EA Expert Panel Report: Reflections on Canada\u27s Proposed Next Generation Assessment Process

In this paper, we share our preliminary reflections on the Expert Panel Report on the reform of the federal environmental assessment process. The report, entitled: Building Common Ground: A New Vision for Impact Assessment in Canada, was released by Minister McKenna on April 5, 2017. The report is the result of an open and thorough public engagement process that heard from a large number of Canadians with a keen interest in EA. The Expert Panel Report offers a blueprint broadly consistent with proposals for next generation federal assessment. Some elements will require further thought, and much of the critical detail on how to make this new approach work remains to be worked out

Mediation in Environmental Assessments in Canada: Unfulfilled Promise?

The federal environmental assessment (EA) process and most. provincial EA processes in Canada either specifically provide for mediation as an option or implicitly allow for it. Inspite of this, the actual use of mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has been almost non-existent in Canadian EA. There is an emerging view, however that mediation could be applied usefully at points of the process when there is conflict among the parties. Such adjustments in process would signal the need for approval agencies -andproponents to give serious consideration to more collaborative techniques of participation. The objective of this article is to consider how mediation has been used to date, and whether it has a role to play in improving the effectiveness, efficiency and fairness of EA processes in Canada. This is accomplished through consideration of the use of mediation in recent years and the results of interviews with twenty EA practitioners. Findings show that mediation has been mainly used in the EA context in the province of Quebec. However, most respondents felt that there is potential for the use of m\u27ediation to strengthen EA. Based on our findings we conclude by outlining three potential ways mediation could be used in EA: as a tool within a traditional EA process to mediate contentious issues; as a process replacement for a procedural requirement; and as a way to find an interim solution to a policygap identified in a project EA

Looking Up, Down, and Sideways: Reconceiving Cumulative Effects Assessment as a Mindset

Despite all the effort that has gone into defining, researching and establishing best practices for cumulative effects assessment (CEA), understanding remains weak and practice wanting. At one extreme of implementation, CEA can be described as merely an irritant to the completion of a project-specific environmental assessment (EA). At the other extreme, the conceptual view is that all effects in EA should be deemed cumulative unless demonstrated otherwise. Our purpose here is to consider how we might reconceive CEA as a mindset that is at the heart of absolutely every assessment of valued ecosystem component (VEC) to ensure that we understand the relative contributions of various stressors and can decide when cumulative effects may foreclose future activities due to impacts on VECs. Conceptually, we ground the CEA mindset in the context of three lenses that must all be functioning and working together for the mindset to be operative: a technical lens; a law and policy lens; and a participatory lens. Our arguments are based on a review of the CEA, strategic effects assessment (SEA) and regional effects assessment literatures, an examination and consideration of Canadian EA and SEA case practice, and our combined professional experiences. Through using the Bay of Fundy in Canada as a case example, we establish the concept of the CEA mindset and an approach for moving forward with implementation

Fulfilling the Promise: Basic Components of Next Generation Environmental Assessment

This paper outlines the key elements of the next generation EA in Canada. It draws on decades of EA practice and academic literature. It summarizes the working conclusions of a lengthy monograph, which also sets out the broad context and the background of experience with environmental assessment law and practice in Canada. Readers who would like to explore the issues raised in this paper in more detail may wish to consult the monograph online

The Regulation of Tidal Energy Development Off Nova Scotia: Navigating Foggy Waters

The vast potential for tidal power development in the Bay of Fundy region of the Atlantic coast has been recognized for decades. At the same time, finding an effective way to harness this power in a cost effective, sustainable and environmentally responsible manner has been an ongoing challenge. In the 1980s, barrage based tidal power technology was piloted in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. It was found to be unsuitable from both environmental and cost perspectives. More recently, pilot projects underway around the world are using new, open turbine technology that is expected to significantly reduce cost and environmental impact. This technology operates on principles similar to a wind turbine, except it is anchored on the seabed in tidal waters. These turbines are able to take advantage of flows of water in both directions, and offer power in predictable intervals during most of the tidal cycle. While this technology is still in the early stages of commercialization, there are pilot projects underway around the world. As a result, the question of how to make decisions on whether, where and under what conditions to permit tidal power development in regions such as the Bay of Fundy have arisen again. The Bay of Fundy finds itself in a region of Canada that has seen the introduction of a number of major new industries over the past few decades. Included in this list are pulp and paper, aquaculture, and, most recently, offshore oil and gas facilities. Decisions on how to regulate these industries were generally reactive and sometimes short-sighted. Since the arrival of these industries, there has been considerable change in the understanding of how governments can make responsible decisions in the best long term interest of their citizens. The pending arrival of tidal power development in Nova Scotia provides an opportunity to implement the lessons learned, to apply appropriate governance models to see through the fog, and to maximize long term benefits to the region. The following article seeks to make the case for principled governance of resource based industries such as tidal power. The primary aim is to offer an overview of the international, constitutional and legislative context and to briefly illustrate the benefits of a principled, proactive approach. A detailed design of the proposed governance regime, strategic assessment and integrated planning processes are left for follow-up research. The purpose here is to lay the foundation for such further work. The article therefore considers issues related to the governance of this new development opportunity by first identifying, in Parts One and Two, the international and constitutional context within which any governance regime for the Bay of Fundy would exist. Parts Three and Four then briefly describe key existing legislative and regulatory systems in place in Nova Scotia that would apply to tidal power development projects. Experiences in other jurisdictions are assessed in Part Five, both with respect to tidal power and for other comparable offshore developments, such as wind. Within this overall context, Part 6 of the article then offers some preliminary thoughts on the essential elements of a suitable governance regime

CAZymes in Maribacter dokdonensis 62–1 from the Patagonian shelf: genomics and physiology compared to related flavobacteria and a co-occurring Alteromonas strain

Carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) are an important feature of bacteria in productive marine systems such as continental shelves, where phytoplankton and macroalgae produce diverse polysaccharides. We herein describe Maribacter dokdonensis 62–1, a novel strain of this flavobacterial species, isolated from alginate-supplemented seawater collected at the Patagonian continental shelf. M. dokdonensis 62–1 harbors a diverse array of CAZymes in multiple polysaccharide utilization loci (PUL). Two PUL encoding polysaccharide lyases from families 6, 7, 12, and 17 allow substantial growth with alginate as sole carbon source, with simultaneous utilization of mannuronate and guluronate as demonstrated by HPLC. Furthermore, strain 62-1 harbors a mixed-feature PUL encoding both ulvan- and fucoidan-targeting CAZymes. Core-genome phylogeny and pangenome analysis revealed variable occurrence of these PUL in related Maribacter and Zobellia strains, indicating specialization to certain “polysaccharide niches.” Furthermore, lineage- and strain-specific genomic signatures for exopolysaccharide synthesis possibly mediate distinct strategies for surface attachment and host interaction. The wide detection of CAZyme homologs in algae-derived metagenomes suggests global occurrence in algal holobionts, supported by sharing multiple adaptive features with the hydrolytic model flavobacterium Zobellia galactanivorans. Comparison with Alteromonas sp. 76-1 isolated from the same seawater sample revealed that these co-occurring strains target similar polysaccharides but with different genomic repertoires, coincident with differing growth behavior on alginate that might mediate ecological specialization. Altogether, our study contributes to the perception of Maribacter as versatile flavobacterial polysaccharide degrader, with implications for biogeochemical cycles, niche specialization and bacteria-algae interactions in the oceans

Availability of vitamin B12 and its lower ligand intermediate α-ribazole impact prokaryotic and protist communities in oceanic systems

Genome analyses predict that the cofactor cobalamin (vitamin B12, called B12 herein) is produced by only one-third of all prokaryotes but almost all encode at least one B12-dependent enzyme, in most cases methionine synthase. This implies that the majority of prokaryotes relies on exogenous B12 supply and interacts with producers. B12 consists of a corrin ring centred around a cobalt ion and the lower ligand 5’6-dimethylbenzimidazole (DMB). It has never been tested whether availability of this pivotal cofactor, DMB or its intermediate α-ribazole affect growth and composition of prokaryotic microbial communities. Here we show that in the subtropical, equatorial and polar frontal Pacific Ocean supply of B12 and α-ribazole enhances heterotrophic prokaryotic production and alters the composition of prokaryotic and heterotrophic protist communities. In the polar frontal Pacific, the SAR11 clade and Oceanospirillales increased their relative abundances upon B12 supply. In the subtropical Pacific, Oceanospirillales increased their relative abundance upon B12 supply as well but also downregulated the transcription of the btuB gene, encoding the outer membrane permease for B12. Surprisingly, Prochlorococcus, known to produce pseudo-B12 and not B12, exhibited significant upregulation of genes encoding key proteins of photosystem I + II, carbon fixation and nitrate reduction upon B12 supply in the subtropical Pacific. These findings show that availability of B12 and α-ribazole affect growth and composition of prokaryotic and protist communities in oceanic systems thus revealing far-reaching consequences of methionine biosynthesis and other B12-dependent enzymatic reactions on a community level

Exact Results on e+ e- --> e+ e- + 2 Photons at SLC/LEP Energies

We use the spinor methods of the CALKUL collaboration, as realized by Xu, Zhang and Chang, to calculate the differential cross section for e+ e- --> e+ e- + 2 photons for c.m.s. energies in the SLC/LEP regime. An explicit complete formula for the respective cross section is obtained. The leading log approximation is used to check the formula. Applications of the formula to high precision luminosity calculations at SLC/LEP are discussed.Comment: 16 pages(LaTeX), UTHEP-92-0601 (contains corrected figures

Associated Charm Production in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions

In this paper a search for associated charm production both in neutral and charged current $\nu$-nucleus interactions is presented. The improvement of automatic scanning systems in the {CHORUS} experiment allows an efficient search to be performed in emulsion for short-lived particles. Hence a search for rare processes, like the associated charm production, becomes possible through the observation of the double charm-decay topology with a very low background. About 130,000 $\nu$ interactions located in the emulsion target have been analysed. Three events with two charm decays have been observed in the neutral-current sample with an estimated background of 0.18$\pm$0.05. The relative rate of the associated charm cross-section in deep inelastic $\nu$ interactions, $\sigma(c\bar{c}\nu)/\sigma_\mathrm{NC}^\mathrm{DIS}= (3.62^{+2.95}_{-2.42}({stat})\pm 0.54({syst}))\times 10^{-3}$ has been measured. One event with two charm decays has been observed in charged-current $\nu_\mu$ interactions with an estimated background of 0.18$\pm$0.06 and the upper limit on associated charm production in charged-current interactions at 90% C.L. has been found to be $\sigma (c\bar{c} \mu^-)/\sigma_\mathrm{CC} < 9.69 \times 10^{-4}$.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Leading order analysis of neutrino induced dimuon events in the CHORUS experiment

We present a leading order QCD analysis of a sample of neutrino induced charged-current events with two muons in the final state originating in the lead-scintillating fibre calorimeter of the CHORUS detector. The results are based on a sample of 8910 neutrino and 430 antineutrino induced opposite-sign dimuon events collected during the exposure of the detector to the CERN Wide Band Neutrino Beam between 1995 and 1998. % with $E_{\mu 1},E_{\mu 2} > 5$ GeV and $Q^2 > 3$ GeV$^2$ collected %between 1995 and 1998. The analysis yields a value of the charm quark mass of \mc = (1.26\pm 0.16 \pm 0.09) \GeVcc and a value of the ratio of the strange to non-strange sea in the nucleon of $\kappa = 0.33 \pm 0.05 \pm 0.05$, improving the results obtained in similar analyses by previous experiments.Comment: Submitted to Nuclear Physics