Presentation of IAIA'06 in Stavanger, Norway

Dear colleagues,

First, I would like to thank the Board for giving Norway the task of hosting the next annual conference of IAIA. This will be a major task for some of us in the MoE, and others, in the year to come, and we have a lot of respect for the job, and will approach it humbly.

As you will know by now, the conference will be held in Stavanger, the fourth largest city of Norway, with about 120 000 inhabitants, situated on the North Sea in the South-West corner of Norway. It used to be a town known for canning sardines in oil, now it is more known as the oil capital of Norway. This will be the first IAIA conference in a Nordic country. We think Stavanger is well suited to host the conference, and Perlita Gundersen from the Stavanger Region Organization will explain why in a moment. She will show you some slides and a five minutes long film to give you an impression of the venue.

Turning now to the more substantive issues, the content of the conference, we would like to build it on three pillars:

1. The Nordic issues
2. The development issues and
3. Issues to be followed up from this and previous conferences.

On this basis, we have proposed a title for the conference, namely

"Power, poverty and sustainability: How can impact assessment contribute?"

You may have gathered that the word "power" has a double meaning in this context, meaning both political power and energy.

This takes me directly to the first of the three pillars, namely energy.

1. Energy issues are very much in focus in the Nordic context, as are the associated climate change issues. These themes of course figure also prominently on the larger agenda, for instance on the current agenda of the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD). Gus Speth addressed some of the concerns associated with energy and climate in his opening speech on Tuesday. At the IAIA'06 we would like to discuss the contribution of impact assessment, in the wider sense of the concept, to both traditional forms of energy sources, like oil, gas and hydro power, as well as alternative forms of energy, like windfarms, wave and tidal power, and geothermal energy. In Stavanger, we will be in a position to take you on technical visits to show you examples of these forms of energy.

The northerly situation of Norway, bordering on the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Sea, sharing a common border with Russia, with a long history of polar exploration, and with cooperation with countries of the Arctic rim, makes it only natural that polar and northern issues are discussed at IAIA'06. With oil prices up to 50 $ oil and gas issues are of course of paramount interest as exploration moves north, potentially influensing fishery, native communities, tourism, traditional ways of life and potentially increasing the need for transport. We would like to address these themes in an integrated manner. 2006 is also the International Polar Year.

Land use planning has a strong tradition in the Nordic countries, and like in other EU countries, impact assessment is now integrated in land use and regional planning procedures. Such achievements are also finding its way into coastal zone planning and management, and are thus topics we would like to focus on next year. Again, Stavanger is well situated to demonstrate impact assessment in land use and transport planning as well as related to fish farming and other coastal zone management issues.

2. Turning now to the second pillar of development issues, we would like to put under discussion how impact assessment can contribute to poverty eradication, and to achieving the MDGs, which world leaders will meet in New York in September this year to address. We would like to focus on how the developing countries themselves can contribute as well as the role of bi- and multilatereal agencies, including the international banks. We hope to be able to offer some support to participants from developing countries to come to the conference.

3. Thirdly, we would like to follow up existing themes from this and earlier conferences, among them, obviously ethics and quality, sustainability issues, health and social issues, and effectiveness of impact assessment are themes which deserve to have our continued attention.

Regarding the format of the conference, we will build on this and last years conference. We hope to strike a good balance between theme forums and concurrent sessions, and to offer interesting and relevant training courses and technical visits. We will establish a Program Committee and other committees to help us put together a good programme. And we are lucky enough to have Statoil on board as the main sponsor.

Before giving the floor to Perlita, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we hope to see you all in Stavanger in May 2006.

Speech made by Terje Lind, Deputy Director General, in Boston during IAIA'05