Indigenous Peoples and impact assessment

The meaningful engagement of Indigenous Peoples in impact assessment processes is often challenging and unbalanced towards the proponent's goals. This relates to various reasons, such as ethnic and cultural diversity, varying capacity for mobilization and negotiation skills of groups in different countries, combined with different sets of rights and licencing procedures. Based on the diverse lived experiences, training and professional background of the authors, as researchers, consultants and one of the authors being Indigenous, this paper will analyse the challenges, opportunities and possible strategies for engaging Indigenous Peoples and communities in impact assessment. From an anthropological perspective, as well as from practice with impact assessment processes with Indigenous communities, the strategies, techniques and activities for assessing impacts with Indigenous communities will be outlined. This chapter will consider international best practices guidelines, including the Aashukan Declaration, while discussing the diversity and complexity of the relational contexts and constellations of actors involved.