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A proposal for further strengthening science in

environmental impact assessment in Canada
a b
Lorne A. Greig & Peter N. Duinker
a
ESSA Technologies Ltd , 77 Angelica Avenue, Richmond Hill , ON , Canada , L4S 2C9
Phone: 001 905 7706334 Fax: 001 905 7706334 E-mail:
b
School for Resource and Environmental Studies , Dalhousie University , 6100 ,
University Avenue, Halifax , NS , Canada , B3H 3J5 E-mail:
Published online: 20 Feb 2012.

To cite this article: Lorne A. Greig & Peter N. Duinker (2011) A proposal for further strengthening science in
environmental impact assessment in Canada, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 29:2, 159-165, DOI:
10.3152/146155111X12913679730557

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DOI: 10.3152/146155111X12913679730557; http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/beech/iapa

Professional practice

A proposal for further strengthening science in

environmental impact assessment in Canada

Lorne A Greig and Peter N Duinker

Downloaded by [186.29.52.90] at 13:44 04 May 2014

We observe ongoing weaknesses in the quality of science underpinning environmental impact

assessment (EIA) in Canada. This is frustrating because approaches for strong scientific practice in
EIA were published decades ago. A major failing has been the lack of scientific support from outside
the EIA practitioner community. We argue for a re-conception of science associated with EIA that
includes a rigorous scholarship of application inside EIA and a vigorous scholarship of integration
outside it. Cases of exemplary organizational structures and science applications in the Canadian forest
sector are given. To turn EIA from the often bitter battleground of shallow impact debates to an
enterprise of strong accumulation of effects knowledge, we urge the relevant communities of
researchers and practitioners to become embedded communities of practice and reform the way science
contributes to EIA.

Keywords: science, environmental impact assessment, EIA, environmental assessment, Canada

I N THE EARLY 1980s, the Federal Environmen-

tal Assessment Review Office (FEARO, prede-
cessor to the Canadian Environmental
Assessment Agency) and Environment Canada to-
gether sponsored a major study on how to improve
the scientific basis of environmental impact assess-
ment (EIA) in Canada. The project’s final report
(Beanlands and Duinker, 1983) contained a series of
six so-called requirements for conducting ecological
studies in EIA:
 Identify the valued ecosystem components on
which the analysis will focus.
Lorne Greig is at ESSA Technologies Ltd, 77 Angelica Avenue,
Richmond Hill, ON, Canada L4S 2C9; Email: lgreig@essa.com;
Tel: 001 905 7706334; Fax: 001 905 7700197. Peter Duinker is
at the School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Dalhou-
sie University, 6100 University Avenue, Halifax, NS, Canada
B3H 3J5; Email: peter.duinker@dal.ca.
We extend hearty thanks to two anonymous referees, and
other readers of earlier versions of the manuscript, for their in-
valuable assistance in improving the paper.




Define a context for impact significance.
Establish boundaries for the analysis.
Develop and implement a study strategy.
Specify the nature of predictions.
Undertake monitoring.
The Beanlands and Duinker (1983, 1984) proposals
have been widely cited in both scientific and practi-
tioner literatures in Canada and abroad, and in in-
numerable EIAs. The claim in almost every EIA that
cites the work is that the EIA follows the sugges-
tions on implementation of stronger ecological sci-
ence. No doubt there have been substantial
improvements in the scientific basis for EIA over the
past couple of decades, but to our knowledge no one
has undertaken the empirical research to confirm
this. However, our professional observations over
the past quarter century of EIA practice in Canada
suggest that implementation still lags significantly
behind the ideal. We observe ongoing weaknesses in
scoping (Mulvihill and Jacobs, 1998; Mulvihill,
2003), time and space bounding (Duinker and
Baskerville, 1986), effects experimentation (Walters

Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal June 2011 1461-5517/11/020159-7 US$12.00  IAIA 2011 159
 Professional practice
and Holling, 1990), impact prediction (Culhane et
al, 1987), monitoring and follow-up (Morrison-
Saunders and Arts, 2004), and adaptive management
(Duinker and Trevisan, 2003).
Both of us have been EIA practitioners (one from
a consulting platform, the other from academia) for
nearly three decades. Together and singly, we have
taught, written about, and researched EIA extensive-
ly. We have served government, private sector and
non-government organization (NGO) clients in de-
signing and reviewing EIAs, and we have served
EIA panels in their work to review EIAs and make
recommendations about projects and the associated
science needed to create reliable impact knowledge
during project implementation. In this paper, our ob-
jective is to draw on these experiences and some fur-
ther reflections to propose an approach to making
further improvements to scientific practice in EIA.
Some starting points for our observations and
arguments are in order:
1. Cashmore (2004) has argued that appropriate
roles for science in EIA depend on one’s assump-
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tion about the substantive purpose(s) of EIA. For
the purposes of this paper, we rely on the follow-
ing conception of EIA: ‘In general, environmental
assessment is a process to predict the environmen-
tal effects of proposed initiatives before they are
carried out…An environmental assessment: iden-
tifies possible environmental effects; proposes
measures to mitigate adverse effects; [and] pre-
dicts whether there will be significant adverse en-
vironmental effects, even after the mitigation is
implemented’ (CEAA, 2010). We must add to this
the imperative that EIA ought also to contribute to
ongoing learning about environmental effects
through rigorous follow-up and monitoring
(Morrison-Saunders and Arts, 2004).
2. Adopting this conception of EIA demands a key
role for science in predicting environmental
effects. Other types of knowledge are indeed rele-
vant in impact prediction (e.g. the traditional eco-
logical knowledge of Canada’s Aboriginal people),
but few would argue that impact prediction is a
non-scientific matter.
3. We limit our analysis to the realm of biophysical
science. Social science also has a huge role to
play in EIA, and whether its protocols match
those of biophysical science or not, we make no
specific claims here about our proposal applying
to social science, although it may have some
applicability.
4. Cashmore (2004) has described five models of
scientific practice in EIA. We see examples of all
five of Cashmore’s (2004) models in Canadian
EIA experience. We prefer to see EIA in the con-
text of Lee’s (1993) conception of processes for
the pursuit of environmental sustainability: sci-
ence and politics must be integrated, and the ap-
propriate model for science is that of adaptive
management (Holling, 1978; Walters, 1986). If
160
EIA is all science, even good science, it will fail.
If EIA is all politics, even the good politics of
principled negotiation (Lee, 1993), it will fail. Our
interest in this paper is to help further a stronger
science contribution to EIA, notwithstanding
scholarly advisories about taking this too far
(Cashmore et al, 2004; Gregory et al, 2006). Our
aim is to help EIA practitioners — scientists, pro-
ponents, regulators, environmental advocates, and
other participants — move the science to greater
rigour (generating more-reliable knowledge) and
utility (generating decision-useful information).
5. Our approach in developing the ideas in this paper
is not one of conventional science itself. We have
taken no new observations and collected no new
data specifically to test the proposal’s hypothesis.
Our observations and views are based on decades
of practitioner experience and involvement, re-
search experience, the literature, and deductive
reasoning.
6. We take the position that EIA practitioners in
Canada are still struggling with scientific practice.
This position is contrary to the findings of Morri-
son-Saunders and Bailey (2003), who surveyed
EIA practitioners and reported that they were in
large measure happy with the quality of science in
EIA but unhappy with the importance placed on
science in many stages of the EIA process. Morri-
son-Saunders and Sadler (2010) confirmed this.
Such a finding should not be surprising, given that
the science practiced in EIA is indeed the direct
purview of those very practitioners. Most profes-
sionals would defend the quality of their work,
and would naturally lament that others might not
see their work as important as they would like.
For this paper, we stand by our position that
significant improvements can and should be made
in scientific work in EIA, and we posit that our
proposal below will, if implemented, be of
tremendous help.
What we address in this paper is not the balance of
scientific considerations in EIA in the context of
socio-political or other decision-making considera-
tions; the data of Morrison-Saunders and Sadler
(2010) make it clear that practitioners acknowledge
the fundamental importance of supporting EIA deci-
sion-making with good science. What we do address
is the notion of what makes for good science in this
context. To the degree that we might see EIA prob-
lems as wicked problems (and surely they often
are), we propose that scientific inquiry associated
with EIA should be set into the context of the
transdisciplinary imagination (Brown et al, 2010).
A framework for science in/for EIA
To achieve the benefits that should accrue from de-
signing environmentally sustainable developments,
strong science in EIA is imperative. In our view,
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal June 2011

scientific practice in EIA is still inadequate. Key fac-
tors behind this situation are inadequate expectations
on how the scientific community should contribute
to EIA. On one hand, the scientific community out-
side the regulatory confines of EIA is not being mobi-
lized sufficiently to support EIA needs. On the other,
the science done within EIA is being unfairly ex-
pected to make up for the lack of scientific support
from outside EIA.
These observations suggest that it is helpful to see
the science associated with EIA in two domains that
are distinguished by their position vis-à-vis formal
project-specific EIAs required by governments as
part of development approvals (Figure 1). Science
outside EIA is needed to provide knowledge for use
inside EIA processes. Thus, it feeds the science in-
side EIA with robust assessment tools and requisite
data sets. It is appropriately sponsored and undertak-
en by a variety of organizations such as govern-
ments, universities, EIA regulatory agencies, and
environmental NGOs. The science inside EIA is
sponsored and undertaken by development propo-
nents to provide information for making decisions
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on specific developments, both before approval and
while developments exist/operate. In addition, the
science inside EIA provides case materials in the
form of testable effects hypotheses and project-
specific monitoring data — it feeds the science out-
side EIA. The actual developments to which EIA
science is applied serve as case-study opportunities
for furthering the creation of general effects
knowledge.
Thus, in summary:
 Science outside the EIA process is needed to cre-
ate, test, and refine robust models for predicting
ecological effects of development; and
Figure 1. Relationships between science and EIA, with recognition of appropriate forms of
scholarship from Boyer (1990)
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal June 2011
Professional practice
 Science inside the EIA process is needed to make
specific impact predictions to inform decision-
makers of the potential ecological consequences
of development alternatives, as well as to measure
environmental responses following development
start-up for the purpose of model evaluation and
refinement.
Boyer’s (1990) categorization of academic scholar-
ships is relevant here. Boyer (1990) suggested that,
besides the scholarship of teaching, professors
can/should also be engaged in (a) the scholarship of
discovery, which has to do with establishing basic
relationships between variables within a discipline;
(b) the scholarship of integration, which investi-
gates relationships among variables from several
disciplines; and (c) the scholarship of application,
where scientific relationships are applied in the
search for good solutions to practical problems. On
the premise that EIA practitioners dealing with bi-
ophysical impact issues are engaged, or should be
engaged, in scientific scholarship, then Boyer’s
(1990) scholarships of discovery and integration
comprise the kind of science most needed in sup-
port of EIA but outside EIA activities within the
regulatory framework. The scholarship of applica-
tion is appropriate inside EIA.
What scientific protocols are contained in the
scholarship of integration that are not in the scholar-
ship of application? Why is project-specific EIA not
an appropriate home for the scholarships of discov-
ery and integration? It comes down to motivations
and time frames. EIA is a process of development
approval that must be accomplished in short time
frames that are inconsistent with those associated
with creation of reliable knowledge of ecological ef-
fects of development. In a nutshell, the central chore
161
 Professional practice
for analysts in EIA is to develop impact predictions.
Such predictions are statements outlining how a val-
ued ecosystem component might be expected to re-
spond — in the future — to specific development
alternatives, including no development (the null al-
ternative) (Duinker and Baskerville, 1986). To make
credible impact predictions, as testable (usually
quantitative) hypotheses, analysts need predictive
models. Such models can either be built from scratch
inside the EIA process, in which case their basis in
observations is likely to be weak because of the limi-
tations of time and resources in EIA, or they can be
developed in scientific work outside EIA. In the
second case, there should be opportunity to work at
the appropriate time and space scales that allow
proper understandings, through field measurement,
of variations in the state/condition of valued ecosys-
tem components across space and through time.
Moreover, scientists outside EIA can mount experi-
ments and process studies, with all the caveats at-
tending them in large ecosystems (Hilborn and
Walters, 1981), that can provide critical data for
model building and testing. However, complex
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models developed outside EIA that require large
amounts of data to parameterize for a particular cir-
cumstance could be infeasible to apply at the scale
of an individual EIA. Consequently, to enable up-
take by the EIA community, the predictive science
developed outside EIA must pay attention to the
practicality of application at the scale of individual
EIAs.
To enable the learning needed to improve predic-
tive models over time, the need for monitoring of
relevant environmental variables during develop-
ment is clear (Duinker, 1989; Morrison-Saunders
and Arts, 2004). What is still debated in EIA prac-
tice is who should be responsible for it. Participants
in EIA processes often disagree as to whether pro-
ponents ought to monitor or whether government
should. Regardless whether the assignment falls to
scientists outside or practitioners inside the EIA
process, the monitoring must get done or else relia-
ble knowledge will not, over time, be developed.
Our experience indicates three things. First, the ve-
racity of impact predictions must be tested with
targeted monitoring. Second, monitoring programs
must be designed to assist in the linking of causes
with effects; monitoring only variables directly as-
sociated with valued ecosystem components may
not yield sufficient insight to explain variation in
their behaviour, particularly when causes are nu-
merous (a situation of cumulative effect). Third,
both the predictive and empirical elements of
impact science proceed best when scientists/
practitioners both inside and outside EIA processes
are embedded in each other’s work (Van Damme et
al, 2008). In this regard, other aspects of EIA prac-
tice, for example evaluation of alternatives and
post-decision follow-up work, may well be further
enabled by a similar collaboration with work done
outside EIA.
162
Cases of exemplary practice in Canada
Instances of promising progress in Canada suggest
that practical implementation of the proposed
framework is feasible. Of particular interest in this
context are Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excel-
lence, instituted around disciplinary themes, which
exemplify the sort of organizational construct need-
ed to develop the science outside EIA that could en-
able good practice within. Project EIAs can, and
have, taken such science and applied it to illuminate
future environmental consequences of development
alternatives. Our examples are from the forest sector
of Canada because it is in that sector that we have
our greatest collective expertise and experience re-
lated to science both inside and outside EIA. Exam-
ples from other resource management and
development sectors (e.g. fisheries or hydro-electric
power generation) may also exist, but in this short
paper we have room for only one such theme.
Networks of Centres of Excellence
Begun in 1992, the Networks of Centres of Excel-
lence (NCE) program is supported by Canada’s three
national granting councils — the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sci-
ences and Humanities Research Council, and the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research — as well as
the federal department known as Industry Canada.
Until recently, the program financed NCEs for up
to 14 years of operation; now, for new NCEs the
funding horizon is ten years. Each NCE is a unique
partnership of universities, governments, businesses,
and non-profit organizations focused on ‘turning
Canadian research and entrepreneurial talent into
economic and social benefits for all Canadians’
(Networks of Centres of Excellence, 2008). In es-
sence, each NCE brings non-university partners
together to drive a university-based research agenda
that delivers knowledge needed by the partners.
Of particular relevance here, and consistent with
personal involvement by one of us (Duinker), is
one NCE associated with natural resources and the
environment: the Sustainable Forest Management
Network (SFM Network).
Since its inception in 1995 (SFM Network, 2008),
the SFM Network has been instrumental in improv-
ing the scientific basis for SFM in Canada. This out-
come has been realized through development of
basic cause–effect relationships between forest
practices and ecological/social variables, provision
of improved models for forecasting broad-scale,
long-term effects of alternative forest-management
regimes, and training of hundreds of graduates for
employment in the sector.
What is critical in the NCE structure is the man-
agement-relevant focus of the research programs
driven by the needs of resource managers. For ex-
ample, the first work on criteria and indicators (C&I)
of SFM in Canada was undertaken by the Canadian
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal June 2011

Council of Forest Ministers (CCFM, 1995, 2003),
initially as a way to communicate into international
fora how Canada is progressing with SFM. Among
several organizations in Canada to pick up the torch,
the SFM Network adopted the C&I framework to
guide research aimed at practical, on-the-ground im-
provements in SFM across the country. Below, we
describe an example where the SFM Network has
been influential in improving the scientific basis for
EIA in the context of forest-management planning.
Forest management
Industrial forest management takes place across
Canada in hundreds of large forest-management
units. Most are owned by provincial governments
and managed under license by commercial enter-
prises. Management plans for such forests are sub-
ject to formal EIA requirements in four provinces:
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Newfound-
land & Labrador. In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, an
EIA accompanies the forest-management plan when
the plan is submitted for government approval. In
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Ontario and Newfoundland & Labrador, the plans
themselves, along with the planning process, are
cleared through a Class EIA process. Through a
range of mechanisms including regulatory require-
ments and forest certification, forest-management
planning in Canada’s other provinces has evolved
toward a state where all forest-management plans
are themselves EIAs in every technical sense.
A superb example is the forest-management plan-
ning work of LP Canada Ltd (LP), operating on pub-
lic land — Forest Management License #3 — in
west-central Manitoba. The SFM Network was in-
volved here as a leading research organization. In
addition, researchers at the Centre for Northern For-
est Ecosystems Research (CNFER) in Thunder Bay,
Ontario, through Lakehead University and with par-
tial funding from the SFM Network, have been in-
volved. Path-breaking integrative work at CNFER
on forest biodiversity assessment (Rempel, 2007;
Rempel et al, 2007), funded partly by the SFM
Network, was used as a basis for assessment of the
biodiversity-related effects of alternative forest-
management strategies (Rempel et al, 2006).
The links to EIA in this example are exquisite.
Research at CNFER was initiated as part of the On-
tario Ministry of Natural Resources’ promises to
support planning for non-timber values in associa-
tion with the Class Environmental Assessment for
Timber Management on Crown Lands in Ontario.
As adjunct professors at Lakehead University,
CNFER researchers can access SFM Network funds
to augment their normal research funding from the
Government of Ontario. Combining these, the Spa-
tial Ecology Program at CNFER has developed ad-
vanced integrated modelling tools for biodiversity
assessment in association with forest-management
planning in Ontario (Rempel, 2008). The models
were applied in the LP forest-management planning
Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal June 2011
Professional practice
and EIA process to develop temporally and spatially
explicit predictions of responses of various facets of
biodiversity (e.g. habitat use by migrating birds).
The work was accomplished as part of the overall
process of LP Canada meeting its own corporate as-
pirations for sustainability as well as forest-
management and EIA approvals of the Government
of Manitoba. The synergies here in terms of combin-
ing the best talent from the consulting, research, and
forest-management communities are outstanding.
These initiatives are in no small part attributable to
the deeply held belief by the resource managers that
sound science is central to sustainably managing
natural resources.
Conclusions
Perhaps the greatest incentive for making the chang-
es we advocate here are the consequences of not do-
ing so. The fundamental rationale for doing EIA is
to prevent unacceptable impacts to the environment
to help society achieve a sustainable pattern of de-
velopment. Sound science is a necessary, if indeed
wholly insufficient, component of EIA endeavours.
To raise the quality of science in EIA to what is
needed, two key things must occur. First, there must
be acceptance that the situation needs to change:
regulators, proponents, and other practitioners have
to want improvement. Second, the expectations for
how good EIA science will develop need to be ex-
plicitly reformulated into a new framework, as
summarized above (see Figure 1). This entails both
continued high but realistic standards for the quality
of scientific practice within EIA, and a ramping up
of coordinated networks of centres of excellence to
generate the needed knowledge.
Developing the models required to enable strong
impact analysis needs a broad view that cuts across
developments rather than being mired in the specific
details of any one EIA. The Networks of Centres of
Excellence Program in Canada has demonstrated
that this approach can deliver the sort of science re-
quired. To put EIA in Canada on a solid scientific
footing, the networks need to be expanded. Addi-
tionally, they should be complemented with research
centres or institutes focused on supporting EIA ac-
cording to: (a) specific types of developments (e.g.
the SFM Network), (b) specific types of valued eco-
system components (e.g. the Canadian Water Net-
work), or (c) regional contexts (e.g. Canada’s
Maritime Provinces). A key focus in this context
would be cumulative impacts (Duinker and Greig,
2006). The centres would engage EIA practitioners
associated with regulatory agencies and proponents
together with university and other researchers in
scoping the targeted research programs needed to
provide the necessary models for impact assessment.
In this targeted effort to support EIA, designing
models to enable their application within the EIA
community is a high priority.
163
 Professional practice
On the practical side, EIA should be
able to experience gradually reduced
costs with implementation of strong
science in reducing impact uncertainty
On the practical side, EIA should be able to expe-
rience gradually reduced costs with implementation
of strong science in reducing impact uncertainty.
This expectation is based on the premise that the un-
certainty associated with a specific type of impact
addressed in EIA has a life cycle. Initially, when the
potential for a specific type of impact is first recog-
nized, there is huge uncertainty about such things as
the potential severity of impact, how the severity of
impact may vary with environmental conditions,
how other system drivers may influence the impact,
the time course over which the impact may be ob-
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servable, how best to measure the impact, and the
potential efficacy of proposed mitigation. With
strong EIA science, each development for which the
impact may occur creates an opportunity for investi-
gation that can help reduce the uncertainty. It is un-
likely that uncertainties would be substantially
reduced by a single EIA. If, however, the EIA work
of subsequent developments can build on prior in-
vestigations, then over time it should be possible to
improve significantly the understanding of the eco-
system interactions involved. As this process pro-
gresses, subsequent EIAs would not need to cover
the same issues, and can be focused more narrowly
on helping to reduce remaining components of the
overall uncertainty. Once an impact type is suffi-
ciently well understood, the knowledge can be syn-
thesized into codes of practice for designing
effective mitigation strategies. This should lead
ultimately to a significant reduction in EIA cost.
The capacity within the scientific community to
progress in the fashion described above has already
been demonstrated in the development of scientific
support for managing natural resources such as for-
ests and fish. Further progress will only be feasible,
however, if EIA practice is transformed, as suggest-
ed here, to include key attributes of sound scientific
protocols in support of sustainable resource man-
agement. Without this, much EIA practice will
remain in the realm of pseudo-scientific untested
qualitative judgement, and EIAs will needlessly con-
tinue to till the same ground. With it, EIA holds the
promise of making a much stronger contribution to
sustainability with greater efficiency and effective-
ness than is apparent in current practice.
We are fully aware that the arguments articulated
above do not benefit from any contemporary evi-
dence derived from purpose-gathered empirical data
on the phenomena discussed. Our evidential base is
164
two-fold: the literature, and our experiences in EIA
research, teaching, and professional practice. These
sources have their limitations, especially the experi-
ential evidence because of its potential bias and the
small sample size of two persons. If on these
grounds our arguments are deemed hypothetical, or
perhaps even untruthful, we would gladly be shown
to be wrong if someone can generate compelling
data to the contrary.
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