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      • 2018 - Regional Development
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    • Sign up for occasional updates from NZAIA
  • Impact Connector
    • Issue #16 SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing >
      • SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing: Intro
      • The drivers and agents of on-farm change in Aotearoa New Zealand
      • Social-ecological assessment for remote and island communities
      • The Impact of Substandard Rural Housing on Resilience and Wellbeing in Te Tai Tokerau
      • Success factors for planning regeneration in rural areas
    • Issue #15 Economic methods and Impact Assessment >
      • Economic methods in impact assessment: an introduction
      • The Nature of Economic Analysis for Resource Management
      • The State-of-the-Art and Prospects: Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Environmental Impact Assessment
      • Economic impact assessment and regional development: reflections on Queensland mining impacts
      • Fonterra’s policy on economic incentives for promoting sustainable farming practices
    • Issue #14 Impact assessment for infrastructure development >
      • Impact assessment for infrastructure development - an introduction
      • Place Matters: The importance of geographic assessment of areas of influence in understanding the social effects of large-scale transport investment in Wellington
      • Unplanned Consequences? New Zealand's experiment with urban (un)planning and infrastructure implications
      • Reflections on infrastructure, Town and Country planning and intimations of SIA in the late 1970s and early 1980s
      • SIA guidance for infrastructure and economic development projects
      • Scoping in impact assessments for infrastructure projects: Reflections on South African experiences
      • Impact Assessment for Pacific Island Infrastructure
    • Issue #13 Health impact assessment: practice issues >
      • Introduction to health impact assessment: practice issues
      • International Health Impact Assessment – a personal view
      • Use of Health Impact Assessment to develop climate change adaptation plans for health
      • An integrated approach to assessing health impacts
      • Assessing the health and social impacts of transport policies and projects
      • Whither HIA in New Zealand….or just wither?
    • Issue #12 Risk Assessment: Case Studies and Approaches >
      • Introduction
      • Risk Assessment and Impact Assessment : A perspective from Victoria, Australia
      • The New and Adaptive Paradigm Needed to Manage Rising Coastal Risks
      • Reflections on Using Risk Assessments in Understanding Climate Change Adaptation Needs in Te Taitokerau Northland
      • Values-Based Impact Assessment and Emergency Management
      • Certainty about Communicating Uncertainty: Assessment of Flood Loss and Damage
      • Improving Understanding of Rockfall Geohazard Risk in New Zealand
      • Normalised New Zealand Natural Disaster Insurance Losses: 1968-2019
      • Houston, We Have a Problem - Seamless Integration of Weather and Climate Forecast for Community Resilience
      • Innovating with Online Data to Understand Risk and Impact in a Data Poor Environment
    • Impact Connector #11 Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation, and Impact Assessment: views from the Pacific >
      • Introduction
      • Climate change adaptation and mitigation, impact assessment, and decision-making: a Pacific perspective
      • Climate adaptation and impact assessment in the Pacific: overview of SPREP-sponsored presentations
      • Land and Sea: Integrated Assessment of the Temaiku Land and Urban Development Project in Kiribati
      • Strategic Environmental Assessment: Rising to the SDG Challenge
      • Coastal Engineering for Climate Change Resilience in Eastern Tongatapu, Tonga
      • Climate-induced Migration in the Pacific: The Role of New Zealand
    • Impact Connector #10 Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation >
      • Introduction
      • Is a “just transition” possible for Māori?
      • Adapting to Climate Change on Scale: Addressing the Challenge and Understanding the Impacts of Asia Mega-Cities
      • How responding to climate change might affect health, for better or for worse
      • Kanuka, Kereru and carbon capture - Assessing the effects of a programme taking a fresh look at the hill and high country land resource
      • Wairoa: Community perceptions of increased afforestation
      • Te Kākahu Kahukura Ecological Restoration project: A story within a story
    • Issue #9 Impacts of Covid-19 >
      • Introduction to Impact Connector Issue 9 – Impact assessment and Covid 19
      • Covid-19 fast-track consenting: climate change legacy key to success
      • Tourism – the long haul ahead
      • Making sense of the impact of Covid-19: planning, politics, and the public good
    • Issue #8 Social Impact Assessment >
      • Challenges for Social Impact Assessment in New Zealand: looking backwards and looking forwards
      • Insights from the eighties: early Social Impact Assessment reports on rural community dynamics
      • Impact Assessment and the Capitals Framework: A Systems-based Approach to Understanding and Evaluating Wellbeing
      • Building resilience in Rural Communities – a focus on mobile population groups
      • Assessing the Impacts of a New Cycle Trail: A Fieldnote
      • The challenges of a new biodiversity strategy for social impact assessment (SIA)
      • “Say goodbye to traffic”? The role of SIA in establishing whether ‘air taxis’ are the logical next step in the evolution of transportation
    • Issue #7 Ecological Impact Assessment >
      • The future of Ecological Impact Assessment in New Zealand
      • Ecological impact assessment and roading projects
      • EcIA and the Resource Management Act
      • Professional Practice and implementation of EcIA
      • EcIA in the Marine Environment
    • Issue #6 Landscape Assessment >
      • Introduction
      • Lives and landscapes: who cares, what about, and does it matter?
      • Regional Landscape Inconsistency
      • Landscape management in the new world order
      • Landscape assessment and the Environment Court
      • Natural character assessments and provisions in a coastal environment
      • The Assessment and Management of Amenity
      • The rise of the THIMBY
      • Landscape - Is there a common understanding of the Common?
    • Issue #5 Cultural Impact Assessment >
      • Introduction
      • Potential of Cultural Impact Assessment
      • The Mitigation Dilemma
      • CIA and decision-making
      • Insights and observations on CIA
      • Achieving sustainability through CIA
      • CIA - Enhancing or diminishing mauri?
      • Strategic Indigenous Impact Assessment?
    • Issue #4 Marine Environment >
      • Introduction
      • Iwi, Impact Assessment and Marine Environment
      • Sea-Bed Mining Application in Taranaki
      • The wreck of the MV Rena
      • High Court RMA Controls on Fishing
      • Initiatives in the Pacific Islands
      • SEA in an NZ context
    • Issue #3 Strategic Environmental Assessment
    • Issue #2
    • Issue #1
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Voices of the next generation – An interview with Ben Payne


PictureBen Payne
Who are you and how did you get into IA?

My name is Ben Payne. I am 27 years old. I came to Impact Assessment (IA)  having studied at the University of Otago. I am from Geraldine in the South Island, from a farming background. I have always been passionate about conservation, landscapes, environments, mountains and lakes, and how we can maintain and protect those resources whilst having rural livelihoods and environmental ecologies that benefit the whole nation.

I came along to Uni and started with first year law, then I fell into physical geography and it became a real passion for me. Then I had a car accident in my third year, so I decided to do a Masters degree, which enabled me to undertake a few human geography papers. I found myself in the kind of the niche in which environmental management fits.

During my 3rd and 4th years I learned I didn’t really want to be technocratic scientist. I did this paper in a course taught by Richard Morgan, called Impact Assessment. Because I was engaged in all these geographical debates – the ideas of environmental equity that comes through development studies and environmental politics – I began to get really fascinated with impact assessment as it gets applied in the development context. I guess what fascinated me about impact assessment is that  it was broader, and it was an integrating set of tools with which you could look at issues strategically. How  each of those facets of impact assessment – social, cultural, environmental –  can be integrated and worked together. I feel we can be quite technocratic in our approaches to environmental management and if you can look at impact assessment as a framework then it might help us assess projects better toward that core goal of social sustainability and social justice.

For example, in my own PhD study, I looked at the High Country Landscape where the policy framework called Tenure Review  presumes that an immediate conservation benefit will come if you separate production from protection. But, say, back in the 1980s, if we had a really strong impact assessment tool it could have recognised the downstream effects of separating those land-use categories and land values and approached land use with a more integrated and holistic land-care ethos.

How you are using IA in your current job?

My job as an environmental consultant involves work on a diversity of projects. My first job involved looking  at the incorporation of Maori cultural landscape values into the proposed Auckland Unitary Plan. Other projects have been AEEs for different energy clients.

I think the way I have learnt about impact assessment at a deeper, theoretical level and being involved in the four different NZAIA conferences means that, personally, I don’t think I apply IA on a day-to-day basis. I am borrowing from it, as I get these technical reports that need summarising, but it’s largely seen as another technical source of knowledge that you use to get a project through. I am constantly constrained by the limitation on word count. I have been told so many times ‘don’t overthink this job, it’s just paint by numbers, copy and paste’.

In some ways, I do question whether the actual application of IA is a matter of lip service or whether clients, assessors or practitioners actually see more fully the value of the framework it applies. Or,  whether we in actual fact clearly articulate its value to the practitioner and client world – it cuts both ways. I really do wish I could use IA more.

What are the challenges faced by IA that you see as important?

I am a newbie, so I think a challenge for me personally is working out where all these aspects of the IA framework all gel together. Also, when I am trying to incorporate impact assessment in my job, I am also trying to learn a legislative system, the different systems of local and central government, as well as working within planning frameworks. All of these things are way more technical and have to be applied really thoroughly and accurately, where as I am not sure whether IA is valued quite the same. It is an applied science, but I think it depends on whether people see IA as an academic pursuit or a practical thing.

I sometimes wonder if IA just gets a bit lost in translation. In the academia there is heaps of discrepancy over what those different tools of IA are, but I am not sure academic discussion has relevance to the way they are being applied in practice. As an academic pursuit we get so caught up in the purities of how it is applied. When, in practice, I have limited time and space in writing a report, I want to know what the four or six deliverables are, and why I’d apply something. I don’t want to know what the debates and issues are, I want to know what it applies to and how it works.

But then I am also selling it a bit short because I am sure there are people who are applying IA more often, and are more well-versed in how it is applied. The thing is, in practice, in AEE we compartmentalise the issues in order to understand them in themselves, rather than as an integrated whole, which defeats the opportunity of impact assessment as a holistic framework and the strengths of what it can do from a broader level.

Practitioners should be able to inform developers and clients of the value of IA more effectively. Also the impact assessment community, we have a lot people who are very informed on these tools, but I wonder if some of this knowledge is just locked away, and whether we as an NZAIA can break it down and disseminate more clearly what the value of the tools are. That’s difficult because IA is so broad.

But that’s the beauty of impact assessment, that it is so broad and can cover so many things, but also  the weakness of it, as it can become inconsistently applied. It is also practised and applied in the context of people wanting to uphold and incrementally improve the status quo, not challenge it.

What is the role of the NZAIA to address these challenges?

We are a very limited workforce and we are all voluntary, but I recognise that when there is so much debate in the IA literature and academia itself, we will struggle to give clout in a working policy and practical environment.

I see the strength in IA is in that strategic framework and that is one thing the NZAIA could really nail and communicate better. Why can’t NZAIA put out a couple of pages that explained the key deliverables of impact assessment. Fundamentally,  how impact assessment can help deliver Section 2 of the RMA – that ethic of sustainable development, sustainable management. I also question why the NZAIA website isn’t seen as useful as the Quality Planning website. Why do people go to the orthodox planning tools, rather than going to creative tools like impact assessment?

I wonder if the way IA is thought about and communicated is becoming old fashioned. I know why I value it and what I like about it, but I do wonder if it’s maybe something we have to re-describe and revalue to ourselves and other audiences, especially to encourage new members and trying to get it more applicable to a younger cohort. It’s really hard, and I guess we are all so overcommitted.

How could the NZAIA be more of a resource to you, and other members?

We are really relevant, and anybody that is informed enough about what IA is finds coming to the conferences relevant, useful and interesting. However, IA’s broadness encourages  connections and interactions across a range of people through the conferences which is hard  to maintain consistently working on a voluntary basis.

Trying to maintain the administrative and practical connections between people and our ideas and work, as well as putting more emphasis on their integration, using our resources like the newsletter and the website, is about being more dynamic. Somehow NZAIA  need to make that innovative step and get ahead of the game or else we appear old fashioned in our mechanisms even though our knowledge and what we are trying to project and get across is not old fashioned. IA is innovative and what people in our community are doing is really worth listening to.

I think we as an association need a cleverer way of getting our identity out there associated with innovative ways of looking at issues. If you can inform people of the value of the tool, hopefully as they filter up they will apply those skills and frameworks more thoroughly. It’s really about convincing people and, done well, most people can be convinced it’s a good idea, but getting it done well is about understanding why it is a good idea.

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  • Home
    • Environmental Impact Assessment
    • Social Impact Assessment
    • Strategic Environmental Assessment
    • Community & Stakeholder Engagement
    • Management, Monitoring and Reporting
  • About Us
    • Core Group >
      • Core Group Meeting Minutes
    • Our Partners and Affiliates
    • AGMs
    • Constitution changes 2025
    • Ethics
  • Membership
    • Sign Up for NZAIA Membership
    • 2025 Calendar Year Membership Subscription Renewal
  • Conferences
    • Conference 2024 >
      • Conference Programme 2024
      • Proceedings 2024
    • Proceedings from Past Conferences >
      • Conference 2023 >
        • Pacific Day 2023
        • 2023 Students
      • 2022 - Wellbeing, Sustainability and Impact Assessment: towards more integrated policy-making >
        • Posters
        • 2022 Students
      • 2021 - Social Impact Assessment >
        • Posters
        • 2021 Students
      • 2019 - Climate Change >
        • Posters
        • 2019 Students
        • Conference Photos
        • Contact List
      • 2018 - Regional Development
      • 2016 - Strategic Environmental Assessment
      • 2015 - Where to for Impact Assessment?
      • 2014 - Transport Infrastructure
      • 2013 Fresh Water Management
      • 2012 - Mineral Extraction
    • Sign up for occasional updates from NZAIA
  • Impact Connector
    • Issue #16 SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing >
      • SIA for rural resilience and wellbeing: Intro
      • The drivers and agents of on-farm change in Aotearoa New Zealand
      • Social-ecological assessment for remote and island communities
      • The Impact of Substandard Rural Housing on Resilience and Wellbeing in Te Tai Tokerau
      • Success factors for planning regeneration in rural areas
    • Issue #15 Economic methods and Impact Assessment >
      • Economic methods in impact assessment: an introduction
      • The Nature of Economic Analysis for Resource Management
      • The State-of-the-Art and Prospects: Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services in Environmental Impact Assessment
      • Economic impact assessment and regional development: reflections on Queensland mining impacts
      • Fonterra’s policy on economic incentives for promoting sustainable farming practices
    • Issue #14 Impact assessment for infrastructure development >
      • Impact assessment for infrastructure development - an introduction
      • Place Matters: The importance of geographic assessment of areas of influence in understanding the social effects of large-scale transport investment in Wellington
      • Unplanned Consequences? New Zealand's experiment with urban (un)planning and infrastructure implications
      • Reflections on infrastructure, Town and Country planning and intimations of SIA in the late 1970s and early 1980s
      • SIA guidance for infrastructure and economic development projects
      • Scoping in impact assessments for infrastructure projects: Reflections on South African experiences
      • Impact Assessment for Pacific Island Infrastructure
    • Issue #13 Health impact assessment: practice issues >
      • Introduction to health impact assessment: practice issues
      • International Health Impact Assessment – a personal view
      • Use of Health Impact Assessment to develop climate change adaptation plans for health
      • An integrated approach to assessing health impacts
      • Assessing the health and social impacts of transport policies and projects
      • Whither HIA in New Zealand….or just wither?
    • Issue #12 Risk Assessment: Case Studies and Approaches >
      • Introduction
      • Risk Assessment and Impact Assessment : A perspective from Victoria, Australia
      • The New and Adaptive Paradigm Needed to Manage Rising Coastal Risks
      • Reflections on Using Risk Assessments in Understanding Climate Change Adaptation Needs in Te Taitokerau Northland
      • Values-Based Impact Assessment and Emergency Management
      • Certainty about Communicating Uncertainty: Assessment of Flood Loss and Damage
      • Improving Understanding of Rockfall Geohazard Risk in New Zealand
      • Normalised New Zealand Natural Disaster Insurance Losses: 1968-2019
      • Houston, We Have a Problem - Seamless Integration of Weather and Climate Forecast for Community Resilience
      • Innovating with Online Data to Understand Risk and Impact in a Data Poor Environment
    • Impact Connector #11 Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation, and Impact Assessment: views from the Pacific >
      • Introduction
      • Climate change adaptation and mitigation, impact assessment, and decision-making: a Pacific perspective
      • Climate adaptation and impact assessment in the Pacific: overview of SPREP-sponsored presentations
      • Land and Sea: Integrated Assessment of the Temaiku Land and Urban Development Project in Kiribati
      • Strategic Environmental Assessment: Rising to the SDG Challenge
      • Coastal Engineering for Climate Change Resilience in Eastern Tongatapu, Tonga
      • Climate-induced Migration in the Pacific: The Role of New Zealand
    • Impact Connector #10 Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation >
      • Introduction
      • Is a “just transition” possible for Māori?
      • Adapting to Climate Change on Scale: Addressing the Challenge and Understanding the Impacts of Asia Mega-Cities
      • How responding to climate change might affect health, for better or for worse
      • Kanuka, Kereru and carbon capture - Assessing the effects of a programme taking a fresh look at the hill and high country land resource
      • Wairoa: Community perceptions of increased afforestation
      • Te Kākahu Kahukura Ecological Restoration project: A story within a story
    • Issue #9 Impacts of Covid-19 >
      • Introduction to Impact Connector Issue 9 – Impact assessment and Covid 19
      • Covid-19 fast-track consenting: climate change legacy key to success
      • Tourism – the long haul ahead
      • Making sense of the impact of Covid-19: planning, politics, and the public good
    • Issue #8 Social Impact Assessment >
      • Challenges for Social Impact Assessment in New Zealand: looking backwards and looking forwards
      • Insights from the eighties: early Social Impact Assessment reports on rural community dynamics
      • Impact Assessment and the Capitals Framework: A Systems-based Approach to Understanding and Evaluating Wellbeing
      • Building resilience in Rural Communities – a focus on mobile population groups
      • Assessing the Impacts of a New Cycle Trail: A Fieldnote
      • The challenges of a new biodiversity strategy for social impact assessment (SIA)
      • “Say goodbye to traffic”? The role of SIA in establishing whether ‘air taxis’ are the logical next step in the evolution of transportation
    • Issue #7 Ecological Impact Assessment >
      • The future of Ecological Impact Assessment in New Zealand
      • Ecological impact assessment and roading projects
      • EcIA and the Resource Management Act
      • Professional Practice and implementation of EcIA
      • EcIA in the Marine Environment
    • Issue #6 Landscape Assessment >
      • Introduction
      • Lives and landscapes: who cares, what about, and does it matter?
      • Regional Landscape Inconsistency
      • Landscape management in the new world order
      • Landscape assessment and the Environment Court
      • Natural character assessments and provisions in a coastal environment
      • The Assessment and Management of Amenity
      • The rise of the THIMBY
      • Landscape - Is there a common understanding of the Common?
    • Issue #5 Cultural Impact Assessment >
      • Introduction
      • Potential of Cultural Impact Assessment
      • The Mitigation Dilemma
      • CIA and decision-making
      • Insights and observations on CIA
      • Achieving sustainability through CIA
      • CIA - Enhancing or diminishing mauri?
      • Strategic Indigenous Impact Assessment?
    • Issue #4 Marine Environment >
      • Introduction
      • Iwi, Impact Assessment and Marine Environment
      • Sea-Bed Mining Application in Taranaki
      • The wreck of the MV Rena
      • High Court RMA Controls on Fishing
      • Initiatives in the Pacific Islands
      • SEA in an NZ context
    • Issue #3 Strategic Environmental Assessment
    • Issue #2
    • Issue #1
  • Resources
    • Webinars
    • IAIA Resources
    • United Nations Guidance
    • Donors Guidelines and Principles
    • Oceania and the Pacific
    • Natural Systems >
      • Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services
      • Agriculture & Food Systems
      • Water Management
    • Social Impact Assessment
    • Health Impact Assessment >
      • Climate Change & Health
      • Air Quality Impact Assessment
    • Cumulative Impact Assessment
    • Community and Stakeholder Engagement
    • Indigenous Peoples
    • Climate Change and Disaster Risk Resilience >
      • Adaptation Planning
      • Nature-based Solutions
    • Urban Development
    • Sustainable Development Goals
    • Strategic Environmental Assessment
    • Regulatory Impact Assessment
    • Methods in Impact Assessment
  • Community
    • Membership Directory
    • News
    • Policy Submissions >
      • Submissions
    • Courses
  • 2025 Calendar Year Membership Subscription Renewal