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9 Socio-economic and traffic impacts
9.1 INTRODUCTION
With the exception of ecological impacts, most impacts are assessed by the repercussions they have on humans (noise, air pollution, landscape, etc.) and to that extent they all could be considered social in nature. However, impacts usually referred to as “socio-economic” have the characteristic that they are transmitted through the workings of society itself, its economy and the behaviour of its population as a result of the project. In this respect, traffic impacts can also be considered under the same heading, as they also result directly from social behaviour – with vehicles as “instruments”. This view of socio-economic impacts suggests the need to consider how society works in order to assess any impacts on it, and that can face us with a problem similar to what we found when dealing with ecology, i.e. the extreme complexity of the science that studies the field, in this case, social behaviour. It can be argued (Vanclay, 1999) that social impacts have always been the central concern of the social sciences, and that to analyse these impacts we have to use the rigour of such sciences. In this sense, the usual approach to the study of these impacts can be said to only “scratch the surface” of social impacts, concentrating on relatively superficial indicators of impact but without getting into their deeper social repercussions in terms of social change, the true measure of social impact. On the other hand, in practical terms it might prove difficult to engage in deep social research involving wide-ranging surveys for every project requiring this type of impact assessment. This is one of the dilemmas of socio-economic impact assessment – and one that impact studies address in varying degrees – especially since this area of impact assessment is relatively new and still has to become fully established as part of the standard collection of impacts to consider.
9.2 SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACTS
These types of impacts are relative newcomers to impact assessment, as the initial emphasis of this growing area of interest and legislation was placed
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Socio-economic and traffic impacts 273
more on “environmental” impacts, probably on the assumption that the socio-economic side was already being covered by the town planning system (Glasson, 2001). Only in the 1990s did socio-economic impact studies become a standard component – albeit sometimes rather “thin” (Glasson, 1994)37 – of a growing number of environmental statements, following the good-practice literature which has accompanied this “coming of age” (Petts and Eduljee, 1994b; Glasson, 1995, 2001; Chadwick, 1995, 2001; Vanclay, 1999; Chadwick, 2001 also contains a very good bibliographical compila-tion). There has been some debate about the nature of, and what to include in, socio-economic impacts. Our definition of these “people impacts” includes direct economic impacts, which normally lead to indirect wider economic/expenditure impacts, demographic, housing, other social services (such as education, health, police) and socio-cultural impacts (including lifestyle, community integration, cohesion and alienation). The general logic advocated for these studies is similar to that of other impacts (Figure 9.1).
Although economic and social impacts can be studied separately – partly because economic impacts tend to be positive while social impacts tend to be negative – the logic they follow is similar, and usually starts from a common base, and it is only after “scoping” the impacts that the two lines of enquiry separate.
Figure 9.1 The logic of socio-economic impact assessment.
37 The face-to-face part of the knowledge elicitation for this area of impact was approached in a way similar to the other areas of impact, i.e. by holding structured conversations between Agustin Rodriguez-Bachiller and an expert in the field, even if in this case the expert (John Glasson, of the Impact Assessment Unit in the school of planning, Oxford Brookes University) was part of the authorship of this book, and references to those conversations will be made in the usual manner. Duma Langdon helped with the compilation and structuring of the material for this part.
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274 Building expert systems for IA
9.2.1 Understanding the project
In socio-economic terms, what matters about the project is its capital investment and its human-resources (labour and users/customers) plans for the con-struction and operation stages, the study of the latter often extending up to 2–3 years into full operation. This involves first of all the detailed quantifi-cation of the socio-economic components of the project, but also it concerns more qualitative social/employment policies associated with it (Figure 9.2). Starting with the quantitative information, concerning the expenditure in physical factors first, we need to know the magnitude and nature of the project:
1 For the construction stage, the investment over time in:
• infrastructure, • equipment,
• buildings,
• non-labour services.
Figure 9.2 Information about the project for socio-economic impact assessment.
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Socio-economic and traffic impacts 275
2 For the operation stage, the expenditure over time on:
• goods,
• raw materials,
• non-labour services, • maintenance.
On the human resources side, we need to know:
1 The “labour curves” over time for construction and operation (see an example in Glasson, 2001):
• number of workers,
• occupational categories/skills.
Differences in the labour force between construction and operation can be important, as some infrastructure/utilities projects (like power stations, roads) involve much more labour during construction than operation, while manufacturing and especially service projects (business parks, new settlements) tend to the opposite. On the other hand, when the latter happens it tends to be because of a high number of visitors/ users, and not because of a high number of workers operating the project, as most types of projects tend to be more and more capital-intensive.
2 Visiting users/customers over time (only for the operation stage):
• numbers,
• socio-economic profile.
In the construction stage it is unlikely that there will be significant numbers of visitors, users or customers, and in some types of projects (like energy projects) this will also be the case for the operation stage. Other projects (like leisure facilities, retail parks, new settlements) depend on large numbers of visitors/users, whose impacts must be considered.
On the qualitative side, it is crucial to identify the developer’s policies concerning labour practices on the one hand, and the expected level of local sharing in all the activities, on the other. On the working practices, it is important to know:
1 wage levels;
2 shifts to be used (e.g. two or three);
3 accommodation policies (like provision of an on-site hostel); 4 transportation policies:
• bussing workers (especially for the construction stage), • providing travel allowances up to a certain distance.
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276 Building expert systems for IA
Also, it is most important to find out if the developer has any specific policies about the expected local share of each part of the project:
1 Expected proportion of local/non-local labour, usually decreasing as the skill level increases; Glasson (2001) gives a typical profile of the proportions of local labour expected in major projects:
• site-services, security and clerical: 90 per cent, • civil engineering operatives: 55 per cent,
• mechanical and electrical operatives: 40 per cent,
• professional, supervisory and managerial: 15 per cent.
Sometimes developers are less inclined to employ local labour when the area has a reputation for labour problems.
2 Training policies: including training in the employment package can be useful to overcome any prejudice against taking on local unemployed people. As a general rule, the higher the occupational category of the staff the longer will be the training needed and the less likely workers are to come from the locality.
3 Policy on local suppliers and putting contracts out to tender: in the construction stage, during normal operation.
4 Purchasing agreements that the firm running the project (often a national firm) may have with non-local firms.
As a result of some of these policies, a profile will emerge of the proportion of workers at different occupational levels likely to be in different family/ housing situations (during construction and operation):
• workers in-migrating to the area with their families: in the construction stage – if it lasts for several years – it will be of the order of 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the external workforce, during operation it is likely to be the vast majority (90 per cent) of the in-migrating workforce;
• workers in-migrating to the area but without their families; • long-distance commuters;
• local workers.
Although all this information about the project is necessary to carry out a detailed impact study, developers cannot always provide it. Decisions on some aspects of the project (like staffing) may be at an early stage and we can either use aggregate figures for labour or investment (and carry out the analysis at an aggregate level) or we can use other similar projects as sources of comparative information to “flesh out” the project, when estimating the likely composition of the labour force, or the likely proportions to be in-migrants, commuters, or locals.
© 2004 Agustin Rodriguez-Bachiller with John Glasson
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