Rethinking Impact Assessments: Integrating Disability Justice into Environmental Governance

Abstract

Assessment laws of Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain incorporate an inclusive perspective on disability. Recognising that Environmental Impact Assessment is one of the central instruments of environmental governance in Europe, the study identifies a persistent gap between the commitments assumed by the Member States under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the United Nations and the limited attention that national legislation dedicates to accessibility, participation and social justice. The overall aim is to evaluate how disability is positioned within the legal frameworks and, based on these findings, to develop a conceptual and procedural framework that can guide more inclusive practices. The research adopts a qualitative design based on documentary analysis of the laws in force in the four countries, all of which derive from Directive 2011/92/EU on environmental impact assessment, as amended by Directive 2014/52/EU. It applies a method of qualitative content analysis that combines deductive and inductive strategies and is structured around three analytical levels: visibility of disability, justice and rights, and accessibility and participation. This approach allows for a systematic examination of the presence, absence or ambiguity of disability-related references within the legal texts, as well as a comparison of convergent and divergent patterns across the four cases. The results reveal the complete absence of references to persons with disabilities and the lack of regulatory mechanisms intended to ensure accessibility, inclusive participation or recognition of social diversity. Social aspects, when mentioned, are confined to broad categories such as the population or human health, confirming the concerns raised in the literature on Social Impact Assessment regarding the tendency of European environmental legislation to overlook the most vulnerable groups. This omission is especially significant given that the States examined are bound both by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and by European accessibility regulations. Taken together, the legal frameworks maintain a technocratic focus centred on environmental protection, with limited integration of the principles of equality and non-discrimination that should guide contemporary environmental governance. On the basis of these findings, the thesis develops the Inclusive Environmental Impact Assessment Guideline, a conceptual and operational framework that translates the core principles of Social Impact Assessment, extended through Disability Justice, into practical guidance applicable to all stages of the assessment process. The guideline conceives inclusion as a continuous process, spanning scoping, the preparation of baseline information, impact evaluation, decision-making and post-decision monitoring. Overall, the research offers a double contribution. First, it provides a comparative diagnosis that reveals structural limitations within the national legal frameworks and their implications for environmental governance in Europe. Second, it formulates a practical framework that enables progress towards more accessible, participatory and socially just environmental impact assessments. The thesis concludes that disability inclusion is an essential criterion for evaluating the ethical, democratic and social quality of contemporary environmental governance and for strengthening the role of the social dimension within Environmental Impact Assessment.