As Canada employs a federated system of government, there are separate environmental assessment (EA) processes. In Ontario, Canada, there is a streamlined, pre-approved, self-assessed process (i.e., the Minister of the Environment’s approval is not required) for “classes” of projects. These Class EA projects are routine, with known impacts, being predictable and mitigable, in a southern Ontarian environment. However, it is assumed that Class EA protocol developed in the southern Ontarian context is directly transferable to northern Ontario. A case-based approach, using the Victor Mine electricity transmission line project, was employed to critically examine whether the Class EA template developed in southern Ontario, could be effectively applied to the western James Bay region of northern Ontario. Specifically, the two assumptions (and corollaries) of Class EAs of predictability (corollaries: the environment is similar in all locations where Class EAs are applied; and the environment is well understood) and mitigability (corollary: all negative effects are mitigable) were examined. Primary (semi-directive interviews) and secondary (literature search) data were used to inform a themed analysis. Results indicate that the northern environment is unique: biophysically, the western James Bay area is Ontario’s only salt water coastal region, and contains one of the largest wetland regions in the world; and socio-economically, no southern Ontarian region can claim that one third of their total regional economy is related to subsistence pursuits. In addition, the northern environment is dynamic, disproportionately changing over time with respect to climate change and post-glacial isostatic adjustment. Moreover, not all negative effects are mitigable (i.e., the effects the existing electrical transmission line has had on waterfowl harvesting). Thus, the Class EA template is not transferable to the northern Ontarian context. Similarly, in other northern regions of the world where glacial isostatic adjustment is a reality and these regions uniqueness must be recognized and be reflected in the EA process, if a process exists.

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has a prominent position in the ongoing search for instruments that can help governments and other organizations to pursue the goal of sustainability. SEA is presented here as a decision-making supportive approach that is meant to improve strategic initiatives, rather than just analysing them. As an approach to planning (as opposed to a mechanical technical instrument that is done on the side and ‘might’ inform the big decisions), SEA has been promoted as a promising instrument expected to be able to provide better informed, more credible and more broadly beneficial strategic initiatives, as well as more timely and clearer guidance for subsequent undertakings. As such, by adjusting and improving planning, governance, and decision-making processes, SEA has a major role in contributing to sustainability. One of the many different planning and decision-making contexts in which SEA can be used is growth-related planning – the object of interest of this research. Planning in a growth context is typically driven by a mix of biophysical, social and economic concerns, and is unavoidably complex, with many independent agents interacting with each other in many ways, all of this involving the full range of intersecting sustainability issues. In this research I explore the concept of sustainability as an overall planning goal, as it relates to a particular approach to planning, i.e., strategic environmental assessment. In addition, this research acknowledges the importance and need to address the context in which SEA applications occur, and therefore, it highlights the need to specify the application for particular areas. This research was guided by an interest in improving understanding of how SEA can help to contribute to sustainability through planning/EA processes and activities, especially in the context of growth-related planning. Above all, this research addressed how SEA best practices can be used to improve regional planning and decision making, including its link to the project level, and how regional planning experience can help illuminate possible means of strengthening SEA practice. As such, this research presents how a sustainability-based SEA approach could contribute to growth-related planning in a rapid growth setting, using York Region, Ontario as the empirical case study. While York Region was not using the SEA nametag, some essential characteristics of SEA were found in a few planning initiatives, in accordance with what some scholars have called a SEA-type approach, i.e., an approach that does not meet formal specifications or definitions of SEA, but which has some of the SEA characteristics or components. This research presents three main scholarly contributions. First, it develops a SEA best practice framework based on the international literature and, as a result, it provides SEA practitioners with a useful generic framework that they can use as guidance and a starting point for SEA studies. In addition, this research brings to light the importance of paying attention to contextual issues in order to make successful use of SEA best practice frameworks. The context of application will always be unique, so the particularities of the case will still need to be carefully considered and incorporated, so that application can be customized to the particular case. Second, this research further develops the discussion about what SEA can achieve, or more specifically, how SEA can help to contribute to sustainability. As such, this research contributes to the discussion about how SEA can help planning and decision-making approaches through a more in depth look at three main components of SEA: sustainability-centred decision making, tiering and communication. The third contribution relates to how SEA adoption becomes a priority or how governments become interested enough in SEA application to actually give it a shot. The concept of a policy window was borrowed from the policy sciences field to provide the framework of analysis for this part of the research, and shows how problem, policy and political streams converged to provide the necessary conditions for the adoption of an SEA-type approach in York Region. In sum, the results of this research suggest that SEA has potential to play an important role in planning and decision making, with particular attention to growth-related planning. In this context, SEA can contribute to planning and decision making that is more integrated, farsighted, open, efficient, credible and defensible, and ultimately brings desirable and durable benefits. Moreover, by providing clearer guidance to the subsequent undertaking, SEA has potential to serve as a bridge to the planning of project-level undertakings.

In Canada, interest in regional strategic environmental assessment as a framework for assessing cumulative environmental effects is growing. Strategic environmental assessment, and in particular regional strategic environmental assessment, is generally regarded as the preferred assessment framework within which to address cumulative effects due to its broad scale of assessment and its focus on influencing future development. However, very little research has been done to confront the challenges, either conceptually or methodologically, in operationalizing strategic environmental assessment at a regional scale and in assessing cumulative environmental effects in this regional and strategic context. This dissertation advances work in this area by defining a conceptual framework and generic methodology for regional strategic environmental assessment that deliberately integrates cumulative effects considerations.<p> The research methodology includes a literature review, framework and case reviews, and three sets of interviews with Canadian and international practitioners, academics, and administrators knowledgeable on strategic environmental assessment and cumulative effects assessment issues. The research results are reported in four manuscripts. The first manuscript presents a typology of current approaches to regional cumulative effects assessment. The second manuscript reviews lessons from recent attempts at regional-scale, strategically-focused environmental analysis in Canada that include an impact assessment component and explicit attention to cumulative environmental effects. The third manuscript presents a structured framework for regional strategic environmental assessment in Canada, and the fourth manuscript discusses conceptual and methodological challenges that accompany the integration of strategic environmental assessment and cumulative effects assessment.<p> Significant findings include that cumulative effects assessment does indeed represent a significant conceptual and methodological challenge in a strategic assessment context and that cumulative effects assessment in this context requires more than simply adding up direct effects. Further, this research indicates that the seminal contribution of regional strategic environmental assessment is to determine the pace and nature of future development in a region, including significant regional environmental thresholds, targets, and limits; and to inform decision makers of the broader, the slower-moving, the farther-reaching, and perhaps the more insidious currents of environmental change. Moving forward, there is a need to further develop and demonstrate approaches to cumulative effects assessment in a strategic context, develop a supportive legislative and regulatory framework for regional strategic environmental assessment in Canada, and define the unique contribution of regional strategic assessment in relation to regional planning and management.

Canadas Beaufort Sea-Mackenzie Delta Basin possesses significant energy resource potential. Decisions about energy development, however, are largely project-based and do not always provide an opportunity for more efficient and more effective regional and strategic approaches to development impact assessment and management. As such, there are constant messages about the need for a more regional and strategic form of environmental assessment, practiced above the project level and focused on broader planning-based assessment as a means to sustainability assurance. The problem, however, is that there is no formal system of regional or strategic assessment (R-SEA) in northern Canada, and considerations as to what R-SEA is and what it should deliver are far from consolidated. The role of R-SEA must be better understood and a means found to make it a meaningful component and accepted and worthwhile part of planning, regulation and development decision-making. The purpose of this thesis is to identify stakeholder understandings and expectations about R-SEA, and its potential roles and opportunities in Arctic energy planning and assessment. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with knowledgeable stakeholders in Arctic oil and gas initiatives, including energy regulators, industry, and energy interest groups, as well as Inuvialuit governments and community boards. Four key themes are identified and discussed: the efficacy of the current approach to environmental assessment for offshore energy development; knowledge of R-SEA; RSEA benefits and risks; and opportunities and challenges to advancing R-SEA in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region (ISR). Only consultation and engagement was seen by most participants as working well within the current EA system in the study area. Many challenges were raised, however, which would indicate a need for a new or revised approach to EA in the study area. There was agreement on the need for a more regional and strategic approach to EA in the ISR, but there was no consensus amongst participants as to the nature and scope of R-SEA and what it is intended to deliver. Though there continues to be much confusion regarding the terminology used, it appears that participants are identifying the same deliverables and advantages, suggesting that they are looking for similar benefits. Challenges to moving such a process forward include leadership, coordination of interests, financial resources, legislated versus voluntary approaches, and human capacity in the ISR region. Future research is needed to address the perceived risks and challenges raised by participants for R SEA to be a worthwhile and effective process.

Transport infrastructure is closely linked to several politically relevant sustainability issues, and since 1985 a formalized environmental assessment process is linked to planning and construction of new roads and railways in the EU (EU directives 85/337/EEC and 2001/42). The aim of the environmental assessment process is to think in advance; to identify, predict and evaluate significant environmental changes resulting from a proposed activity, in order to adjust the proposed activity accordingly and to avoid unnecessary and unexpected consequences. Biodiversity is a component of sustainable development that is in many ways affected by road and railway construction, but which has been challenging to fully account for within the environmental assessment process. This thesis presents four studies on the role of biodiversity in environmental assessment of road and railway plans and projects. Paper I presents the state of the art of road and railway impacts on ecological patterns and processes sustaining biodiversity, and reviews the treatment of biodiversity in a selection of environmental assessment reports from Sweden and the UK. Paper II presents a quantitative assessment of the impact of the Swedish road network on birds and mammals, and how fragmentation and road disturbance might affect a selection of ecological profiles. Paper III demonstrates how scientific models, data and knowledge can be mobilized for the design and evaluation of railway corridors, and Paper IV analyses how habitat connectivity, as a prerequisite of genetic exchange, relates to landscape composition and size and number of fauna passages. The results from Paper I show that road and railway impacts on biodiversity need to be addressed at every level of planning; from corridor alignment in the landscape to utilization and maintenance. The review of environmental assessment reports shows that the treatment of biodiversity in environmental assessment has improved over the years, but that problems with habitat fragmentation, connectivity and the spatial delimitation of the impact assessment study area remain. The results from Paper II identify natural grasslands and southern broadleaved forest, prioritized habitat types important for biodiversity, to most likely be highly affected by road impacts, and suggest road disturbance to have a high impact on overall habitat availability. The results from Paper III demonstrate how the landscape specific distribution of ecological and geological resources can be accounted for in railway corridor design, and potentially lead to more resource efficient outcomes with less impact on ecological processes. The results from Paper IV indicate that the several small fauna passages would increase connectivity more across a barrier than the construction of a single large. Effective barrier mitigation will also depend on the selection of focal species and the understanding of how the focal species perceive the landscape in terms of resistance to movement. This thesis demonstrates how quantitative assessment can benefit biodiversity impact analysis and address issues such as habitat connectivity and fragmentation, which have been difficult to account for in environmental assessment. It is recommended that biodiversity impact analysis moves towards an increasing use of quantitative methods and tools for prediction, evaluation and sensitivity analysis. Future challenges include verification and calibration of relevant spatial ecological models, and further integration of road ecology knowledge into road and railway planning. / <p>QC 20151103</p> / GESP

Public participation is a central objective of environmental assessment process and a means by which the concerns and interests of the public are considered before a project proceeds. However, there have always been concerns as to the real influence of the public in the environmental assessment process. Using a qualitative comparative case study approach, this study considered two types of assessment established in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, comprehensive studies and review panels, to understand which of the two process options results in more meaningful consideration of intervenor concerns. The results indicate that though proponents were responsive to intervenor comments during comprehensive studies, panel reviews resulted in more uptake of intervenor concerns. On the issue of which process option provided more opportunities for public participation, the findings suggest that there were no significant differences between the two options because the entry points for public participation were similar.

Meaningful public engagement is a challenging, but promising, feature of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in developing countries such as Kenya. This research examined completed Kenyan SEA and compared procedures to standard practice, with particular emphasis on public participation. Two selected SEA case studies explored the extent of participation, learning outcomes of participation, and whether the learning outcomes lead to social action for sustainability at the community level. Document reviews, participant observation, a focus group, and semi-structured interviews with environmental practitioners, government officials, and community members provided data for the thesis. The study revealed that public participation is variable amongst the completed SEAs and shows that the ideal conditions for learning in public participation were not completely fulfilled, resulting in a greater abundance of instrumental than communicative or transformative learning outcomes. Nonetheless, individual and social actions that contribute to sustainability have been taken based on the learning outcomes.

Meaningful public engagement is a challenging, but promising, feature of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in developing countries such as Kenya. This research examined completed Kenyan SEA and compared procedures to standard practice, with particular emphasis on public participation. Two selected SEA case studies explored the extent of participation, learning outcomes of participation, and whether the learning outcomes lead to social action for sustainability at the community level. Document reviews, participant observation, a focus group, and semi-structured interviews with environmental practitioners, government officials, and community members provided data for the thesis. The study revealed that public participation is variable amongst the completed SEAs and shows that the ideal conditions for learning in public participation were not completely fulfilled, resulting in a greater abundance of instrumental than communicative or transformative learning outcomes. Nonetheless, individual and social actions that contribute to sustainability have been taken based on the learning outcomes.

Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) has a prominent position in the ongoing search for instruments that can help governments and other organizations to pursue the goal of sustainability. SEA is presented here as a decision-making supportive approach that is meant to improve strategic initiatives, rather than just analysing them. As an approach to planning (as opposed to a mechanical technical instrument that is done on the side and ‘might’ inform the big decisions), SEA has been promoted as a promising instrument expected to be able to provide better informed, more credible and more broadly beneficial strategic initiatives, as well as more timely and clearer guidance for subsequent undertakings. As such, by adjusting and improving planning, governance, and decision-making processes, SEA has a major role in contributing to sustainability. One of the many different planning and decision-making contexts in which SEA can be used is growth-related planning – the object of interest of this research. Planning in a growth context is typically driven by a mix of biophysical, social and economic concerns, and is unavoidably complex, with many independent agents interacting with each other in many ways, all of this involving the full range of intersecting sustainability issues. In this research I explore the concept of sustainability as an overall planning goal, as it relates to a particular approach to planning, i.e., strategic environmental assessment. In addition, this research acknowledges the importance and need to address the context in which SEA applications occur, and therefore, it highlights the need to specify the application for particular areas. This research was guided by an interest in improving understanding of how SEA can help to contribute to sustainability through planning/EA processes and activities, especially in the context of growth-related planning. Above all, this research addressed how SEA best practices can be used to improve regional planning and decision making, including its link to the project level, and how regional planning experience can help illuminate possible means of strengthening SEA practice. As such, this research presents how a sustainability-based SEA approach could contribute to growth-related planning in a rapid growth setting, using York Region, Ontario as the empirical case study. While York Region was not using the SEA nametag, some essential characteristics of SEA were found in a few planning initiatives, in accordance with what some scholars have called a SEA-type approach, i.e., an approach that does not meet formal specifications or definitions of SEA, but which has some of the SEA characteristics or components. This research presents three main scholarly contributions. First, it develops a SEA best practice framework based on the international literature and, as a result, it provides SEA practitioners with a useful generic framework that they can use as guidance and a starting point for SEA studies. In addition, this research brings to light the importance of paying attention to contextual issues in order to make successful use of SEA best practice frameworks. The context of application will always be unique, so the particularities of the case will still need to be carefully considered and incorporated, so that application can be customized to the particular case. Second, this research further develops the discussion about what SEA can achieve, or more specifically, how SEA can help to contribute to sustainability. As such, this research contributes to the discussion about how SEA can help planning and decision-making approaches through a more in depth look at three main components of SEA: sustainability-centred decision making, tiering and communication. The third contribution relates to how SEA adoption becomes a priority or how governments become interested enough in SEA application to actually give it a shot. The concept of a policy window was borrowed from the policy sciences field to provide the framework of analysis for this part of the research, and shows how problem, policy and political streams converged to provide the necessary conditions for the adoption of an SEA-type approach in York Region. In sum, the results of this research suggest that SEA has potential to play an important role in planning and decision making, with particular attention to growth-related planning. In this context, SEA can contribute to planning and decision making that is more integrated, farsighted, open, efficient, credible and defensible, and ultimately brings desirable and durable benefits. Moreover, by providing clearer guidance to the subsequent undertaking, SEA has potential to serve as a bridge to the planning of project-level undertakings.

Questions of uncertainty and value conflict are increasingly pervasive challenges confronting policy makers seeking to address the range of environmental problems generated by contemporary technological systems. Yet these questions are ultimately political and moral in nature, and require a framework of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) that is marked by informed and democratic civic governance. Reflecting this, the original, civic purposes of environmental assessment (EA) embraced science and public participation as interdependent elements in the creation of more sustaining forms of human-nature interaction. However, formal models of EA have forsaken meaningful democratic engagement to technique. Based on the instrumentalist assumption that better science automatically leads to better policy, EA has externalised the civic source of political energy that underpins its environmental expertise. Moreover, debates become polarised when science is uncritically imported into the adversarial forums of interest-based politics,so that environmental science is increasingly unable to support political action. I shall argue that the revolutionary potential of SEA to transform the policy process rests upon a recovery of its original, civic purposes. My thesis is that a deeper understanding of the relationship between scientific knowledge and political action is required if SEA is to be rigorous, and also relevant to public concerns. Philosophical pragmatism contributes epistemological resources vital to this task. By situating knowledge in the context of practice, and by recognising the dialogical, judgmental nature of rationality, the practical philosophy of pragmatism reclaims the contextually embedded nature of inquiry. When science is embedded in a wider ethical context, the meaning and purposes of environmental knowledge become central questions of policy. The procedural ethics of both liberal and Habermasian politics cannot address these questions, however, because they relegate questions of the public good to the realm of individual choice. Instead, I argue that public dialogue, guided by a praxisoriented virtue ethics, is required to recover objective environmental goods in the policy process. I also argue that Aristotlean rhetoric, with its focus on the credibility of expertise, is the mode of persuasive argument most appropriate for dialogical public forums. The public philosophy of civic environmental pragmatism is therefore presented as a richer theoretical framework for understanding the contribution of both experts and citizens in the development of environmental knowledge for policy. As a dialogical framework for SEA, civic environmental pragmatism constructively combines the critical/normative and instrumental/descriptive aspects of policy inquiry, both of which are required in the development of socially robust knowledge and politically feasible policy decisions.