Development of a Social Vulnerability Indicator and its Application to Environmental and Social Impact Assessment

Abstract

One of the main principles of Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) is to acknowledge the unequal distribution of development project impacts while prioritizing the needs of the most seriously affected groups. Moreover, ESIA stresses the importance of embracing the whole spectrum of stakeholders throughout the assessment process through participatory actions. However, the methodological development of strategies for the participatory assessment of social vulnerability within ESIA is still scarce. This paper presents a methodological proposal that allows for the self- and co-assessment of vulnerability applied to a golf-based tourism project (GBP) in Huelva (Spain) . This strategy uses Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to identify the most vulnerable stakeholders through two main criteria: the level of negative impacts received from the project and the level of influence on the project’s decision-making processes. Data were collected from structured interviews with the stakeholders, who rated these variables both for themselves and the rest of stakeholders. The results of the MCDA afford a classification of the stakeholders according to their level of vulnerability. This information is extremely useful in subsequent steps in the ESIA process, for example, as a basis for the prioritization of impacts in the mitigation phases.