Environmental and social impact assessment is a core policy approach for regulating environment–development challenges across both developed and developing contexts. Related frameworks, including cumulative impact assessment and vulnerability assessment, have become key mechanisms for guiding project approval and climate policy. However, assessment frameworks are often constrained by the political economy of extractive development, compliance-oriented procedures, and limited incorporation of local and Indigenous knowledge, while regulatory accretion can delay approvals for even beneficial interventions. Drawing on more than 150 publications across environmental assessment (EA), political ecology, sustainability science, science and technology studies, critical mapping, and Indigenous studies, this review offers a sympathetic critique of mainstream EA. It argues that positivist frameworks and functional dualisms can work to obscure social power relations and the emergent, synergistic nature of socio-ecological change. Incorporating relational ontologies and ideas of compound vulnerability reveals how socio-political forces and environmental degradation coproduce local transformations and risks, while attention to community agency and Indigenous knowledge can open pathways for more inclusive and deliberative environmental regulation. Future research can help operationalize these framings in EA policy and practice.
Barney et al. (2026) studied this question.