Graham S. Whitelaw

Community-Based Monitoring in Support of Local Sustainability

Abstract Community-based monitoring (CBM) activities in Canada are increasing. A conceptual framework developed for and used to guide a pilot CBM project in 31 Canadian communities is evaluated. The framework provided the strategic direction necessary for successful implementation of the pilot and proved useful in the training of community coordinators hired for the project. Limitations of the framework include its inadequate attention to community diversity, its linearity, and insufficient expression of the adaptive and synergistic nature of its components. In order to support local sustainability, CBM appears to require an approach that is context-specific, iterative, and adaptive. Given these emergent characteristics, an enhanced conceptual framework for CBM in Canada is developed based on four dynamic themes: community mapping, participation assessment, capacity building, and information delivery.

A Critical Systems Approach to Social Learning: Building Adaptive Capacity in Social, Ecological, Epistemological (SEE) Systems

This paper presents a conceptual tool, or heuristic, for describing the epistemological context for social learning within complex social-ecological systems. The heuristic integrates several definitions of social learning that emphasize the importance of critical reflection and its collaborative nature and that it is rooted in and oriented toward practice through social interactions. The conceptual tool is useful in identifying and conceptually mapping different perspectives based on types of learning described along three dimensions: typology of knowledge; different levels of critical reflection; and scale. The heuristic was originally developed in the context of an environmental planning process in southern Ontario, Canada, and is applied to identifying barriers and bridges to social learning in the case of flood damage reduction in a remote First Nations community in northern Ontario, Canada.

Roles of environmental movement organisations in land-use planning: case studies of the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, Ontario, Canada

The paper explores the roles of environmental movement organisations (EMOs) in land-use planning, including domain creation (establishment of new or modified landscape planning boundaries) and regime change (adoption of new or modified legal and planning rules). The research involved two case studies of land-use planning processes: the Niagara Escarpment and Oak Ridges Moraine, Ontario, Canada. The two cases together reveal an evolution of land-use planning towards collaborative processes on mainly private lands in Southern Ontario during the period from 1960 to 2002. The results suggest that EMOs can create new planning domains through agenda setting activities, build landscape value and vision, educate governments and the public, and work to maintain and alter regimes. Collaborative planning has emerged as an important process in which some EMOs are now participating.

The Victor Diamond Mine environmental assessment process: a critical First Nation perspective

Restrictive scoping has emerged as a contentious issue in environmental assessment (EA) with developments in northern Canada on Aboriginal territorial homelands. Restrictive scoping potentially leads to the exclusion of potentially affected stakeholders, constrained impact assessment, and inadequate collection of baseline information and traditional knowledge. The First Diamond Mine in Ontario, Canada, is located on the Attawapiskat River in the western James Bay region. We examined whether the scoping applied in the EA process that led to the approval of the mine addressed the needs of First Nations located southeast of the mine, specifically Fort Albany First Nation on the Albany River. Our findings indicate that the proponent, De Beers Canada Inc., with the approval of government authorities, primarily consulted and worked with Attawapiskat First Nation through the EA process and largely excluded other First Nations in the region. Limitations of EA in the context of northern Canada are identified. The potential of emerging community-based and regional land use planning in Ontarios far north is discussed.

Sustainability through intervention: a case study of guerrilla gardening in Kingston, Ontario

The purpose of our paper is to provide an in-depth look at guerrilla gardening as an example of sustainability in action. Through participatory action research methods that triangulate content analysis, 16 semi-structured interviews and researcher logs, two case studies were developed. The first was of Dig Kingston, a guerrilla gardening project and the second of the Oak Street Community Garden, both located in Kingston Ontario. The focus of the research was on guerrilla gardening, while the community gardening case was used for contrast and to deepen our analysis. Key themes that emerged from our case research included expression, intervention and spatial manipulation. Our main findings present a deeper understanding of guerrilla gardening as well as an analysis on the relationship between space and sustainability. In particular our paper lays the groundwork for how interventions, like guerrilla gardening, open up unexpected and non-normative possibilities for conceptualising sustainability. These themes contribute to current understandings of sustainability by illustrating how a localised action that operates outside of spatial expectations, in this case guerrilla gardening, is a powerful pathway towards producing engaging and sustainable communities. Thus, our paper contributes to the growing body of literature on open, reflexive and critical models of sustainability.

Embracing sustainability: the incorporation of sustainability principles in municipal planning and policy in four mid-sized municipalities in Ontario, Canada

The issue of planning for sustainability is becoming more established within Canadian municipal planning. As municipalities begin to align their planning policy to reflect a more sustainable approach, there is an increased interest in how sustainability is being operationalised within municipal documents. This research aims to better understand how principles of sustainability are imbedded within Ontario municipal documents, with a specific focus on the Integrated Sustainability Community Planning approach that has emerged in Canada. Drawing on a nested comparative case study of four mid-sized municipalities, we uncover the language and strategies employed by the municipalities as they relate to the principles of sustainability developed by Gibson [2006a. Sustainability assessment: basic components of a practical approach. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 24 (3), 170–182]. The findings suggest that current policy-based approaches to sustainability are considering more socially oriented strategies focused on promoting community involvement, inclusive decision-making, equity, socio-ecological civility, long-term integrative planning, and responsibility through stewardship. However, there are potential limitations that will require future research to examine policy outcomes associated with sustainability uptake. The ICSP approach must still overcome the issues relating to lack of regulatory authority and the incorporation of policies based on popular trends rather than empirical evidence.

The controversy of transferring the Class Environmental Assessment process to northern Ontario, Canada: the Victor Mine Power Supply Project

Since Canada employs a federated system of government, there are separate environmental assessment (EA) processes at the national and provincial levels. In the Province of Ontario there is a streamlined, pre-approved, self-assessed process for ‘classes’ of projects. 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 transmission line project, was employed to critically examine whether the Class EA template developed in southern Ontario should be applied to the western James Bay region of northern Ontario. Specifically, the two assumptions of Class EAs of predictability and manageability were examined. Interview and document data were used to inform a themed analysis. Results indicate that the western James Bay region is significantly different to southern Ontario. Thus, the Class EA template developed in and for southern Ontario is not transferable to the northern Ontarian context and the application of ‘cookie cutter’ EAs to other sub-arctic and arctic regions must be questioned.

A POLICY WINDOW OPENS: STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT IN YORK REGION, ONTARIO, CANADA

Government agenda setting has been a focus of research in the field of policy sciences for over two decades. The concept of a policy window is explored as a driver of governmental agenda setting. The Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada was chosen as a case study for exploring the application of strategic environmental assessment at the municipal level through a policy window lens. Problem, policy and political streams converged to provide the necessary conditions for improved environmental assessment and infrastructure planning in York Region. A focusing event and the resulting crisis motivated stakeholders to identify and act on the problem. An SEA-type approach was initiated as one key response. A variety of activities were initiated by York Region including the development of a Sustainability Strategy, synchronisation of master planning, wider consideration of alternatives at the master plan level and improved public consultation. Conclusions are drawn and several recommendations are presented and discussed.

Strategic environmental assessment and regional infrastructure planning: the case of York Region, Ontario, Canada

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is seen as an instrument that is essential to realizing sustainability goals that transcend project-level undertakings (e.g. policies, plans and programmes). The purpose of this case-based, collaborative research was to extend practical and theoretical understanding of SEA to the related, but in practice poorly coordinated, processes of project-level environmental assessment (EA), master planning and regional land use planning. Semi-structured key informant interviews and review of policy documents were used as the main sources of qualitative data to explore the key events that have led to an emerging strategic approach to planning and EA in York Region. This research contributes to the application of SEA at the municipal level, and highlights the importance of an SEA-type approach as a contribution to better informed, tiered and integrated planning and decision making that is underpinned by sustainability.

Getting back to basics: the Victor Diamond Mine environmental assessment scoping proce and the issue of family-based traditional land versus registered traplines

Proper scoping is essential for any environmental assessment (EA) process. This is particularly true with respect to resource development in the intercultural setting of First Nation homelands of northern Canada. Improper scoping leads to EAs that are flawed for a number of reasons. For example, potentially impacted stakeholders are excluded from the process; thus, the proper collection of baseline information is not possible resulting in inaccurate predictions of impacts and mitigation strategies. We examined whether the approved EA for the Victor Diamond Mine in northern Ontario was properly scoped using criteria identified by the Government of Canada, in their project-specific guidelines developed for the assessment. Our results from the published literature, which included oral history, clearly indicate that the Victor Diamond Mine EA scoping process was based on two erroneous assumptions: that the registered trapline system was the accepted system of land use/occupation in northern Ontario, and that land use/occupancy was based on the treaty-imposed reserve system (not the family-based traditional lands system). Implications for resource development involving indigenous people are discussed.