ID: 2135
Presenting Author: Alissa Cartwright
Session: 714 - Assessing Information: Conflicting Data Interpretation and Eroding Public Trust
Status: pending
This presentation will consider how the cumulative impacts of major projects on Indigenous communities have been disregarded and underestimated in British Columbia’s IA processes.
Despite regulatory requirements for Cumulative Effects Assessments (CEA) to be completed as part of Environmental Assessments (EA) in British Columbia, Canada, multiple EAs in the northwest region have under-estimated or failed to assess cumulative effects of major project development. Based on a review of EA documents and other literature, the presentation will describe how looming financial uncertainty caused by tariffs and other geopolitical issues is being used to fast-track large-scale developments, with regulatory decisions being made without a CEA or based on outdated CEAs completed under old EA legislation. Even though two of the major projects considered in the presentation are specifically intended to support the large-scale industrial development in the region, the regulatory processes for these projects fail to adequately conduct CEAs. In these processes, the concerns of a northwest/coastal Indigenous community in the heart of the region are being disregarded and impacts to their community either unacknowledged or unaddressed. The presentation will consider how the EA process has repeatedly failed to incorporate the concerns identified by First Nations and other parties into their assessments, and how this failure has eroded trust in the accuracy and reliability of EA processes in BC.
As Research Manager at Kwusen Research & Media, Alissa manages the completion of Indigenous Land Use Studies, Cumulative Effects Assessments, and other types of research studies. She has