Search

Indigenous-led impact assessment (ILIA) is a project review process designed and conducted with meaningful input and an adequate degree of control by Indigenous peoples. Using a case-based approach, this paper examines ILIAs conducted in Canada. The research – tools for ILIA – provides examples of options for the design and implementation of ILIA processes which have been utilized by Indigenous Nations while making their own determinations regarding if and how development should occur according to their unique locations, histories, natural resource issues, and governance. We have identified five tools: framework agreements; customized review panels; land use and consultation policy; impact and benefit agreements; and land use planning. Each tool is described along with a case study example of how the tool was applied within ILIA. Although our work focuses on Canada, the examples and tools can be valuable for Indigenous peoples and EIA practitioners in jurisdictions elsewhere who are looking to understand how ILIA might be operationalized to reflect their settings, values, and priorities. The results are helpful to Indigenous governments and groups looking to develop their own approaches to assessment, and for understanding the relative strengths and experiences of options they may consider or adapt for their own needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to understandings of contestation and resistance in urban politics, using a land use struggle against a “big-box” development in Vancouver, Canada as an example. It surveys Foucault's work on “governmentality,” highlighting the centrality of the notion of resistance in this work before focusing in particular on Foucault's yet underexplored conceptions of “conduct” and “counter-conduct”. These concepts offer an analysis of urban politics beyond the binary of successful implementation of city policies or their failure, and of cooption or revolt; therefore, proving especially useful in the analysis of urban governance which is increasingly characterised as “post-political”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many planning agencies and stakeholder groups experimented with innovative forms of public involvement in the 1990s. British Columbia is one such jurisdiction which embraced the concept of public involvement in a broad range of land and resource management planning scales - to the degree of collaborative planning with communities, using consensus. The purpose of this paper is to present lessons for planners, supported by literature and by research in British Columbia, Canada from 1995-97, on these public involvement processes. Building on earlier 'typologies' for public involvement in planning, it proposes a strategic approach for identifying and analysing stakeholders, for setting objectives and for subsequently choosing the most appropriate level of public involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Water Resources Journal / Revue Canadienne des Ressources Hydriques is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper evaluates an innovative two-tiered model of collaborative planning designed to increase participation of First Nations in resource and environmental planning in British Columbia, Canada. Like a one-tiered model, the two-tiered model engages stakeholders in face-to-face negotiations to develop a consensus plan. However, to finalize an agreement, recommendations from the first tier are then sent to a second tier of negotiations that includes only two parties – First Nations and the provincial government. This innovative two-tiered collaborative process was designed to meet the unique position of First Nations and address the problem of low First Nations participation in previous single-tiered collaborative planning processes. Results based on 26 evaluative criteria indicate the two-tiered process was successful in increasing First Nations engagement while still meeting the interests of non-aboriginal stakeholders who did not participate at the second tier of negotiations. However, results also indicate a need to revise the two-tiered process to improve buy-in from non-aboriginal stakeholders while continuing to respect First Nations' constitutional rights. With these revisions, results suggest that a two-tiered collaborative planning model is a viable option worthy of consideration for cases in which one or more participants, such as aboriginal populations, have unique rights and interests that need to be accommodated in the process design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do processes for community engagement in forestry decision making in Canada serve the aims of sustainable forest management? This paper reports on several studies of forest land-use and management planning processes in four provinces and a national survey of forest-sector advisory committees to determine who is selected to participate, what values participants bring to the table, and how participants are expected to behave in committee processes. The analysis suggests that participatory mechanisms are both shaped by and reinforce local norms, values and expectations of forestry communities. Thus, the focus is on understanding the social context within which communities become engaged rather than providing a technical assessment of specific initiatives. In particular, the study examines assumptions related to gender, class and racialized identities that operate in rural communities and shape the participation and influence of participants. These studies all suggest that forestry advisory committees remain elite organizations, dominated by individuals with economic stakes, constrained by priorities set by government and/or industry, and focused on technical issues. Women, Aboriginal people and those of lower socioeconomic status are less likely to participate and less likely to make substantive contributions when they do participate. Differences by gender are significant, but gender is not the only factor that explains the marginalization of some groups within these processes. The results suggest a need to examine how gender intersects with other sets of social relations such as class and racialized identity in order to better understand the social factors that will influence the achievement of sustainable forest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information on biomass distribution is needed to estimate GHG emissions and removals from land use changes in Canada's north for UNFCCC reporting. This paper reports aboveground biomass measurements along the Dempster Highway transect in 2004, and around Yellowknife and the Lupin Gold Mine in 2005. The measured aboveground biomass ranges are 10-100 t ha-1 for woodlands, 1-100 t ha-1 for shrub sites, and 0.5-10 t ha-1 for grass/herbs sites. The root mean squared error (RMSE) of measurements is 21%, and the median absolute percentage error (MedAPE) is 14%. The combination of JERS backscatter and Landsat TM4/TM5 gives the best biomass equation for the Dempster Highway transect, with r 2 = 0.72 when using a one-step approach (i.e. using all points) and 0.78 when using a two-step approach (i.e. stratifying data into three classes: grass, shrub, and woodlands). The two-step approach reduces the MedAPE from 53% to 33%. The validation against Yellowknife & Lupin data indicates that the equations have good transferability. The improvement of two-step approach over the one-step approach, however, is not significant for the validation dataset, suggesting that the one-step approach is as good as the two-step approach when applied over areas outside where the equations are developed. The relationships and error analysis of this study, as well as the final estimate of GHG emission/removal over Canada's north have been incorporated into Canada's 2006 UNFCCC report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical patterns of land use and subsistence in circumpolar communities often coexist in complex and novel ways with rapidly emerging wage labor markets and global political economic forces. The integration of traditional environmental knowledge and practice into contemporary contexts, as manifested in food culture, is explored as both a routine behavioral reality and a profound symbolic process. This paper examines the creative role of historical experience in procurement, processing, and presentation of food in (re)defining cultural identity and relationships with the environment and social others. Similarities and contrasts are drawn from active participation ethnographic field research among Dene (Chipewyan) hunter-fishers in north-central Canada and subarctic farmers in northeastern Finland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource planning and management in British Columbia, Canada, has been steadily moving towards more active public participation. While government agencies have long been required to consult the general public during the course of land or resource use planning, the 1990s brought in a period of more intense public involvement. In terms of resource planning, this led to the creation of several new planning processes. Given that there is now considerable experience with the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) and the Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) processes, it is time for an appraisal. In particular, the paper examines the public's perceptions of these processes with respect to 'what works well' and 'what needs improvement'. The results highlight a number of areas to which process designers and managers should direct attention. There are three key items of note. First, there are generally low levels of awareness by respondents of public consultation processes in their community. Second, there is a need for access to timely, relevant and readable information throughout the course of the process in order to keep participants and the public as up-to-date as possible. Finally, there must be greater clarity about the process itself, including mandates, participants and decision-making powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest Renewal British Columbia (FRBC) was created in 1994 to deliver programmes of sustainable development within the leading economic sector of the province, serving as a key element of the radical new natural resource management agenda being promoted by an interventionist provincial administration. Its funding consisted solely of the hypothecated revenues of a 'super' stumpage on timber harvesting. This paper considers the role FRBC played in helping to gain agreement to changes in provincial land use planning and forest strategy, and evaluates its effectiveness as an eco-tax recycling mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, the United States stands alone among high-wealth countries in its copious use of exclusive zoning for single-family detached homes (single-family zoning, SFZ). Australia and Canada, however, are two countries that mirrored U.S. practices through the mid-20th century, and these countries still have SFZ, though it is less widespread today. We theorized reasons for the United States' divergence in a review of histories and other studies from the three countries. We observed that when fiscal, affordability, and environmental concerns took hold globally in the 1970s, Australian and Canadian governments addressed these issues in part by opening single-family areas to more housing types, whereas nearly all U.S. governments left SFZ unchallenged. We show here how historical racial composition and prejudice in the United States, though long intertwined with zoning practices, began to distinguish American residential zoning practice from its Canadian and Australian counterparts at this time, explaining that American planners faced revanchism in the wake of civil rights legislation and White flight. A recent flurry of reform in the United States, however, indicates that U.S. residential zoning practices are reconverging with those in Australia and Canada. Observing how American zoning paralleled and then diverged from its Australian and Canadian counterparts has revealed another way in which U.S. racial composition and prejudice have distinguished the climate of planning in the United States. We also demonstrate how a more equitable way of zoning, one that opens more urban land to housing mixture, can provide a basis for building more sustainable cities in the United States. As American zoning begins to reconverge with its Australian and Canadian counterparts, U.S. planners can look to these countries to understand the potential and limits of undoing SFZ in pursuit of environmental, fiscal, and housing goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetland habitat continues to be lost to cumulative effects of development on the landscape. Part of the problem is that there currently exists only limited guidance as to how to use the existing scientific tools, conceptual frameworks and guidance documents to advance cumulative effects assessment (CEA) from the project scale to the broader regional scale at which land-use planning occurs. To strengthen CEA science for wetlands there are three minimum requirements: (1) understand the baseline science of wetland functions; (2) delineate the primary drivers (anthropogenic and natural) of disturbance; and (3) develop the science to link drivers to changes in wetland function in an interactive, synergistic and cumulative way. The paper concludes by identifying ways in which the state of CEA science and management of wetlands could be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Publicly available statistics regarding rural demographics, rural society and land use are presented and analysed using Geographic Information System (GIS). Our aim was to provide a quantitative basis for discussion of rural policy issues such as urban encroachment. Productivity (tonnage) of crop agriculture has increased by about 230% over 40 years while that of livestock (expressed as livestock units) has remained constant. Agricultural consolidation and intensification seen in southern Ontario has not translated into economic sustainability where on-farm income declined from 1991 to 2000. However, on-farm income in southern Quebec and municipalities adjacent to Toronto increased, perhaps due to the niche markets created in these regions. The increases in agricultural activity throughout southern Ontario have occurred in regions that have been designated as sites for innovation clusters, thus providing a foundation of resources for bio-based industries to expand and innovate. Reflecting on trends of demographics and production systems we conclude that rural policy should orient its geographical delineation to regional and inter-provincial scales. Our analysis indicates that rural populations and communities are sustainable but agricultural enterprises have changed radically; they have maintained or increased productivity but lost profitability. Applying a rural landscape design to the entire region would help address the sustainability of agriculture and rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smoking is the leading cause of premature death in Canada. Smoking also pollutes air and generates litter such as cigarette butts. The use of designated smoking areas (DSAs) is increasingly popular on university campuses and has the potential to influence smoking prevalence. It is however found that the related regulations and policies are largely unknown. This study systematically examines the spatial distribution of DSAs at 12 Canadian campuses using ArcGIS Pro, and predicts the required number of DSAs using regression analysis based on a number of climatic, and socio-economic factors identified by cluster analysis. The density of DSAs ranged from 0.119 to 0.739 DSA/104 m2, with an average of 0.354 DSA/104 m2. Results from the regression models suggested that climatic factors are important to the number of DSAs. The proposed spatial analytical approach is also applicable to the design and planning of other major health institutions or residential complexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use control has become a ubiquitous part of contemporary planning, but in early 20th century Canada such controls were under constant debate. I review these debates and interrogate planning-led anxieties around waste to show how planners used categories of waste to encourage land use control and to facilitate the improvement of people's lives and property. I think through the frictions that emerged when such planning ideas, mobilized through professional networks, touched down in the cities of Vancouver and Winnipeg. Land use regimes warrant increased scholarly attention: early conversations have contemporary relevance, as their discursive logics are foundational to modern methods of land use control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed the spatial distribution of nitrogen dioxide over Calgary (Canada) in summer 2010 and winter 2011 and in summer 2015 and winter 2016, and estimated land use regressions for 2015–16 (2010–11 models were estimated previously). As nitrogen dioxide exhibited spatial clustering, we evaluated the following spatial specifications against a linear model: spatially autoregressive (lag), spatially autoregressive (error), and geographically weighted regression. The spatially autoregressive (lag) specification performed best, achieving goodness-of-fit aligned with or greater than values reported in the literature. We compared the 2015–16 spatially autoregressive models with the 2010–11 models and reparametrized them on the 2010–11 and the 2015–16 data. Finally, we identified a single set of predictors to best fit the data. Nitrogen dioxide concentration decreased over the 5 years, retaining consistent spatial and seasonal patterns, with higher concentrations over traffic corridors and industrial areas, and greater variation in summer than winter. The multi-temporal analysis suggested that spatial land use regressions were robust over the time interval, despite moderate land use change. Multi-temporal spatial land use regressions yielded consistent predictors for each season over time, which can aid estimation of air pollution at fine spatial resolution over an extended time period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We recently completed the accuracy assessment of a Landsat-derived landcover polygon layer covering the entire province of Alberta (660,000 km2), Canada, for which we gathered reference information for nearly 5000 randomly selected polygons ranging from two hectares to thousands of hectares in size. This gave us the unique opportunity to quantify, for the first time, how the probability of correctly classifying a landcover object varies with its size. Irrespective of whether they are represented as polygons or as sets of connected pixels with the same label, the classification accuracy of landcover objects decreases as their size decreases, steadily for large and medium sizes, and more dramatically when they are within two orders of magnitude of the pixel size of the input image. We show that this size-dependency is bound to occur whenever the size distribution of landcover objects follows an inverse power law. Our results are consistent with previous studies on related issues, confirm the need to account for size when assessing the accuracy of object-based landcover maps, and cast doubts on the validity of (1) recently proposed object-based accuracy estimators, and (2) landscape pattern analyses where the minimum patch size is close to the pixel size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of the Association of American Geographers is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Conversion of farmland to non-agricultural uses presents a challenge to future food production and ecosystem services in US and Canada. Expansions of housing, transportation, industry, retail sales, schools and other developments are driving land out of farming. In the US there is annual conversion of 500,000 ha away from food and fibre production systems. Coupled with 1% annual population increase, this will reduce today's 0.6 ha per person to 0.3 ha by 2050. Canada has more land and smaller population, but farmland losses are occurring in fertile areas near coasts and in level valleys where highest quality land is located. Current rates of increase in agricultural productivity will not compensate for this land loss. Compared to US, there are more specific tools and legislation at the provincial level in Canada that provide opportunities for controlling sprawl. Important in both countries is general lack of awareness and concern about loss of productive farmland, a situation that could be improved through education. Stimulating collective understanding of this growing problem and providing viable solutions could provide the basis for national policy strategies to promote and assure sustainable food systems for the future and enhance the capacity to maintain vital ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Canada's four main livestock industries were integrated with the Canadian Economic and Emissions Model for Agriculture (CEEMA) which operates at the census district level. The livestock crop complex (LCC), which defines the crop area required to feed Canada's livestock, was disaggregated from provincial to district level. The LCC areas were subtracted from the crop areas stored in the CEEMA database to define the maximum area available for non-meat food, fiber, and biofuel feedstock production. The resulting non-livestock residual (NLR) area estimates were 18.7 Mha in the west (excluding rangeland, summerfallow, irrigated cropland and any crops not associated with livestock diets) and 1.0 Mha in the east. The GHG emissions from the NLR in the west were 13.7 Tg CO2e, or 30% of the total GHG emissions from those crops associated with livestock diets. The 1.6 Tg CO2e of GHG from the NLR in Eastern Canada represented 8% of the total GHG emissions from those livestock-related crops. The eastern NLR crop areas were more sensitive to changes in livestock populations than the Western Canada NLR areas because of the more dominant role of livestock production in eastern Canadian agriculture than in the west. The total agricultural GHG emissions budget showed direct but muted sensitivity to changes in Canadian livestock populations in both eastern and Western Canada. The methodology will link agricultural GHG emissions with district level land use decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis on culture in studies of colonialism tends to obscure other forms of colonial power while making it impossible to contextualize the cultural argument and assess its salience. Rather than focusing on texts, systems of signification, and procedures of knowledge generation, as the colonial discourse literature is wont to do, a fuller understanding of colonial powers is achieved by explaining colonialism's basic geographical dispossessions of the colonized. In so doing, the issue of power is not prejudged and the particular roles of different modes and theories of colonial power come into focus. I explore these propositions by considering the powers underlying the reserve (reservation) system in British Columbia, a system that, by allocating a tiny fraction of the land to native people and opening the rest for development, facilitated the geographical reorganization of the province. My conclusions are these: the initial ability to dispossess rested primarily on physical power and the supporting infrastructure of the state; the momentum to dispossess derived from the interest of capital in profit and of settlers in forging new livelihoods; the legitimation of and moral justification for dispossession lay in a cultural discourse that located civilization and savagery and identified the land uses associated with each; and the management of dispossession rested with a set of disciplinary technologies of which maps, numbers, law, and the geography of resettlement itself were the most important. Although no one body of theory explains colonial power, several theoretical perspectives yield crucial insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s, the provincial government of British Columbia made the introduction of participatory processes into the land use planning and resource management of its Crown lands the central element of its attempt to defuse conflictual relationships over choices affecting the sustainability of the province's development strategies. The processes used to this end are examined, and evidence of the resulting outcomes is evaluated. As well as the planning gains associated with the switch from techno-corporatist to consensual decision-making for the province's publicly owned resource base, studies indicate that there will be substantial ecological benefits from zoning an additional 30% of Crown lands for enhanced protection, at little economic cost to rural industries. The new rural planning regime also offers a consensual management system capable of assimilating the tribal holdings created by the settlement of First Nation claims on Crown lands. Overall, the evidence indicates that substantial benefits have emerged from the application of procedural environmental justice to formerly highly technocratic management processes, not least of which is delivery of "peace in the woods". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. Since the early 1980s some 40,000 acres of forested land have been cleared and placed under cultivation by Mennonite farmers near the small town of La Crete in northern Alberta's Peace River district. This incipient agriculture has been accompanied by dramatic increases in road building and home construction and by the establishment of churches and schools. The principal force behind the acquisition of land has been a desire of families to have homes in rural areas where they can enjoy lifestyles based on traditional Mennonite values. Because most new farmers cannot earn a living in the district from agriculture alone, they must rely on the wood industries to supplement their incomes. Demand is building for the province to open still more land, but disagreements between the government and the Mennonite community about the most appropriate location for developing new farms has put further expansion on hold until the conflict can be resolved. Keywords: agricultural expansion, Alberta, Canada, Mennonites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the connections between ecological restoration and community gardening by providing an analytical account of the history and aspirations of the Alex Wilson Community Garden in Toronto, Ontario. Project's demonstration of the principles of sustainable land use and community planning; Provision of food production opportunities for local residents.

Highlights the sixth annual Applied Geography Conference hosted by the Department of Applied Geography in Toronto, Ontario. Number of registrants attended; Features of th conference; Discussion of land use problems and resource management problems in other conference sessions.

Looks into the land use planning system of British Columbia. Description of the forest land planning in British Columbia; Creation of the British Columbia Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE); Components of the provincial land use strategy presented by CORE; Land use reallocations.

Public policy objectives concerning urban population distribution often are achieved through residential land use regulation. Control over population distribution also can be exerted indirectly through the ,;election of employment sites. If population policy goals can be expressed as a target for each zone of the urban area. then it is possible to determine that spatial distribution of employment for which population distribution comes as close as possible to these targets. Using the matrix structure of the Garin-Lowry urban development model, a goal program is derived which determines the basic employment distribution which minimizes deviations from desired zonal populations for Metropolitan Toronto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian community planning practice and institutions derive from both American and British influences, but the outcome of that combination of influences is distinctive. A strong corporate orientation emerges from the initial conditions for building cities, from the cultural milieu in which the agenda for planning was set, and from the constitutional circumstances that affected what forms of land use regulation were adopted. US-type zoning coexists with UK-inspired development control, all in a context of paternalistic review of local decisions by provincial government. The planning process in Canadian communities tends toward a discretionary system operated by professionals leading to an emphasis on accomplishment and a pervasive bureaucratic character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional issues have always been important in Canada's economic and political development. Regional planning, however, was not established as a conscious, formal activity of governments until the 1950's and 1960's. Two basic forms have emerged: statutory regional land planning, which focuses on land use, is authorized and administered by provincial governments, and is undertaken by voluntary associations of communities; and regional development planning, which focuses on socioeconomic development and is undertaken by provincial governments and the federal government, both independently and jointly. The above functions are undertaken separately, under different legislation, by different agencies, and by bureaucrats using different values and mind-sets. The functions should be integrated, or at least coordinated, if regional planning in Canada is to be effective in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]