Improving environmental decision-making: A review of community-based monitoring in Canada
Cumulative effects assessment (CEA) is used in environmental decision-making and helps scientists and resource managers understand the effects of past and present human activities on the environment such that future impacts of proposed activities can be predicted. The environmental studies within CEAs that follow western science methods need to be improved. Environmental information needs to be collected over longer timeframes and across larger areas to reduce uncertainty and constrain predictions, but studies are often limited by resources (i.e., time and money).
Community-based monitoring (CBM) is a type of citizen science in which community members can collect information in support of environmental studies, including those within CEAs. We already know that governments and industry can run CBM projects to improve community participation in environmental decision-making and to make effective use of available resources. There are often questions, however, around the quality and efficacy of CBM projects: can they collect the information needed for environmental studies that use western science methods for CEA?
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
We investigated the ability of CBM projects in Canada to provide information needed to perform cumulative effects assessments. We then explored whether CBM projects that are collecting information that supports environmental studies within CEAs had unique project characteristics.
We used online searches to create a list of CBM projects that collect environmental information in Canada. We randomly chose 40 of these projects, and scored how well they collect environmental information based on western science methods for CEA. We scored and characterized each project using only project information that was available online.
We separated projects into four score categories, ranging from the lowest-scoring projects to the highest-scoring projects. The patterns in project characteristics for each score category were explored to determine if the highest- scoring projects had unique project characteristics.
The highest-scoring projects had characteristics that were different from the lowest-scoring projects. The highest-scoring projects involved non-profit organizations as bridging organizations that coordinated community participation and received funding and support from provincial/territorial government agencies. Participants in these projects collected measurements and samples using methods described in training manuals. The information collected by community members was publicly available online and was used for environmental studies and resource management decisions. These project characteristics should be considered when designing future CBM projects that are meant to collect environmental information for CEAs.
There are CBM projects in Canada that collect information needed for western science components of CEA. We recommend future studies explore how CBM projects can be designed such that Indigenous and western science methods are used to further improve the utility, holism, and applicability of CEAs.
Read the paper — Pan-Canadian review of community-based monitoring projects and their capacity to enhance environmental monitoring programs for cumulative effects assessments by Jess Kidd, Jeremy Brammer, Simon Courtenay, Heidi Swanson, and Stephanie Avery-Gomm.
