Barbarians at the gate: storming the Gothenburg consensus

Untapped potential of health impact assessment

“…Equator Principles Financial Institutions [EPFIs], the World Bank Group and the Asian Development Bank) are critical actors. 16 The Performance Standards of the International Finance Corporation (IFC, a member of the World Bank Group), which include a community health standard, are internationally recognized and guide the impact assessment performance for large development projects. 17 As part of loan covenants, IFC and EPFIs incorporate standards on social and environmental performance and reporting.…”

“…13 This is because in places where no national HIA policy is in place, only best practice principles linked to financing projects and internal company standards apply. 16 Hence, from a quantitative and qualitative perspective, there is a divide in HIA practice between high-and low-HDI countries. This has important ramifications affecting current and future global challenges, including protecting health.…”

“…This is critical in a competitive environment such as the extractive industry, in which adherence to sustainable principles may impose an economic handicap. 16 Second, all of these efforts are based on current best practices, which are not a substitute for legal requirements. The example of the European Union shows that HIA not being mandatory seriously hinders the ability to fully tap its potential for promoting public health.…”

“…21 For example, an HIA methodology that is based on the social determinants of health model has its limitations in the context of HIA for large development projects in a tropical country. 16 On the other hand, the social determinants of health as a guiding framework for HIA may outgrow the strengths it has in high-HDI countries when applied in the context of urbanization or policy planning in low-and medium-HDI countries. 25 These examples highlight that the HIA community does not only have to scrutinize and amplify the methods at hand, but also become more clear about which methods make sense in what environment and for what purpose.…”

Enhancing impact: visualization of an integrated impact assessment strategy

“…Can indeed anybody in a potentially impacted community possibly understand the highly technical nature of the analyses presented? Our group has reviewed and/or contributed to numerous extractive industry and water resources impact assessments (IAs) in developing countries (Utzinger et al, 2005;Krieger et al, 2008Krieger et al, , 2010Winkler et al, 2011Winkler et al, , 2012a. Without exception, these IAs, including our own health impact assessments (HIA), are elaborate, multi-volume documents, all certainly reach a "magna" length.…”