Freshwater cumulative effects and environmental assessment in the Mackenzie Valley, Northwest Territories: challenges and decision-maker needs

摘要

There is a recognized need to advance cumulative effects assessment to regional and ecologically meaningful scales, but such initiatives are often critiqued for being isolated from management contexts and the regulatory practices of project-based environmental assessment. A major challenge is that there has been limited attention devoted to understanding decision-making at the project level, and the value of monitoring data to support cumulative effects analysis. This article examines how cumulative effects are considered during environmental assessment decision-making within the context of freshwater management in the Mackenzie Valley, Northwest Territories. Interviews with representatives from organizations involved in environmental assessment, regulation, and monitoring are used to identify challenges to applying information about cumulative effects at the project scale. Results reinforce the need for regional approaches and improvements in information and monitoring capacities to support cumulative effects analysis, but also the need to address institutional and organizational deficiencies to ensure that the data and information gener-ated are useful to and applied within project-based decision-making.