Open Collections

Arnold, Lauren

University of British Columbia

The impacts of individual resource development projects are cumulative and combine and interact with other stressors in complex environmental and social systems. Cumulative effects assessment is an established process that is intended to evaluate environmental impacts in combination with other past, present, and foreseeable activities, but it has been difficult to implement as part of the environmental assessment processes used to evaluate and approve prospective resource development activities. In addition, the focus of research and practice has been on biophysical effects. Cumulative effects assessments are increasingly expected to account for cumulative social effects to people, their communities, and livelihoods caused by resource development projects and land use activities, but there has been limited attention devoted to how to complete such an assessment. This research responds to this deficit and uses case study analysis and semi-structured interviews to explore practitioner experience in environmental assessments for hydroelectric developments in British Columbia and Manitoba, Canada. The objectives were to explore what is known about accounting for cumulative social effects, how such impacts are defined, framed, and evaluated in practice during project assessments, and the regulatory and professional capacity needed to support an assessment of cumulative social effects. The results present a conceptual framework for the cumulative social effects of projects, and outline how identified challenges for cumulative effects assessment are exacerbated by social impacts that introduce additional complexities in impact identification, assessment, and decision-making. Addressing these challenges requires substantial changes to CEA frameworks that are applied during project assessments including attention to impact legacies, responsibility, and a focus on the extent to which a project contributes to healthy human systems. Key capacity deficits and needs are iii identified in terms of the availability regulation and guidance, the professional expertise needed to evaluate information about social impacts, and understanding responsibility and management for cumulative social effects. The results of this research provide insight into how to improve the assessment of cumulative social effects, address key challenges for Canadian hydroelectric project assessments, and present recommendations and knowledge that are applicable in other settings.

Text

2022-07-06

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/82093

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/