Fairness in Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Processes: Proceedings of a Seminar

Robert Paehlke was Professor, Environmental and Resource Studies, at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario.

This book will be of interest to environmentalists, lawyers, administrators, and businessmen with duties relating to the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. The book is the product of what must have been a most interesting three-day seminar held in Banff in 1983 under the sponsorship of the Canadian Institute of Resources Law. The seminar looked closely at the issue of fairness in environmental and social impact assessment procedures.

The elements of fairness are spelled out by the various participants (academics, environmentalists, administrators, lawyers, and consultants). It is generally agreed overall that ultimately decisions on proceeding or not proceeding with resource development projects are political and not administrative. That is, that it is appropriate that conclusions be recommended to elected decision-makers. However, several participants make an excellent case that hearings on projects should be as open-ended as possible and that it is crucial that final recommendations be written public documents. Perhaps the most important of the remaining issues regarding fairness is the call by several participants for providing costs or at least partial funding to public participants. Proponents of projects have staff personnel available full-time for such hearings and, of course, such costs are a legitimate business expense. Thereby, proponents are effectively subsidized from the public treasury for 50 per cent of their expenses as their taxable income is reduced by whatever their expenses might be, without upper limit other than their total profits. Intervenors on behalf of the public or the environment not only participate on their own time, but their expenses (travel, typing, research, and so forth) are often borne out-of-pocket. Obviously, such a procedure is so grossly unfair as to make it hardly worth the trouble or the costs to the public treasury.

One hastens to add that a less public procedure is obviously pointless. The only reasonable way to proceed is to provide modest funding to public intervenors.

Other issues discussed are the difficulties associated with separating environmental, social, and ethical issues. EIA cannot properly be seen as an exclusively technical or scientific exercise. It is about values — the relative merits of the economic bottom line and a recognition that dollars are not the only values Canadians hold dearly. That said, one must add that the cost of the hearings themselves must be kept within reasonable bounds. One method for achieving fairness of this form is to place time limits on proceedings, and another is to assure that expensive bureaucratic predecisions have not already been taken.