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Authors: Adriana DiSilvestro and Audrey Irvine-Broque

Reforming environmentally harmful subsidies is an international priority under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Research that links industrial subsidies to negative ecological impacts, however, is limited. This paper contributes to the emerging agenda of global “subsidy accountability” research by linking oil and gas subsidies to the decline of endangered caribou herds in British Columbia, Canada. While existing research concretely attributes the decline of caribou herds to industrial activity, including oil and gas development, we suggest there is a need to identify the political-economic structures which drive ongoing industrial development in caribou habitat, including public subsidies. We use government data to map oil and gas wells in critical caribou habitat and determine how many are run by operators receiving provincial fossil fuel “royalty credits”. Ultimately, we find that 1678, or 54%, of oil and gas wells located within critical caribou habitat are run by companies that have received benefits from one or both of BC's largest royalty credit programs. This paper points to the need for further analysis of subsidies as indirect drivers of biodiversity loss on a global scale, as well as increased emphasis on political-economic drivers in conservation research. It also highlights the obstacles to implementing appropriate conservation solutions in political-economic contexts dominated by resource extraction.

DiSilvestro, A and A Irvine-Broque. 2023. Spatializing oil and gas subsidies in endangered caribou habitat: Identifying political-economic drivers of defaunation. Conservation Science and Practice (early view): 1-14.

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.13007

Authors: Emilie Cameron and Sheena Kennedy

This paper analyses the environmental assessment of every proposed mining project that has undergone full review through the Nunavut Impact Review Board from 1999 to 2019, with specific emphasis on how impacts to caribou were identified and assessed. Caribou are the most important terrestrial species in Nunavut from a food security, traditional culture, and harvesting perspective, and mining is known to have impacts on caribou habitat, migration and calving behaviour, predation and hunting patterns, and other effects. Close study of how caribou impacts are discerned and evaluated within environmental assessment (EA) can thus reveal broader trends about both EA and the broader resource governance process. Although some project proposals were initially rejected, every EA ultimately concluded that impacts to caribou were not significant, despite evidence presented to the contrary. We present three modes through which serious impacts are rendered insignificant within EA (mitigation, strategic use of scale, and strategic use of Inuit knowledge and consultation) and comment on the broader context shaping EA in Nunavut. We argue that EA cannot do what it is expected to do (come to rational, science-based decisions that balance ecological, social, and economic goals) and is an insufficient tool for ensuring the long-term well-being of caribou in Nunavut.

Cameron E, Kennedy S. Can Environmental Assessment Protect Caribou? Analysis of EA in Nunavut, Canada, 1999-2019. Conservation and Society (early view).

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Authors: Rosemary Collard, Jessica Dempsey, Bruce Muir, Robyn Allan, Abby Herd, Peter Bode

Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) include economic benefit predictions that influence whether project proposals proceed to the construction and operational phases of development. Decision-makers often reason these benefits outweigh the potential adverse effects to environmental and social valued components, e.g. endangered species. But rarely are the economic impacts monitored and audited. This paper evaluates predicted and actual economic benefits through a predictive audit of three coal mines in the critical habitat of endangered caribou in British Columbia, Canada. Based on data collected from publicly available documents, including financial reporting, we compare the predicted employment and corporate tax revenue against the projects' actual performance for these two indicators. Economic impacts were significantly overestimated for both indicators: only 59% of forecasted employment and 34% of forecasted tax revenue materialized. The results challenge the credibility of trade-off analyses that underpin rationales for these project approvals and more broadly raise questions about the confidence and uncertainty of economic predictions in other EIAs and decision rationales. The study echoes existing calls for rigorous economic follow-up and demonstrates the critical role of predictive audits in that undertaking.

Collard, R, Dempsey, J, Muir, B, Allan, R, Herd, A and Bode, P. 2023. Years late and millions short: A predictive audit of economic impacts for coal mines in British Columbia, Canada. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 100, p.107074.

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Authors: Rosemary-Claire Collard and Jessica Dempsey

Abstract: In the last half century runaway wildlife declines have been simultaneous with the liberal environmental state’s ascent. Despite proliferating legislation to arrest these declines, states have fuelled economic growth at species’ expense. Through what tactics of power does the liberal environmental state manage this contradiction between promising species protection while authorising their obliteration? Manipulations of tense, futurity, temporal pace and scope are central. Responding to the plight of endangered caribou in Canada, the state tinkers and repeatedly resets time (“starting … now!”) while hailing the future eco-perfect, a time just-around-the-corner when caribou and the economy will flourish.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anti.12849

Collard, R., & Dempsey, J. (2022). Future eco-perfect: Temporal fixes of liberal environmentalism. Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12849

Authors: Jessica Dempsey, Anna Gabriela Doebeli, Dawn Hoogeveen, Ceall Quinnand Inari Sosa-Aranda

Abstract: To what extent do mining environmental assessments in British Columbia (BC) consider gendered impacts? How are they considered? And how are these considerations shaped during the environmental assessment process? To answer these questions we undertook a systematic review of all completed BC mining environmental assessments between 1995 and 2019 (n = 37). Through a careful reading of documentation archived in the BC Environmental Assessment Office registry, we found that 60% of projects did not consider the gendered impacts of mining development; the remaining 40% of projects inconsistently assessed gendered impacts. While noting an increase in gender considerations in environmental assessments since 1995, also quantified in our results is what has not changed. Even where gender is considered, the assessments often collapse this concern into one of “women's issues,” obscuring intersectional impacts and downplaying violence along racialized and gender diverse lines, including those experienced by Indigenous women, children, two-spirit, trans, queer and non-binary people. Environmental assessment is a regulatory tool designed to adjudicate the impacts of mining projects, yet our results lead us to conclude that it is also a tool of environmental injustice, compounding and further sedimenting heteropatriarchal and racialized patterns produced through generations of settler colonial resource extraction in BC.

https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12795

Dempsey, J., Doebeli, A.G., Hoogeveen, D., Quinn, C. and Sosa-Aranda, I. (2022), Inconsistent, downplayed, and pathologized: How mining's gendered impacts are considered in BC environmental assessment. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12795

Authors: Anna Gabriela Doebeli, Briana Magnuson, Kihan Yoon-Henderson, Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey, Michele (River) Walter, Marianne Carre, Maggy Corrado, Rajdeep Dhaliwal, Anna Giesting, Karina Gonchar, Chris Hsu, Tamara Johnson, Urvee Karve, Enoch Lam, Karyn Nelson, Morgan Teske, Emily Valente, Isabella Wang, Paige Wheaton, Chloe Hetherington, Louisa Hsu, Can Wen, and Christa Yeung

Abstract: How does the state see nature? Has the emergence of “environmental states” with significant environmental laws and policy changed the state’s vision towards nonhumans, particularly endangered wildlife? These are key questions in a paradoxical context where over the past half century, endangered wildlife have largely continued to decline amid expanding state environmental legislation. Towards answers, we analyze how endangered marine animals in Canada are considered in federal environmental assessments (EAs) that inform state decisions about whether to authorize major development projects. We conducted an inductive content analysis of all federal EAs for projects with potential adverse effects for one or more of the 14 endangered marine vertebrates in Canada. Of 32 projects, 31 were approved, 30 of which were predicted to have no or insignificant impacts on endangered marine species, despite a litany of potential impacts. This analysis reveals four main justifications for predicting insignificant impacts: unproven mitigation measures; species are presumed to have a low likelihood of occurrence in project areas; species behaviour is believed to reduce the likelihood of impacts; and project impacts are characterized as minor compared to existing activity. A consistent vision of nature underpins these justifications: the state sees marine species and ocean ecologies in a simplified manner, while these species also remain strategically illegible. Simplification and strategic illegibility both devalue endangered marine animals, suggesting EA is failing endangered marine species by facilitating the state’s ability to prioritize development over species recovery.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901121001842#sec0065

Doebeli, A. G., Magnuson, B., Yoon-Henderson, K., Collard, R., Dempsey, J., Walter, M. (., Carre, M., Corrado, M., Dhaliwal, R., Giesting, A., Gonchar, K., Hsu, C., Johnson, T., Karve, U., Lam, E., Nelson, K., Teske, M., Valente, E., Wang, I., . . . Yeung, C. (2021). How does the environmental state “see” endangered marine animals? Environmental Science & Policy, 124, 293-304. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.001

Authors: Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey and Mollie Holmberg

Abstract: Many caribou populations in Canada face extirpation despite dozens of provincial and federal legislative instruments designed to protect them. How are industrial developments that impact caribou justified and permitted despite governments' commitments to caribou protection? Toward an answer, this paper scrutinizes an approval process for major projects in Canada: environmental assessment (EA). We identify 65 EAs for major projects with potentially significant adverse impacts for caribou—all projects but one were approved. The results show that most projects were approved on the basis of proposed mitigation measures that promise to render adverse effects “insignificant”; yet mitigation effectiveness is largely unknown. Further, several projects were approved even though mitigation measures were insufficient, citing public or national interest. Finally, some projects' approval rested in part on scientific claims that the project area is already degraded or absent of caribou. Based on these findings, EA is failing caribou, acting as a means by which the state licenses major developments with potentially significant adverse effects for caribou, with a pretense of protection. The failure stems in part from a broader tension within the state that manifests in EA: a tension between the state's roles promoting economic growth and protecting against this growth's negative effects. Recognition of this tension needs to be more central to conservation biology.

https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.166

Collard, R., Dempsey, J.. & Holmberg, M. (2020). Extirpation despite regulation? Environmental assessment and caribou. Conservation Science and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.166

Authors: Robyn Allan, Peter Bode, Rosemary-Claire Collard & Jessica Dempsey

Summary :This report looks at the promised economic benefits of coal mining projects in northeastern British Columbia and concludes that the jobs, tax revenues and production activity estimates are wildly overstated, while pledges to protect vulnerable wildlife species have not been met.

The woodland caribou—a distinct population called Central Mountain caribou located in the same region as the three coal mines this research examines—are listed under Canada’s endangered species legislation, the Species at Risk Act. While there are numerous provincial and federal legislative and regulatory instruments designed to protect them, the impacts of resource extraction, including coal mining, continue to threaten the species' existence.

In order to have resource projects approved, and to receive the necessary project permits, resource companies promise regulators they will mitigate the environmental impacts of their projects. They position those impacts as necessary trade-offs required in order to realize promised economic returns.

For this report, the researchers looked at publicly available financial information to measure the actual financial and economic impacts of the Willow Creek, Brule and Wolverine coal mines in N.E. BC over the last two decades to see if the promised benefits materialized. They found that the financial and economic benefits from coal mines in northeastern British Columbia were not realized at levels close to what was promised, while habitat destruction of this endangered species has continued. The report’s findings have implications for natural resource management across Canada.

https://policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/BC%20Office/2020/12/ccpa-bc-Who-Benefits-From-Caribou-Decline-2020.pdf

Allan, R., Bode, P., Collard, R., & Dempsey, J. (2020). Who benefits from caribou decline? Corporate Mapping Project. https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/who-benefits-caribou-decline