Voices of the next generation – An interview with Ben Payne
Ben 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.
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.