A born-in-Prince George forum to track the cumulative impacts of northern projects has published a book inspired by a conversation that started just two years ago.
The Integration Imperative: Cumulative Environmental, Community and Health Effects of Multiple Natural Resource Developments, was edited by four University of Northern B.C. professors and compiles the work of 29 collaborators.
That range of voices reflects who spoke at a two-day public forum in January 2014, said UNBC professor Chris Johnson, including government, First Nations and industry.
"There was also just a really strong grassroots, community voice and they seemed to be repeatedly echoing themselves. Folks were quite concerned at the pace of development, the overlapping state of developments that were happening. It was LNG facilities and pipelines and forestry," he said, and more.
Inspired from that same forum, UNBC launched a Cumulative Impacts Research Consortium in October last year and the book was published.
While there is "deep literature" critiquing cumulative impacts and how federal legislation deals with it through the Environment Assessment Acts, Johnson said a holistic approach was missing.
"The big leap we took forward here is the integration of a lot of different types of impacts," he said, even on daily life like the cost of housing, access to health care and more.
"We call it the integration imperative."
Bigger projects are required to consider and document cumulative impacts relative to past, current and reasonably foreseeable projects.
"But it's not being done very well," he said, adding the little projects are left out of the conversation.
"Think about all the little things that happen like seismic lines and power lines and well sites. Those don't get any type of environmental assessment."
Past efforts to track the cumulative impacts of resource development have been too limited in both spatial and temporal scale, said Gillingham.
"Rarely if ever do we consider if an area has already been too impacted to allow further human-related disturbance. Each day it is becoming more critical that we better understand cumulative impacts from a more holistic perspective," said Gillingham in a statement.
Those that examine cumulative impacts often use the phrase: death by 1,000 cuts.
And while emphasis is often on negative results of resource development, Johnson said, the book addressed the tension between the benefits and the drawbacks.
"I don't think the conversation has been that nuanced in the past when we just focus on the environment," he said, giving Tumbler Ridge as an example.
Last week a U.S.-based company bought three of the struggling town's coal mines.
"That's a very positive impact for Tumbler Ridge," said Johnson, though as a caribou biologist he knows coal is harmful to the animal.
The book pushes for more big-picture planning among impacted groups.
"To wrestle with those tradeoffs we need to sit down as community members, First Nations, all levels of government and industry and say what is our vision for this area (is) what developments in past," he said.
"Once we set that vision then we can fall back on conventional environment assessment rules and legislation."
Margot Parkes said the book makes a case that environmental, community, and health impacts must be looked at together, and shows how it can be done.
"There is a vital need to integrate a new way of thinking and a wider range of perspectives and understandings if we are to understand, and perhaps even manage the cumulative impacts from natural resource development," said Parkes in a statement.
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