Lorne Fitch speaks about Cumulative Effects

Nowhere to run, Nowhere to hide. Photo: Photo by pawel szvmanski on Unsplash

Guidance from Cumulative Effects Assessments—Is there room for more development in the Eastern Slopes?

Lorne Fitch, P. Biol.

What if we had an accounting tool that allowed us to quickly determine how much of the landscape already had a development footprint on it? Could that tool tell us the implications of yet more development on landscape integrity, water quality, wildlife and other ecosystem attributes? As well, could it project the implications of additive development into the future? As much as it sounds implausible, we have just the tool.

Cumulative Effects Assessment (CEA) is a powerful tool, if applied at the regional scale, that can measure the extent of all past land-use and development footprints. The ability to then project forward is key to understanding both the benefits and consequences of impending and proposed land-use developments.

As the development footprint accumulates, CEA provides a practical, pragmatic way to assess future plans, and weigh those plans against key economic, environmental and social thresholds. We cannot plan well for something we cannot see, especially the future.

A CEA provides factual knowledge, allowing an informed choice to be made about future options. As a pathway to a sustainable future, CEA allows today’s decisions to be measured against tomorrow’s realities.

Sadly, politicians, government regulators and land-use proponents have an aversion to undertaking or accepting the results of regional CEA studies, for a variety of reasons:

There is a view CEA at a regional scale is too complex, an assessment of “everything on everything.” There is no appetite for larger, regional assessments because it is then hard to avoid the implications of additional development. Results generally indicate the existence of limits, constraints, costs and consequences. This may interfere with the glossy narrative of development.

Concerns are raised over data availability and costs of undertaking a CEA which land-use proponents argue increases the complexity of development. Hollow and self-serving arguments/attacks are mounted over the predictive capability and framework of models, as well as the ability to understand and assess multiple stressor (threat) interactions. Government regulators view a CEA as out of scope for individual projects because of narrow policy guidelines.

There is a tendency to avoid and ignore past land-use footprints in favour of setting a baseline of current conditions to assess the implications of new development. CEA results generally provide a message that the additive amount of development can have negative social, cultural, health, economic and environmental implications.

A CEA study may point out that new development should only occur after the footprint of past activity has been successfully erased, which requires patience and commitment to landscape restoration, as well as effective monitoring.

There is less latitude for politically motivated decisions on single-sector interest developments when a CEA is undertaken. A focus is created on accountability through monitoring—how much, how long, how effective— and how to use the information to guide operational decision-making, regulatory oversight and enforcement.

Because a CEA may suggest constraints on development, many don’t want to hear and acknowledge negative, unhappy results.

A total of 20 CEA and associated studies have been undertaken in the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rockies. They tell the same story. The Eastern Slopes are not a frontier of unrealized possibilities—instead, they are a busy landscape where expectations already exceed the ability of the landscape to absorb these dreams.

To ignore the consistent message from existing regional CEA studies and to not proceed with other assessments is irresponsible and leads to adding more land-use pressures to an already busy, crowded landscape. The losers are fish, wildlife and water quality, as well as other metrics of landscape health and integrity of concern to Albertans.

A Cumulative Effects Assessment enables us to objectively ask the hard questions of development—is there room for more human footprint, is this the right thing to do, is it being done the right way, what are the trade-offs and do the ecological costs outweigh the economic benefits? Avoiding the hard questions and failing to objectively measure lead us down an unfortunate, irreconcilable path.

Lorne Fitch is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence: Dispatches From the Conservation World and Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle.