ENVS201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Environmental Impact Assessment, Oil Sands, Oldman River
15 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Oil sand impacts: 91 projects (x5 by 2030, 5% of canada"s ghg emissions (29 mt to up to 175 mt by 2030, sox and nox, water quality/quantity, human health aboriginal health issues, ecosystem impacts. Political agency decisions impact environment, but often ignored. Scientific need to incorporate context dependent analysis. Regulatory problem in the sense that trying to achieve a result that is difficult to predetermined with specificity. Policy making problem how ensure discretionary decisions account for environmental considerations. Requires decision makers to identify and asses the env consequences of their decisions before the final decision is made. Policy tool seek to ensure that decisions account for env impacts. Won"t the environmental issues be addressed by compliance with regulatory standards: discretion, complexity, context-specific, cumulative impacts. Values bring environmental goals to bear on decisions: not ambivalent about outcomes. Procedural requires adherence to process but does not impose scientific substantive requirements: open, participatory, reasoned. Does not necessarily prevent potentially harmful decisions requires justification.
