For the past two days, I have had the privilege of attending the Ontario Association of Impact Assessment annual conference, entitled “Duty to Consult: From Theory to Practice.” This is dealing with consultation with First Nations peoples when conducting an Environmental Impact Assessment.
What an eye opener.
We not only had presentations from a variety of lawyers and representatives of various federal and provincial government agencies which talk about the legal requirements, but also presentations from First Nations representatives themselves, telling us about consultation from their perspective.
In my experience, many businesses in our western culture are confused (and frequently annoyed) by their experience in dealing with First Nations communities. Most of this comes from the lack of predictability that businesses seek in conducting their work. For their part, the First Nations communities, with some few exceptions, have not had a great experience when approached by business and government.
There are many problems, but the biggest is one of culture and mindset.
We live in a culture where the economy is King, where “economic growth and development” is of paramount importance. In fact, our economy is designed to grow and does not function very well if that growth is slowed, let alone stopped or reversed.
But the First Nations just don’t care about economic growth since, in their words, they hold paramount their responsibility to the memory of their ancestors, to the future for their children, and to the land, air, water, and environment which sustains life, and to all the other species which share the land with us.
Businesses desire one stop shopping. They want to know who to deal with, what the requirements are, how long things will take, how much things will cost. In a nutshell, they want a predictable business environment.
First Nations do not work this way. Their history is such that the lines on the map indicating traditional hunting grounds each nation occupied is drawn not with a fine pencil, but a wide paint brush with much overlap. Their decision making process is not hierarchical, but collaborative. And costs, which are related to the scope of the impact, are highly variable and to them, inconsequential. It costs what it costs to get it right.
Businesses often approach Environmental Assessments as a legal requirement; as an item to be checked off in the process of building a project, as something they are required to do to get that long list of approvals before construction. The EA and all the work leading to it is a line item or group of activities on a project schedule. This is a schedule and list of approvals that is completed long after the back-of-the-envelope analysis of a project which drives the decision to spend development money. By the time businesses even begin to hire consultants for an EA, the decision to proceed with the project has already been made. The business had already decided that it is a good investment. The EA is used to identify impacts and determine mitigative measures that must be taken.
But the First Nations do not work this way. For them, the assessment of impacts comes first, and is of paramount importance in determining whether a project should proceed. The economic considerations are secondary and should only be considered once it is determined that there is no impact or that it can be mitigated.
In their minds, we have it exactly backwards. And after 18 years doing project engineering, I can’t disagree.
After all, they managed to live here for thousands of years, sustainably. We come along and in a few hundred years are managing to wreak havoc on the environment around us, endangering not only other species, but ourselves as well.
Who do you think has the wrong approach?
