Environmental watchdog to study combined effects of development

MIRIAM HILL

In an attempt to create a long-term guide to sustainable resource management, the non-governmental Canadian Arctic Resources Committee has launched a four-year, $400,000 study in an area shared by Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

CARC will study the cumulative effects of industrial development in the Slave Geologic Province, a region that stretches from Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories to the Coronation Gulf in Nunavut.

There are about 30 mining projects in the region at various stages of development, from the Diavik diamond mine currently under construction, to the Lupin gold mine in Nunavut, which resumed operation in 2000.

Nuna Logistics recently submitted a proposal to the federal government to build a road from near the Nunavut border to Bathurst Inlet, connecting the Izok Lake base metal deposit with a seaport built at Bathurst Inlet.

According to CARC, the road would cross the migration route and calving ground of the Bathurst Caribou herd. At about 350,000 animals, the herd is the largest and most important in the region. Wildlife observations gathered by CARC this year show the herd may be getting smaller and the road and port project may put further strain on the herd.

The program director for the project, Shelagh Montgomery, said CARC has been watching the Bathurst Inlet port and road project with a critical eye.

“We’ve been certainly writing to [Indian and Northern Affairs] Minister Nault and we’ve been trying to promote other groups to write and to build the knowledge of this project within the Northwest Territories,” she said. “I think it’s fairly well-known in Nunavut — it’s not as well-known in the Northwest Territories. So it’s more of a watchdog role.”

CARC’s concern is that little is being done about the cumulative effects that 20 years of development will have on the land, water, wildlife and people of the Slave Lake Geologic region.

The four-year study, called “Plan for the Land,” will compile research to give affected communities the information they need to make decisions based on how much development is sustainable for the area’s species.

Montgomery explained why looking at the combined effects of development is important.

“How can we look at this more closely to ensure that future developments are considered in a bigger picture and not just as an individual mine or road or hydro-electric development, or whatever the change could potentially be to the land?”

Montgomery said while the practice of studying cumulative effects of development is becoming more and more acceptable (assessing the cumulative effects of development is recognized now in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as a component that needs to be looked at), there’s no firm tool kit or framework to follow.

“You need really good baseline data, you need monitoring because you need the long-term influences and I think modeling is a predictive tool because it helps to provide the scenario,” she said. Modeling is a way researchers can take information and predict how things will change as factors continue to influence a situation over time.

To do that, researchers need to identify indicators — components that can be monitored over a long period.

“A very important one and an ecological one in the North would be caribou, so how is a particular herd changing over time? Does it seem like it’s being impacted on by any one development, or group of developments?” Montgomery said. “Then there are socio-economic indicators as well. These can be positive or negative. Is household income increasing, or are there greater problems of substance abuse?”

The study will include scientific measurements as well as traditional ecological knowledge gathered from people in communities. There are about 10 communities in the study region, but because of funding constraints not all will be interviewed. The tools learned from the one or two communities visited will be shared with the others to enable them to put together their own packages of data.

Montgomery cited the Northwest Territories’ Lutsel K’e community as a good example of what all should have.

“They currently have a database that’s in a GIS format,” she said. It contains interviews that have been conducted over the past several years with elders and trappers.

That information could be used as CARC begins working on modeling scenarios.

“In their territory if they’re anticipating a company that might come along,” she said, “well they pull out their traditional knowledge data that says this is commonly a very popular place for fishing, or Mr. X went there for fishing in the spring.”

That information would be used on maps to indicate where there are areas of significant value to the community from a traditional standpoint.

While Nunavut has the Nunavut Land Use Planning Commission established under the land claims agreement, the Northwest Territories has no land-use plan, Montgomery said, so developments come along and are looked at one at a time and not as a group.

Once the “Plan for the Land” study is completed, CARC says, it will be published in layperson’s language to enable both governments and citizens to create guides for long-term sustainable resource management.