Since the enactment of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act in 1994, the system has become an important part of Taiwan's environmental governance. However, the existing EIA operations tend to focus more on engineering and less on humanities side, and over emphasise on science and techniques results in the negligence of the living integrity, cultural diversity and human rights abuses. Therefore, the social impact caused by the development behaviour was not rigorously assessed and appropriately addressed, leading to people’s protests, the lack of social credibility on the EIA results, which may even be revoked by the courts, resulting in heavy losses to developers.
This book is translated by the Centre from the "Social Impact Assessment: Guidance for assessing and managing the social impacts of projects" published by the International Association for Impact Assessment, which was co-authored by Dutch scholar Frank Vanlcay and other experts. A detailed discussion is provided on the principles, concepts and practices of social impact assessment. If we can fully implement the spirit disclosed in this book, economic development, environmental sustainability and social justice are likely to achieve win-win results.