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Integrating Climate Change Into Environmental Impact Assessments: Key Design Elements, Meinhard Doelle

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This paper explores the integration of climate mitigation into the environmental impact assessment processes. The focus here is on the much neglected mitigation element (which is defined to include GHG emissions as well as impacts on natural sinks such as forests, soils, grasslands and oceans). To this end, the paper considers how to integrate the GHG emission and sinks impacts of projects at five critical stages of the assessment process: triggering, information gathering, analysis, the project decision, and post-approval follow-up.

Next Generation Environmental Assessment In The Emerging High Seas Regime? An Evaluation Of The State Of The Negotiations, Meinhard Doelle, Gunnar Sander

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Next Generation Environmental Assessment in the Emerging High Seas Regime? An Evaluation of the State of the Negotiations

Meinhard Doelle Canadian Chair, Marine Environmental Protection World Maritime University mhd@wmu.se

Gunnar Sander Norwegian College of Fishery Science University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway

Abstract

This article evaluates prospects for an effective Environmental assessment (EA) regime through the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) process and suggests improvements to the results of the negotiations as of March 2020. We start our review by offering key elements of existing international law as it relates to EA as context. …

Paris To Projects Research Initiative, Robert B. Gibson, Karine Peloffy, Meinhard Doelle

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This working paper explores the key components and provisions that need to be incorporated into impact assessment legislation to ensure that assessed undertakings help meet Canadian climate change mitigation commitments and duties.

This discussion paper includes a summary that serves as a basic briefing note on the core climate components that should be included in the new federal legislation. It also includes a box presenting the tests for determining an undertaking's contributions to meeting Canada's international climate change mitigation commitments, and a more detailed discussion of implications for the new law.

The Lower Churchill Panel Review: Sustainability Assessment Under Legislative Constraints, Meinhard Doelle

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This paper reviews the experience of applying a sustainability framework in the assessment of the Lower Churchill Hydroelectric project in Labrador, Canada. In it's 2011 report, the Joint Review Panel proposed a decision-making framework for determining whether and how the project would make a net contribution to sustainability. In its framework, the panel considered the distribution of environmental, social, and economic impacts, benefits, risks and uncertainties.

Ea Expert Panel Report: Reflections On Canada's Proposed Next Generation Assessment Process, Meinhard Doelle, A. John Sinclair

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In this paper, we share our preliminary reflections on the Expert Panel Report on the reform of the federal environmental assessment process. The report, entitled: Building Common Ground: A New Vision for Impact Assessment in Canada, was released by Minister McKenna on April 5, 2017. The report is the result of an open and thorough public engagement process that heard from a large number of Canadians with a keen interest in EA. The Expert Panel Report offers a blueprint broadly consistent with proposals for next generation federal assessment. Some elements will require further thought, and much of the critical detail …

Ea Expert Panel Report: A Preliminary Assessment Of Canada's Proposed New Federal Assessment Process, Meinhard Doelle

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The paper offers an overview and assessment of the key recommendations of the EA Expert Panel's report on the reform of the federal environmental assessment process in Canada. The paper covers the proposed application of the process, the process and institutions, the proposed approach to jurisdictional cooperation, the scope, the role of regional and strategic assessments, public participation, the role of indigenous peoples, and follow up and compliance. The paper concludes that the report offers a very useful blueprint for reform, but that many details have yet to be worked out.

Polyjural And Polycentric Sustainability Assessment: A Once-In-A-Generation Law Reform Opportunity, Jason Maclean, Meinhard Doelle, Chris Tollefson

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The Canadian environmental assessment (EA) regime is broken. At a time when the Canadian economy is both increasingly sluggish and unsustainable, we have an obligation – and perhaps a once-in-a-generation opportunity – to fundamentally reform EA to enable it to finally live up to its promise of promoting sound and sustainability-based decisions. This task is even more pressing in light of the global commitment under the Paris Climate Change Agreement to rapidly transition to greenhouse gas emissions neutrality. Among the many priorities of meaningful EA reform – moving beyond project-level assessments, focusing on net positive contributions to sustainability, avoiding costly …