Social impact assessment in Finland, Norway and Sweden : a descriptive and comparative study

Abstract: This thesis describes and compares the practices of social impact assessments in Finland, Norway and Sweden. How are social impacts, as caused by any planned intervention, assessed in the countries? How do the countries' practices relate to the international theory and practice? What are the differences, and/or similarities, between the countries? SIA is a procedure of assessing and estimating potential social impacts as caused by some kind ofplanned intervention. The origin of SIA is commonly traced back to the introduction of environmental impact assessment (EIA). However, it has not won the same recognition as its cousin EIA. Since social aspects often are complex and thus difficult to measure and estimate, SIA can be used as a procedure to not only cope with quantitative aspects but also qualitative. Since EIA was introduced into legislation in Europe through the European Council, the Nordic countries have gradually introduced EIA, and impact assessment (IA), in their national legislation. There has not been any introduction of SIA per se in the legislation, however, assessment of social impacts are more or less included in the legislation covering EIA and IA. This thesis shows that SIA, in practice, is used to a differing extent in the countries and that there are some differences in what social impacts comprises and how they are assessed. In Norway the more overall and general IA is used including both biophysical impacts and social impacts, where the social impacts are de$ned and assessed in a rather quantitative way compared to the other two countries. In Finland and Sweden, SIA, as defined in the international theory and practice, is used to some extent. However, the practice in Sweden is not as widespread as in Finland and Norway, where social aspects and impacts seems to be more integrated in impact assessments.