Present and Future of Cultural Impact Assessment Viewed from the Perspective of International Trends

GyeongGi Cultural Foundation

Cultural Policy is a quarterly magazine published by the Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation since the summer of 2017 with the purposes of identifying new trends in cultural policies at home and abroad, gathering the opinions of experts in relevant areas, and introducing the directions and contents of diverse cultural policies promoted by Gyeonggi Provincial Government and Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation.

Writer | Yang Hye-won

Cultural impact assessment has been known globally as a “future-oriented means that helps policymakers improve positive impacts of policy on values, beliefs, thoughts, ideology, ethics, habits, tradition and other material and immaterial environments while enabling them to mitigate and reduce negative impacts.” (Partal, 2013). A. Partal explains that cultural impact assessment has been implemented mostly in Australia, New Zealand, northern Japan, Hawaii and Canada where indigenous communities are active.1) However, the scope and prospect of cultural impact assessment seem to further expand recently.

This paper attempts to look into the future of cultural impact assessment by studying cases of cultural impact assessment in different countries, diverse efforts to assess cultural impacts and the current state of cultural impact assessment that is currently carried out in Korea in 2017.

Cultural Impact Assessment of New Zealand’s Auckland Council 2)3)

New Zealand’s Auckland Council conducts cultural impact assessment in order to keep track of cultural values, interests and connections formed by Mana Whenua, local indigenous people, in their relationship with the region and natural resources. The assessment system then studies what impacts development projects have on such cultural elements and how to mitigate negative impacts. If a developer plans to launch a project in an area that is valuable for Mana Whenua or in the vicinity of an archaeological site and a zone with a great natural landscape or characteristics, the developer is required to go through cultural impact assessment. It is indigenous people who conduct such assessment. Meanwhile, the Auckland Council gives support by coordinating the assessment process, providing information and suggesting recommendations.

Cultural Impact Assessment of Canada’s Mackenzie Valley 4)5

The Mackenzie Valley, which is located in Canada’s Northwest Territories, has come up with strategies to understand and minimize development projects’ negative impacts on Mackenzie Valley’s cultural environment (tangible cultural heritage, sites that are meaningful spiritually, historically and socially, methods of crop cultivation and land utilization, cultural landscape in a broad sense encompassing local culture, identity and values, system of cultural values, expression and knowledge, etc.). The framework of such strategies is environmental impact assessment which includes cultural impact assessment. The assessment takes place in three steps: preliminary screenings, environmental assessment and environmental impact review. To be more specific, cultural impact assessment is composed of the following six steps

The Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board (hereinafter referred to as the Review Board) reviews a project and requests the developer to stop it in the following cases :

Social Impact Assessment in the US and Integrated Impact Assessment in the EU

It is also worth comparing social impact assessment in the US and integrated impact assessment in the EU to cultural impact assessment. Social impact assessment in the US is a system that “assesses the impacts of development projects or policies on local residents and local communities.” It has been conducted since 2003. Its major elements of assessment are cultural values or characteristics such as the cultural identity of the given local community or people, which cannot be assessed only with environmental impact assessment.

Indices of Social Impact Assessment in the US

As for the EU’s integrated impact assessment, the European Commission’s guidelines on impact assessment divide social impacts into the following six areas :

Korea’s Cultural Impact Assessment System 6)7)

In 2003, Korea started its discussion on the adoption of cultural impact assessment and relevant research. In 2013, the Fundamental Act on Culture was enacted. As this act requires the country and local governments to conduct “cultural impact assessment,” it became Korea’s system. From 2014 to 2015, a pilot project for the assessment system took place and from 2016, the assessment was officially carried out for 15 policies and plans of the central government and local governments. In 2017 as well, 15 cases are being assessed

Projects Going through Cultural Impact Assessment (2016 to 2017)

In other countries, the main objective of cultural impact assessment is to protect local indigenous people’s own culture or to conserve local cultural heritage and landscapes. Thus, in many cases, the scope of assessment is confined to a specific region or it is carried out as part of environmental impact assessment. On the other hand, Korea has conducted cultural impact assessment at the national level and the assessment is independent from other assessment systems. Korea’s cultural impact assessment is also characterized by its strong nature as a discourse against development policy based on the paradigm of economic growth.

Consequently, the country’s cultural impact assessment system assesses the cultural impacts of public policies and plans from diverse perspectives including cultural enjoyment, expression and participation, cultural heritage and landscapes, communities, cultural diversity and creativity. The assessment system then comes up with policy recommendations that encourage the given policy to be improved in a desirable manner. Finally, the system also provides in-person consulting.

Assessment Indices of Korea’s Cultural Impact Assessment (as of 2017)

Moreover, Korea continuously carries out the following activities. First, the country develops a standardized assessment tool that comprehensively utilizes onsite studies, the analysis of documents, focused group interviews (FGI) and in-depth interviews with policymakers, surveys and experts’ assessment. Second, it improves assessment guidelines. Third, it builds a basis for a cultural impact assessment system encompassing the central government and local governments. Future of Cultural Impact Assessment

Future of Cultural Impact Assessment

Recently, not only English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada but also Taiwan enacted the Fundament Act on Culture like Korea, thus making efforts to adopt the cultural impact assessment system. Despite the fundamental difficulties inherent in the system, such numerous countries are enthusiastic about it. This proves that culture has become one of the essential elements of our life. This also implies that considering cultural impacts of diverse public policies and development projects are directly linked to humanity’s common goal: sustainable development.

Indeed, a network of international cultural institutions adopted the Declaration on the Inclusion of Culture in the Sustainable Development Goals. The network also suggested indices regarding “cultural impact assessment” as cultural indices to be included in the SDG Framework. The network is composed of the following institutions: IFACCA (International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies), Agenda 21 for culture (UCLG’s Committee on Culture), IFCCD (International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity), Culture Action Europe, Arterial Network and IMC (International Music Council) and ICOMO S (International Council on Monuments and Sites). 8)

The purposes of cultural impact assessment are to improve cultural values and to suggest better cultural alternatives by assessing the cultural impacts of public policies. Such assessment is not only a system of assessing a country’s policies but it is humanity’s common duty as the system’s meaningfulness has been recognized globally. Still, the design and management of the system may differ depending on each country’s historical, social and cultural contexts. Furthermore, the development of the system will require sustainable international cooperation and networking efforts.

Citation

1) Adriana Partal (2013) Impact Assessment: A Tool to Assist Cultural Sustainable Development. People and the Planet 2013 Conference: Trasforming the Futrue, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 2-4 July

2) Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea (2015). 2015 Research on Cultural Impact Assessment.

3) Auckland Council. Mana Whenua Cultural Impact Assessments, Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan: Fact Sheet

4) Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea (2015). 2015 Research on Cultural Impact Assessment.

5) Mackenzie Valley Review Board (2012), Cultural Impact Assessment Guidelines:/ Internal Working Draft (internal document not to be distributed outside), p. 51.

6) Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Korea(2016) The 2016 Comprehensive Report on Cultural Impact Assessment.

7) Korea Culture & Tourism Institute (2017), The 2017 Guidelines on Cultural Impact Assessment.

8) The Future We Want Includes Culture (2015), Recognizing the Role of Culture to Strengthen the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda

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Writer - Yang Hye-won/ Researcher at Statistics & Evaluation Center of Korea Culture & Tourism Institute

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Kim Hyun Tae Kim Sunghwan Cho Doo Won Park Hyerin

Writer: GyeongGi Cultural Foundation

About: Everything about the GyeongGi arts and culture, GGCF

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