Environmental Assessment: Time to Hit the Reset Button
DATE: October 25th – 26th, 2016
LOCATION: Toronto, Ontario
OVERVIEW:
OAIA 2016 is a conference for industry professionals interested in environmental assessment. For two days in October, a community of smart, talented people come together to share ideas, tell stories and decide whether it’s time to hit the reset button.
Environmental Assessment (EA) practitioners in Ontario today face a labyrinth of EA processes all slightly different with ever increasing requirements for more and more information and more and more consultation. The result is often a massive EA document filled with complex technical information that is both difficult to understand and time consuming to review. Is this complex and unfriendly process actually leading to better outcomes?
Decision-makers in Ontario (and elsewhere) doubtless are hearing this message and are now planning reviews of the respective EA regimes beginning this year with the federal government. These government-led initiatives are providing a golden opportunity for EA practitioners to reflect on what EA has become and are today, and what we, as EA practitioners, want it to look like moving forward.
2016 Conference Presentations
Session 1.1: Environmental Assessment: Time to Hit the Reset Button
Session 4.1: Class Environmental Assessments: Lessons Learned and the Path Forward
Session 4.2: Ontario's Municipal Class Environmental Assessment System
Session 5.1: Meaningful Public Engagement in Government Environmental Decision-making
Session 5.2: Public Consultation in the Class Environmental Assessment Process
Session 5.3: Public Participation: Typical Problems and Solutions
Session 6.1: Indigenous Involvement in Environmental Assessment: Finding a Better Way
Session 6.2: Indigenous Involvement in EA, Finding a Better Way: The Case of the News Post Creek Project
Session 6.3: Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Knowledge for Ontario Mining Issues
Session 7.1: Eabametoong First Nation Perspectives on the Purpose and Practice of Environmental Assessment
Session 8.1: Indigenous Issues and Decision Statements in Federal Environmental Assessment
Session 8.2: The Inextricable Linkages Between EA and Social Acceptance
Session 8.3: The Inextricable Linkages Between EA and Social Acceptance
Session 8.4: What to do When There is No Formal EA Process: a ``How To`` Guide
Session 9.1: Next Generation Environmental Assessment: Implications for Ontario
Session 9.2: Next Generation Environmental Assessment: REA and SEA Considerations
Session 9.3: Towards Next Generation Environmental Assessment
Session 10.1: Integrating EcoSystem Services into Environmental Assessment
Session 10.2: Lasting Regional Gains from Non-renewable Resource Extraction
2016 Conference Outcomes
Observations from the OAIA 2016 Conference
OAIA Response to the Minister's EA Challenge
Official Conference Sponsors
Thank you to the following sponsors of the 2016 Conference:
