Climate change impact assessment: the state of the art

Since the Paris Agreement in 2015, climate change has shifted from a peripheral consideration in impact assessment (IA) to an organizing principle shaping how impacts are defined, alternatives are compared, and decisions are justified. This paper provides a state-of-the-art synthesis of Climate Change Impact Assessment (CCIA) focusing on the co-evolution of policy and legal mandates, methods, institutional arrangements, and professional practice. We conceptualize CCIA as an integrative assessment practice linking mitigation, adaptation, and justice within impact assessment. Methodologically, the paper combines a structured narrative review of peer-reviewed and grey literature and associated member-survey insights, to populate a SWOT synthesis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). Key developments include legal mainstreaming of mitigation and adaptation within EIA/SEA systems and the growing interface between IA and sustainable finance (e.g. EU Taxonomy). Despite significant progress, implementation remains uneven, with persistent fragmentation, methodological inconsistency, and renewed ‘streamlining’ pressures. We conclude that CCIA is best understood not as a separate IA ‘tool’ but as a cross-cutting integrative practice within the IA family that links decarbonization, resilience, and justice. Priorities for the next decade include consolidating legal mandates, standardizing decision-relevant methods, strengthening equity and Indigenous rights analysis, and operationalizing boundary-informed assessment tied to monitoring and compliance.