellor - Maori, Director of the Centre for Maori and Indigenous Planning and Development at Lincoln University and Senior Lecturer in Planning at the University of Auckland.  He graduated in Town Planning in 1983 and practised as a planner – specialising in Maori issues with Napier City Council, Auckland Regional Council and the Ministry of Works and Development. He has been actively engaged in practice, then teaching and research in Maori planning, resource management, policy and design and indigenous heritage management with indigenous Maori and public sector institutions for over 30 years. 

In 2015, the Minister for Maori Development presented him with the New Zealand Planning Institutes - Papa Pounamu Award for Outstanding Service to Maori Environmental Planning and Resource Management. He is of Ngai Tahu (hapu Ngai Te Ruahikihiki, Ngai Tuahuriri, Ngati Huirapa), Ngati Porou, Rongowhakaata, Ngati Kahungunu, Ngati Paerangi (Atiu, Cook Islands) descent.               
Michaela Aspell

Michaela Aspell

Michaela is an Advisor at the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) and a part-time masters student studying Climate Change Science and Policy at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington. A Natural Resources Engineer by training, she previously worked at Tonkin + Taylor where she was seconded to Lyttelton Port Company as an Assistant Project Manager for large regulatory approvals under the RMA.  She is passionate about environmental sustainability and particularly interested in the interaction between mātauranga Māori and climate change adaptation and mitigation. 
Hamish Rennie

Hamish Rennie

Hamish Rennie is an Associate Professor in Planning and Environmental Management at Lincoln University, NZ.  A geographer initiated into social impact assessment as a graduate field worker for the Clutha HEP development he has maintained a keen interest in social impact assessment in developing countries and New Zealand in his subsequent 12 years as a public servant and since moving to academia in 1995 he has taught and supervised research in various aspects of SIA ever since. As an RMA Hearings Commissioner, submitter and expert planning witness he has seen its (non-)use in various planning settings and maintains a keen interest in its role in decision-making.
10:30 am - Break
11:00 am - 12:30 pm    Informed decision making with SIA
KEYNOTE (Via Zoom from Australia):
Let's give SIA more clout: effective, accurate and enforceable assessments
Professor Sara Bice

Professor Sara Bice

Professor Sara Bice is Foundation Director, Institute for Infrastructure in Society at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University and a recent Past President of the IAIA. In 2020 Sara received the IAIA Outstanding Service Award.

She has wide experience in SIA and will discuss some of the challenges and solutions facing SIA, especially the opportunities found in placing more emphasis on cumulative impacts and community based assessments.

Lifting our game: impact assessment and the Treaty of Waitangi
Dy Jolly and Jade Wikaira

Dy Jolly and Jade Wikaira

Dyanna Jolly is from Whitebear First Nations in Saskatchewan, Canada. She has worked for iwi and hapū for the last 15 years preparing Iwi Management Plans and cultural impact assessments.  She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Otago and has a particular interest in what Treaty-based impact assessment might look like. 

Jade Wikaira (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Whānau ā Apanui, Ngāpuhi) is a planning practitioner with a passion for working with whānau and hapū to develop outcomes that reflect their aspirations, and for working towards more inclusive planning practice.  Jade is the current Chairperson of Papa Pounamu, the national network of Māori environmental planning and resource management practitioners. 

Lifting our game, exploring alternatives with affected communities
Carl Davidson

Carl Davidson

Carl Davidson is a Director and owner of Research First, one of New Zealand’s leading market and social research companies. With Research First Carl works as the Head of Insight, where he helps clients find evidence-based solutions to their pressing business problems.

Carl’s professional life has been spent at the interface of behavioural science and marketing. He has worked as a university lecturer (in sociology, then marketing), a social scientist in a Crown-funded research institute, a market researcher, and as a strategy consultant. In addition, Carl regularly presents and writes about research methods and about analytical thinking. He is the author of nine books about evidence-based learning, with a number of these now the standard textbooks used to teach research skills and critical thinking in New Zealand universities. He is also a regular contributor to The Press, where he writes about ‘the social science of everyday phenomena’, and he teaches in the University of Canterbury’s MBA programme. Reflecting his standing in the New Zealand research community, between 2010 and 2012 Carl was made the Chief Commissioner of the Families Commission and tasked with turning it into a world- class centre for research on families.

In 2013 he was also appointed to the Government’s Expert Advisory Group on Information Sharing for the Action Plan for Vulnerable Children, and in 2017 he was elected to the Board of the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce. He is also an Adjunct Fellow at the University of Canterbury’s Business School.
We live in interesting times for community consultation and engagement. Participation rates for many of our traditional approaches are declining, and there is ever increasing pressure to reduce budgets and increase cycle times. Some believe this means leaning heavily on digital solutions but impact assessors might have an even better solution gathering dust at the bottom of their toolkits – the charette. This presentation argues that there is no better time for a renaissance of charettes, and demonstrates how the speaker used the approach in a recent large scale community consultation.
12:30 pm - 1:45 pm - Lunch and Poster Session
1:45 pm - 3:15 pm   Scale, context and synergies in SIA
(Via Zoom from Canada):
Experiences from Canada: assessing the social impacts of linear development projects
Michael Benson

Michael Benson

I have been working in the field of social impact assessment for the past 20 years. I am currently working at the Canada Energy Regulator where I shape the CER’s technical work and strategic direction on environmental and socio-economic assessments, and engagement with the public and Indigenous peoples. My professional career concentrates on applying critical and system thinking approaches to solve sustainability challenges.
Impact assessment is an important planning tool that improves decision-making by identifying the future consequences of a proposed development. The initial focus in the 1970s was on assessing environmental impacts; however, over the past 50 years this has evolved to incorporate broader stakeholder input and assess social impacts. In Canada, this includes the consideration of Indigenous knowledge and effects on the rights of Indigenous peoples. Canada is a vast country and linear development projects (e.g., powerlines, pipelines, roads, railways) regularly traverse wide geographical expanses and impact numerous communities. As a result, such linear development projects often raise complex issues and competing interests that must be reconciled.

This presentation will share experiences and best practices in assessing social impacts from a regulatory and practitioner’s perspective. We will explore how the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) is creating more accessible processes (e.g., co-designing public hearings, culturally sensitive participation options), better analyzing and managing social impacts (e.g., meaningful development of conditions, incorporating Indigenous peoples into project monitoring), and integrating social considerations into decision making. The CER has adopted a number of tools and methods to adapt its processes to better meet evolving expectations, all while still maintaining procedural fairness and rigorous environmental standards.

Recreation impacts and social impacts - can we integrate their assessment better?
Rob Greenaway

Rob Greenaway

Over the past 30 years Rob Greenaway has completed more than 500 consultancy projects in New Zealand, Asia and the Pacific, and has presented evidence at more than 100 hearings. Rob’s area of expertise is recreation and tourism planning, and includes management planning and resource assessments for local and regional authorities, and assessments of effect for consent applications, mostly in coastal, marine and freshwater settings, but including subdivisions and major industrial developments. He is a Fellow and an Accredited Recreation Professional of Recreation Aotearoa.

Assessing impacts on families - does SIA do the job?
Gerard Fitzgerald
3:15 pm - Break
3:45 pm - 5:15 pm   Social impacts of low-carbon futures
Social impacts of transport mode shifts
Angela Curl

Dr. Angela Curl

Angela is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Population Health, University of Otago Christchurch. She a social scientist interested in the relationships between urban environments, transport and health. She is particularly interested in how public policies, particularly in transport, urban planning and housing, can address health inequalities and transport disadvantage. Angela undertakes research exploring perceptions and experiences of accessibility and how these interact with the built environment to influence outcomes, such as travel behaviour, transport disadvantage, physical activity, health and wellbeing, for different population groups.
This presentation will present outcomes of research into the social impacts of mode shift undertaken for Waka Kotahi, NZTA. Given New Zealand’s high car dependence, transport policies are aimed at mode shift to meet environmental objectives.  As the policy focus moves from strategic objectives to specific measures and interventions to achieve mode shift it is important to consider how to ensure that mode shift policies have positive social outcomes. It is also important to consider how impacts are distributed across society for the transport outcomes to support the wellbeing and quality of life of all New Zealanders. Typically, those worst off in society tend to suffer the worst effects of the transport system while the most well off benefit most (Lucas and Jones, 2012).

Therefore, it is important to ensure that mode shift policies which focus on expanding mode choice do not restrict the opportunities of those who might already be facing transport deprivation. Similarly, if mode shift policies predominantly expand the choices of those who are already most mobile, existing inequities in accessibility and the choice of modes will widen.  A greater understanding of existing inequities in transport resources and access to opportunities can help target mode shift policies.

Evaluating policy experiments for inclusive low carbon innovation
Anna Berka and Janet Stephenson

Anna Berka

Anna Berka (PhD) is a Lecturer in climate change, sustainability and policy at Massey Business School. She holds degrees in environmental science, policy and economics and has a consulting background in social entrepreneurship and impact evaluation in the UK energy sector. She works on effective climate change governance in relation to risk, inclusivity (social justice) and innovation, using country comparative studies to draw best lessons for policy and practice. She has published on impact assessment, research methods, grassroots innovation, energy transitions, and low carbon innovation policy.  
The systematic evaluation of low carbon policies and programmes is still rare, resulting in limited understanding of their effectiveness and ability to contribute to the overall transition to a low carbon economy (1-4). Even where projects are evaluated, evaluations are often restricted to direct monetary impacts for which market data is available, meaning we lose sight of qualitative and indirect aspects that we now know to be critical to the longer-term success of decarbonization pathways. This means we often have a poor understanding of what kinds of projects generate desireable social and environmental change processes and impacts. While a range of methods exist to assess and integrate qualitative and indirect (“fuzzy”) social and environmental impacts, they are not well established and largely not seen as legitimate complements to cost-benefit analysis. This work marries two traditionally separate strands of literature - socio-technical transitions literature and monitoring and evaluation literature - to develop and pilot an evaluation method that can be used assess and integrate qualitative and quantitative social, environmental and economic impacts and assess a project’s contributions to system-level sustainability transitions.  Development of the evaluation framework will be embedded in an understanding of the challenges and opportunities for evaluation that policy analysts and in relevant New Zealand agencies face. 

Assessing the impacts of housing intensification
Sue Vallance

Suzanne Vallance

Suzanne Vallance’s research focuses on collaborative and transactive planning for sustainability and resilience. She seeks to understand governance strategies and planning approaches that may help resolve the tensions that populate the interface of strategic and tactical planning, and the interstices between the ‘public good’ on one hand, and ‘individual preference’ on the other. This underpins a diverse range of research interests (housing, public space, DIY urbanism, and disaster risk reduction) and methodologies (often action-research) and theoretical positions.

Schooled originally in human geography and political science, her research with community-based and non-governmental organisations has led to an appreciation for transdisciplinarity as well as indigenous ways of knowing and understanding the world. Systems thinking, Science and Technology Studies, and Social Practice Theory (SPT) provide useful theoretical impetus for applied planning research and practice. 
Current planning orthodoxy suggests urban consolidation through, among other initiatives, residential intensification (medium density housing, infilling) will bring many benefits, including improved viability of public and active transport which, in turn, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and promotes walkability, vibrant public space, affordable housing, equitable access, efficient use of infrastructure and reduced urban sprawl onto productive land. The compelling list of purported benefits denies the experience of many residents in neighbourhoods targeted for intensification: increased pollution and noise, the loss of greenspace, more fast food and liquor stores, over-burdened infrastructure, invasion of privacy, and accessibility hampered by broader safety concerns.

These effects are especially problematic when intensification takes place in ‘deprived’ neighbourhoods where residents lack the political capital, time and other resources to navigate increasingly complex, essentially impenetrable planning processes. In such cases, intensification may perform injustices on already vulnerable people. It is in this context of vulnerability and injustice that we resurrect the notion of transactive planning where it is explicitly acknowledged that the process of planning is as generative/performative as any plan. It emphasises the potential of planning as a co-creative process where residents are empowered to make spaces into ‘public’ places. In this paper, we draw on transactive planning theory and our research conducted in the Inner City East of Christchurch to explore the implications for impact assessment.
5:15 pm - Close

6:30 pm - Dinner

Day 2 - Rāpare / Thursday 22 April 

9:00 am - 10:30 am   Community and resilience
Operationalising He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora - Tairāwhiti's Wellbeing Framework
Erina Hurihanganui and Malcom Mersham

Erina Hurihanganui & Malcom Mersham

Erina Hurihanganui has led the development and design of He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora,  a Wellbeing Framework for Trust Tairāwhiti based in Gisborne. 
 
The Trust focusses on regional development and  is now in the phase of operationalising He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora.  They have used the framework to create their strategic plan and priorities to 2026. They are currently developing a set of impact indicators and measures based on the activities they do and intend to do  – to actually see if they are making a difference to the wellbeing of their communities. 
 
The evolution of He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora and its impact assessment design has been an iterative journey for the Trust.  Operationalising the framework which began late December last year
has unfolded the complexities involved in the creation of a wellbeing framework and then the actual assessment of wellbeing impact against it. 
 
Malcolm Mersham joined Erina and the He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora team to help operationalise the framework, by developing systems of knowledge & data capabilities to capture the measures, activities and outcomes of He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora. Prior to joining Malcolm was part of the economic development team at Trust Tairāwhiti.
Trust Tairāwhiti is the regional development trust for Te Tairāwhiti, based in Gisborne. Originating from the commercialisation of the electricity network in the late 1980s, the Trust now has a diverse investment portfolio including electricity generation, transmission, the Gisborne seaport and airport amongst other areas to preserve its capital. Trust Tairāwhiti invests approximately $20million a year into Tairāwhiti through its community, economic development, and tourism channels.   

In 2018, the trustees committed to developing a Tairāwhiti Wellbeing Framework that would support its investment decision making & measure impact across Tairāwhiti.

Through substantial community engagement, He Rangitapu He Tohu Ora was born, co-designed & developed with the communities of Tairāwhiti & finalised in 2020. Through this process, regional indicators were identified, and the Trust is now on a journey operationalise the framework, by creating a set of impact indicators to measure the outcomes we are having in the region.
 
http://trusttairawhiti.nz/tai/

The social impacts of climate-induced migration on receiving communities
Rajan Ghosh and Caroline Orchiston

Rajan Ghosh

Rajan Ghosh is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Sustainability in the School of Geography, University of Otago, New Zealand. His PhD research focuses on climate-induced migration from the Pacific to New Zealand. He completed a Master’s of Science in Geography and Environment from Jagannath University, Bangladesh. His Master’s research focused on environmental migration in Bangladesh. Rajan is a core group member of the New Zealand Association for Impact Assessment, New Zealand.