Cumulative Effects Assessment: Linking Social, Ecological, and Governance Dimensions

Weber, Marian; Krogman, Naomi; Antoniuk, Terry

doi:10.5751/es-04597-170122

Cited by 10 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 11 publications

(15 reference statements)

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“…Consider ways to set SEA onto a statutory foundation. That foundation should establish requirements for creating and using development scenarios (Weber et al, 2012;Duinker & Greig, 2007), and engaging the public and stakeholders in identifying appropriate VECs and considering their resilience in the face of future development prospects. In anticipation of such a statutory foundation being established, SEAs conducted in the meantime should be consistent with these concepts and embody strong implementations of the CEA mindset.…”

Section: Focusing the Cea Mindsetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking up, down, and sideways: Reconceiving cumulative effects assessment as a mindset

Sinclair

Doelle

Duinker

2017

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

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Despite all the effort that has gone into defining, researching and establishing best practices for cumulative effects assessment (CEA), understanding remains weak and practice wanting. At one extreme of implementation, CEA can be described as merely an irritant to the completion of a project-specific environmental assessment (EA). At the other extreme, the conceptual view is that all effects in EA should be deemed cumulative unless demonstrated otherwise. Our purpose here is to consider how we might reconceive CEA as a mindset that is at the heart of absolutely every assessment of valued ecosystem component (VEC) to ensure that we understand the relative contributions of various stressors and can decide when cumulative effects may foreclose future activities due to impacts on VECs. Conceptually, we ground the CEA mindset in the context of three lenses that must all be functioning and working together for the mindset to be operative: a technical lens; a law and policy lens; and a participatory lens. Our arguments are based on a review of the CEA, strategic effects assessment (SEA) and regional effects assessment literatures, an examination and consideration of Canadian EA and SEA case practice, and our combined professional experiences. Through using the Bay of Fundy in Canada as a case example, we establish the concept of the CEA mindset and an approach for moving forward with implementation.

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Section: Focusing the Cea Mindsetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking up, down, and sideways: Reconceiving cumulative effects assessment as a mindset

Sinclair

Doelle

Duinker

2017

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

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“…Land-use planning was described by Weber et al (2012) as a "wicked problem" because it must bring together science and other forms of knowledge with decision makers and stakeholders to develop new tools to understand how development affects communities and the environment. Land-use planning processes should support decision making, guided by public scrutiny, and follow a precautionary approach that considers conservation (e.g., protection, sustainable use, restoration) and development.…”

Section: Land-use Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As mentioned above, there is nothing prohibiting the application of a carefully designed sustainability assessment or CEA at a regional scale in Ontario's Far North. For example, the Far North Land Use Strategy mandated by the Far North Act, 2010 offers an important opportunity for proactive planning and assessment processes, which could consider a variety of futures and scenarios (e.g., Duinker and Greig 2007, Far North Science Advisory Panel 2010, Francis and Hamm 2011, Weber et al 2012 beyond business as usual, plus consider explicit development and infrastructure options. Tools such as ALCES (a cumulative effects simulation model and mapping tool) can support these regional planning processes (e.g., Francis and Hamm 2011, Carlson et al 2011, Carlson and Chetkiewicz 2013.…”

Section: Follow-up and Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific considerations and challenges for addressing cumulative effects in forest landscapes in Canada

Venier

Walton²,

Brandt

2021

Environ. Rev.

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Traditionally, forest management has focused on forestry-related practices while other industries have been managed separately. Forest management requires the integration of all natural resource development activities, along with other anthropogenic and natural forest disturbances (e.g., climate change, pollution, wildfire, pest disturbance) to understand how human activities can change forested ecosystems. The term cumulative effects has been used to describe these attempts to integrate all disturbances to develop an understanding of past, current and future impacts on environmental, social and economic components of the system. In this review, we focus on the science required to understand the past, current and future impacts of the cumulative effects of anthropogenic and natural disturbances on forested ecosystems or their components. We have primarily focused on the terrestrial system with an emphasis on northern forests in Canada. Our paper is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all cumulative effects science but a synthesis of the challenges and approaches currently being used. Central repositories were identified as an approach to deal with issues of availability of remotely sensed data on anthropogenic and natural disturbances. Data integration projects, open data and well-designed large-scale data collection efforts are needed to provide sufficient data on environmental responses to cumulative effects. As well, large-scale integrated, modularized ecosystem models are needed to bring stressor and environmental response data together to explore responses to, and interactions between, multiple stressors, to project these effects into the future, and to identify future data collection needs.

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“…Cumulative effects, de ned by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment as "a change in the environment caused by multiple interactions among human activities and natural processes that accumulate across space and time" [1], are of broad scienti c interest [2,3,4,5,6,7] and in Canada are at the forefront of scienti c and technical investigations in the context of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) [8,9], policy development [10,11,12] and monitoring approaches [13,14]. These considerations apply at both federal and provincial levels in Canada [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on the forest carbon balance in the Oil Sands Region of Alberta, Canada; a pilot study (1984–2012)

Shaw

Rodrigue

Voicu

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background Assessing cumulative effects of anthropogenic and natural disturbances on forest carbon (C) stocks and fluxes, because of their relevance to climate change, is a requirement of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) in Canada. However, tools have not been developed specifically for these purposes, and in particular for the boreal forest of Canada, so current forest C assessments in EIAs take relatively simple approaches. Here, we demonstrate how an existing tool, the Generic Carbon Budget Model (GCBM), developed for national and international forest C reporting, was used for a relatively rigorous assessment of the cumulative effects of anthropogenic and natural disturbances to support EIA requirements. We applied the GCBM to approximately 1.3 million ha of upland forest in a pilot study area of the oil sands region of Alberta that has experienced a large number of anthropogenic (forestry, energy sector) and natural (wildfire, insect) disturbances.Results 24% of the pilot study area was disturbed. Increasing disturbance emissions combined with declining net primary productivity over the 29 years of the pilot study changed the area from a net C sink to a net C source. Forest C stocks changed from 332 Mt to 327.5 Mt, declining at an average rate of 0.155 tC ha− 1 yr− 1. The largest cumulative areas of disturbance were caused by wildfire (139,000 ha), followed by the energy sector (110,000 ha), insects (33,000 ha) and harvesting (31,000 ha) but the largest cumulative disturbance emissions were caused by the energy sector (9.5 Mt C), followed by wildfire (5.5 Mt C), and then harvesting (1.3 Mt C).Conclusion An existing forest C model was used successfully to provide a rigorous regional cumulative assessment of anthropogenic and natural disturbances on forest C, which meets requirements of EIAs in Canada. The assessment showed the relative importance of disturbances on C emissions in the pilot study area but their relative importance is expected to change in other parts of the oil sands region because of its diversity in disturbance, types, patterns and intensity. Future assessments should include peatland C stocks and fluxes, which could be addressed by using the Canadian Model for Peatlands.

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Cumulative Effects Assessment: Linking Social, Ecological, and Governance Dimensions

Cited by 10 publications

References 11 publications

Looking up, down, and sideways: Reconceiving cumulative effects assessment as a mindset

Looking up, down, and sideways: Reconceiving cumulative effects assessment as a mindset

Scientific considerations and challenges for addressing cumulative effects in forest landscapes in Canada

Cumulative effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on the forest carbon balance in the Oil Sands Region of Alberta, Canada; a pilot study (1984–2012)

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