THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLICY AND LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR SOCIAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is an assessment tool that assess the social effects of infrastructure and major projects and is conducted in many countries, including the United States, Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, New Zealand, and Japan. Malaysia requires such form of assessment for projects deemed to have social implications prior to obtaining planning permission from the local planning authorities. The requirement of the submission of SIA report as part of planning permission requirement necessitates from section 20B (2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1976. Based on several studies, there are several legal issues arises from the SIA approval process, affecting various stakeholders. As such, this research aims to analyse the implementation of SIA from the Malaysia’s policy and legal perspective using qualitative method of systematic literature review and content analysis. Analysis of literatures show that the SIA framework in Malaysia can be improved as to make the process of SIA approval to be more effective.