On the back cover of Dr. Bristol-Alagbariya’s book, Participation in Petroleum Development, I say:

The potential of impact assessment for bringing “equity, prosperity, and tranquility” to the Niger Delta, especially by means of community participation, offers a promising approach to achieving sustainable development in that volatile yet vital part of the world.

Approaches are not arrivals, however. The precondition for this or any other initiative to succeed depends in the first instance on peaceful resolution of the violent confrontation that has afflicted the region and nation with growing intensity over the past five years. Its roots go much deeper, of course, to the disparity and inequity that have marked and marred the region since oil development began in 1956.

The Primacy of Politics

It was here in Abuja, four and a half years ago, in a meeting at the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, that it occurred to me: “Water resources development is one-tenth technical and nine-tenths political.”

I repeated that insight at an International Water Association conference last month in Seoul, Korea, and asked the audience of mainly technical people if that were about the right fraction. No one disagreed.

Earlier this month I repeated it again, this time in Melbourne, Australia, in discussions with one of the largest mining companies in the world, and again there was no disagreement. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who disagrees with that formulation.

If this is so, then it follows that “to get the water resources right, you have to get the politics right.” What that might mean naturally depends on what is understood as “politics.” Two leading but contending versions are the coercion and consensus views.

The former is represented by Harold W. Lasswell, who defined “politics” as “who get what, where, when, and how.” In fact, identifying winners and losers is a fair description of the methodology of impact assessment. In contrast, David C. McClelland offers a consensual definition of politics, one more congenial to the author’s: politics is “the authoritative allocation of values.”

Whatever definition we adopt, getting the politics right means building the institutional capacity for good governance. The United Nations Development Programme have postulated five principles for achieving this:

The operative terms here all relate closely to the concept of public or popular or people’s participation, the central theme of the book under discussion. Its centrality in the process of social change is embodied in Herbert Simon’s “Participation Hypothesis”:

“ … Significant changes in human behavior can be brought about rapidly only if the persons who are expected to change, participate in deciding what the change shall be and how it shall be made.” (from “Recent Advances in Organization Theory” (1955: p. 206).

Enter Impact Assessment’

We can now assert that the field of Impact assessment represents both an instrument of governance (see Ahmed and Sanchez-Triana 2008) and an opportunity for participation. It is therefore not surprising to find the author with affiliations in both fields. “Impact assessment” can be formally defined as:

. .. a process for anticipating and evaluating the difference between existing and future conditions with and without the intervention of natural events or social actions, intended or unintended.

What it is good for is contained in this vision/mission statement: the goal of impact assessment is to:

… develop local and global capacity to anticipate, plan, and manage the consequences of change so as to enhance the quality of life for all.

The general methodology of impact assessment is comprised in ten steps, referred to here as the “Main Pattern” schema since it appears to represent a general consensus among impact assessment practitioners and aims at methodological completeness. The ten steps comprising an assessment cycle are:

Scoping

Problem Identification

Formulation of Alternatives

Profiling

Projection

Analysis of Alternatives

Evaluation

Mitigation

Monitoring

Management

Specific methods and techniques and data sets and series are associated with analytic operations at each step. Opportunities for participation are likewise present at every step, especially scoping, problem identification, and formulation of alternatives on the front end and evaluation, monitoring, and management on the back.

In short, impact assessment seeks the (fore) knowledge of consequences, anticipating unanticipated consequences by exercising the foresight provision. Along with this goes an ethic of consequences, emphasizing the responsibility of impact assessment practitioners in relation to their knowledge and its application.

Two phrase can be applied in characterising the field of impact assessment: “comprehensive and integrated” in its coverage of impact levels, scales, schedules, and sectors, and “proactive and creative” in its anticipatory research, design, and policy applications. In this it supports futurist Alvin Toffler’s concept of “anticipatory democracy,” putting people in charge of their own desirable futures. In the present context, it is convergent with the author’s view of “environmental democracy.”

We believe that application of the philosophy and methodology of impact assessment can and will serve to facilitate bringing “equity, prosperity, and tranquility” to the Niger Delta region and to the nation and beyond. This book marks an important advance toward that end.

Prof. C. P. Wolf of the Social Impact Assessment Centre, New York and also co-founder and Past President International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA), Fargo, USA presented this paper at the launching of the book “Participation in Petroleum Development: Towards Sustainable Community Development in the Niger Delta” written by Aseme-Alabo Edard T. Bristol-Alagbariya at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, recently.

Prof. C. P. Wolf