Why is social impact assessment the orphan of the assessment process?

Social impact assessment (SIA) has not been widely adopted as a component of the assessment process for project or policy appraisal. This paper focuses on four issues: how we are labeling research on social impacts; what historical events led to the separation of SIA from the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process; whether the Guidelines and Principles for Social Impact Assessment helped focus the research and practice of SIA; and whether there is evidence that we are accumulating a body of knowledge labeled social impact assessment. To become institutionalized EIA-SIA must be a statutory requirement, otherwise agencies and consulting firms that do EIA will not include social impacts. The requirement must extend to international bilateral aid, donor and lending agencies.