But such an understanding is inherently limiting, particularly in those
regulatory systems that are modelled on NEPA which have been implemented
in many places around the world. This understanding presumes an adversarial regulatory system. It denies that assessment might be
carried out internally by a corporation or by government, or even by a
community itself independent of a regulatory process. The assessment of
impacts of past developments is excluded from this definition. There is
also no role for the management, mitigation and monitoring of impacts,
or for contribution of the SIA participants in the redesign of the project,
or even in decision making about what constitutes an appropriate
project. Although the definition implies that the social impacts of policy
actions could be considered, the practice of SIA has tended to focus only
on projects. Thus, in such an understanding, SIA has been limited only
to a regulatory defined role of predicting the (negative) impacts of projects.