Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs) have long been identified in the academic literature as an important tool in improving the efficiency, effectiveness and fairness of environmental assessment processes (EAs). SEAs can improve the efficiency of EAs by dealing with generic and high level policy issues before individual projects are proposed and designed, allowing developers to avoid problems and streamlining the project EA and regulatory process. They can improve the effectiveness of EAs and project approvals by ensuring decisions at the project level are made within an appropriate policy context. Finally, SEAs can improve the fairness of EAs and regulatory processes by ensuring those potentially affected by proposed projects are engaged early, and have the opportunity to contribute to shaping the policy context within which individual projects are considered.

It is not surprising, given the promise of SEAs, that there have been calls for the integration of SEAs into environmental assessment processes in Canada for almost two decades, some with concrete proposals on how to integrate SEA into existing decision making processes. There has been support for this from a broad range of parties involved in EAs, from industry to First Nations and environmental organizations. There have been concrete proposals to carry out SEAs in a variety of contexts. There have also been experiments with SEA-type processes, many of which have been studied and shown to offer much promise. Nevertheless, jurisdictions in Canada have been slow to embrace the formal integration of SEAs into their EA processes.

Much of the research on SEA in Canada has either been conceptual, or it has considered experience with SEA in the context of a particular SEA process. In a recent study, Rebecca Critchley and I have taken a different approach. We look back at an emerging industry sector in Nova Scotia to consider how it has been affected by the absence of a provincial SEA to date. The sector is the wind energy sector. We then consider how the project based EA process currently applies to the wind energy sector, what issues are most frequently raised in the EA process, and how two municipalities in the province have responded to the industry in the face of local opposition. We then ask what lessons Nova Scotia’s experience with wind developments has to offer for the design and implementation of SEAs of emerging industry sectors more broadly.

We proceeded with our investigation in four parts. We started with a brief overview of the law and policy context within which the wind energy industry finds itself in Nova Scotia. We then considered how decisions about individual proposals for wind developments have been reviewed and approved in Nova Scotia, by assessing the provincial project EA process carried out for wind developments. We assessed how two municipalities in Nova Scotia, Kings County and the Halifax Regional Municipality, have dealt with the promise and controversies surrounding wind developments within their respective jurisdictions. Finally, we drew on 9 principles of good SEA from the literature to reflect on the experience in Nova Scotia of making decisions about individual wind developments in the absence of a provincial level SEA. Based on this reflection, we consider what lessons the experience with wind development in Nova Scotia offers for the design and implementation of SEAs.

Our starting assumption was that there are good public policy reasons to encourage wind development in Nova Scotia. They include energy security, reduction in GHG emissions and air pollution, price stability, and employment opportunities. As with all human activities, we also assumed that there are negative impacts, risks and uncertainties associated with wind developments, and that an effective governance approach will endeavour to minimize these, while also ensuring that projects are only approved if they offer net long-term benefits, and striving to gain public support or social licence for individual projects and for the industry as a whole.

We concluded that a Wind SEA can make a valuable contribution to the governance of this industry sector in Nova Scotia. It has the opportunity to improve the social licence of wind, it can make the project EA process more efficient, effective and fair, and it can ensure a more appropriate and effective role for municipalities in the decision making process. Finally, a Wind SEA would also provide an opportunity to improve the coherence of provincial policy on renewable energy and to ensure provincial policy evolves with changing circumstances.

It is difficult to draw firm or final conclusions about the value of SEAs for other sectors in other jurisdictions on this one study. However, our assessment of the wind sector in Nova Scotia does support the general view in the literature that SEAs have much to offer to improve the decision-making for emerging new industry sectors.

The detailed results of our work are due to be published in 2015. To download my publications on Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEAs), see http://ssrn.com/author=715387.  

 

Meinhard Doelle,

Director, Marine & Environmental Law Institute