Regional Strategic EA for Northern British Columbia: The Case and the Opportunity
Residents of northern British Columbia are inundated with proposals for industrial development in the areas of liquefied natural gas, mining, forestry, oil and gas, and hydroelectric, and they are expected to respond to these myriad proposals on a project-by-project basis. The Northwest Institute and West Coast Environmental Law travelled to communities across the north (Prince Rupert, Terrace, Kitimat, Hazelton, Fort St. John, and Chetwynd) to talk to residents about LNG proposals and cumulative effects.
In this report, they propose the use of RSEA as a tool to address these issues, in the context of a government-to-government relationship with Indigenous peoples. RSEA reverses the project-by-project approach to environmental assessment by providing residents the opportunity to imagine the future they want for their land and communities based on shared values, and then measuring individual projects against this vision. In this way, RSEA takes a proactive rather than reactive approach.