Japan Society for Impact Assessment

The history of JSIA dates back to 1997 when IAIA-Japan was established. At that time, there were no national regulations governing environmental impact assessments (EIAs) in Japan. As such, local governments faced many challenges implementing EIAs. Additionally, while there were some EAI-related industrial associations, there was no EIA academic association. Subsequently, IAIA-Japan was established in 1997 to offer EIA practitioners and researchers a forum to discuss both academic and technical issues. Another IAIA-Japan objective was to facilitate international exchange both to learn lessons from the experiences of other countries and to communicate Japanese experiences to the world. IAIA-Japan played an active role until the establishment of JSIA in 2002.

IAIA-Japan activities resulted in the establishment of the Japanese Environmental Impact Assessment Law in 1999. The EIA Law immediately and significantly changed the EIA scene in Japan, in particular increasing the technical complexity of EIA topics. The regulations also raised new issues, such as the roles of strategic environmental assessments, biological impact assessments, cumulative impact assessments, social impact assessment s and international cooperation. This created a necessity for a forum to discuss these issues on both a domestic and an international scale. Consequently, IAIA-Japan, primarily comprised of EIA experts involved in international-scale projects, evolved into JSIA, comprised of both researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and professions.

Since its establishment in 2002, JSIA has held annual meetings and published journals every year. JSIA international events include the Japan-Korea EIA workshop held annually since 2003 and the Japan-Korea-China tripartite EIA workshop held annually since 2011. JSIA also hosted the inaugural Multi-sector Roundtable Conference to facilitate the exchange of current EIA issues among the governments, researchers and private sectors of each participating country during the 2013 tripartite EIA workshop. JSIA plays a leading role in promoting EIA-related research, interaction and education in Japan and its Asian neighbors.

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