Location:

Canada

Date:

2023-2024

Background:

The Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS), a directorate of Environment and Climate Change Canada, is responsible for protecting migratory birds, species at risk, and their habitats. While current strategies review and mitigate impacts from individual project, cumulative effects on the broader ecological landscape are not adequately addressed.

This is a particular concern in areas where new critical mineral mining operations and related infrastructure are being developed, such as the ring of fire in Northern Ontario, Canada. In this context CWS is developing tools to manage cumulative effects, including a draft Cumulative Effects Management Framework based on risk management.

Services Provided:

Ciera Group prepared a report presenting an overview of cumulative effects assessment and offset methodologies and proposes a framework for managing cumulative effects with an emphasis of the structuring of a Cumulative Effects Management Group (CEMG).

The tasks included:

1. Analysis of international practices related to pre-planning and planning stages for managing highly impacted ecosystems and mitigating project contributions to cumulative effects.

2. Examination of offsetting practices in other countries (e.g., Australia, USA, Germany) to determine whether the objective is “no net loss” or “net gain.”

3. Identification and proposition of indicators to assess adverse project contributions to cumulative effects and develop a framework for selecting indicators for species at risk, migratory birds, and wetlands.

4. Development of a framework for managing cumulative effects within a broad landscape context, specifically related to critical mineral development in Canada.