The Paris to Projects Research Initiative

This working paper explores the key components and provisions that need to be incorporated into impact assessment legislation to ensure that assessed undertakings help meet Canadian climate change mitigation commitments and duties. This discussion paper includes a summary that serves as a basic briefing note on the core climate components that should be included in the new federal legislation. It also includes a box presenting the tests for determining an undertaking\u27s contributions to meeting Canada\u27s international climate change mitigation commitments, and a more detailed discussion of implications for the new law

Paris to Projects Research Initiative

This working paper explores the key components and provisions that need to be incorporated into impact assessment legislation to ensure that assessed undertakings help meet Canadian climate change mitigation commitments and duties. This discussion paper includes a summary that serves as a basic briefing note on the core climate components that should be included in the new federal legislation. It also includes a box presenting the tests for determining an undertaking\u27s contributions to meeting Canada\u27s international climate change mitigation commitments, and a more detailed discussion of implications for the new law

From Paris to Projects Clarifying the Implications of Canada’s Climate Change Mitigation Commitments for the Planning and Assessment of Projects and Strategic Undertakings (Summary Report)

By signing the Paris Agreement, Canada made a commitment to do our fair share to limit global average temperature rise to “well below 2°C” relative to pre-industrial levels, and to pursue “efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.” The federal Impact Assessment Act that is now before Parliament requires consideration of whether assessed undertakings would “hinder or contribute to” meeting Canada’s climate change commitments.So far, however, Canada has done little to define what the Paris Agreement entails for planning, assessment and decision making on projects and other undertakings with significant implications for meeting the Paris commitments. That leaves a serious gap in law, policy and practice between Canada’s commitments and the assessment of major undertakings.Assessments are an important venue for proactive climate change mitigation. They guide decision making on major extractive and infrastructure projects and other undertakings that will entrench existing practices or drive key transitions for many decades. If these assessments are to contribute to meeting our climate change mitigation commitments, we need to understand what meeting those commitments entails – how far we have to go and what we have to do to close the gap between our current efforts and our promised accomplishments.To inform serious efforts to fill that gap, this paper examines• what the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals imply for global and Canadian GHG reduction targets in light of “fair share” principles and feasible pathways;• what is needed to raise Canadian climate change mitigation ambitions to the Paris Agreement level, and ensure sufficiently strengthened and clarified targets, frameworks and applied tools to inform evaluations of particular undertakings; and• how to translate these needs and tools into well-specified and authoritative requirements for effective application under federal assessment law.Our intent has not been to deliver final answers but to establish a reasonably firm working base for comparing what we are doing with what is needed to meet our Paris commitments

From Paris to Projects: Clarifying the Implications of Canada’s Climate Change Mitigation Commitments for the Planning and Assessment of Projects and Strategic Undertakings (Full Report)

Canada has signed the Paris Agreement and made other international commitments to doing our fair share of what is needed to keep overall global warming to the Paris Agreement limit of well below 2ºC, and to aim for 1.5ºC, to avoid devastating climate change. However, we have not yet progressed far in translating these commitments into implications for decision making on proposed undertakings with significant implications for meeting those commitments.Clarifying those implications and determining how best to incorporate them in deliberations and decision making is overdue and now imperative. The federal government’s new Impact Assessment Act, which is now proceeding through Parliament’s legislative process, stands to require that all assessments decisions be based in part on evaluation of the extent to which the effects of the designated project hinder or contribute to the Government of Canada’s ability to meet its environmental obligations and its commitments in respect of climate change. (Impact Assessment Act, section 63(e)).In this report, we present the findings of an initial effort to delineate and address the gap between Paris and projects. We set out the needed steps and their main implications, especially for new assessment law, regulation and policy. The steps are not fully defined and many components include a range of possible options. Our intent and expectations have not been to deliver final answers but to establish a firm basis for informed conversation of a matter of pressing importance. The challenges identified in this report are numerous and demanding but reasonably clear.Our main findings and recommendations are summarized in part 5, the concluding section of the report

Paris to Projects Research Initiative

This working paper explores the key components and provisions that need to be incorporated into impact assessment legislation to ensure that assessed undertakings help meet Canadian climate change mitigation commitments and duties. This discussion paper includes a summary that serves as a basic briefing note on the core climate components that should be included in the new federal legislation. It also includes a box presenting the tests for determining an undertaking\u27s contributions to meeting Canada\u27s international climate change mitigation commitments, and a more detailed discussion of implications for the new law

Strategic Impact Assessment on Climate Change in Project and Regional IA

The following post has been prepared jointly with Professor Bob Gibson at the University of Waterloo, and Karine Péloffy at the Centre Québécois du Droit de L’environnement. The work is a small part of a broader research collaboration on the integration of climate change into EA funded by the Metcalf Foundation and SSHRC. For decades now, successive the Canadian federal governments have been making international and domestic commitments to climate change mitigation. So far, the record of achievement has been poor. Among the signs of inattention to effective action is that no Canadian government has made a serious attempt to define the implications of our broad commitments for planning and decision making about particular undertakings. As a result, we have been assessing and approving major projects without informed evaluation of whether or not their attributable lifetime greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would be in line with meeting our commitments. Thankfully, that may be about to change. In its June 2017 discussion paper on environmental assessment process reform, the current federal government proposed an approach to cumulative effects issues that includes “[c]onducting strategic assessments that explain the application of environmental frameworks to activities subject to federal oversight and regulation, starting with one for climate change.” Undertaking such strategic assessments has been a prime recommendation of many participants in the federal assessment processes reform exercise

Strategic Impact Assessment on Climate Change in Project and Regional IA

The following post has been prepared jointly with Professor Bob Gibson at the University of Waterloo, and Karine Péloffy at the Centre Québécois du Droit de L’environnement. The work is a small part of a broader research collaboration on the integration of climate change into EA funded by the Metcalf Foundation and SSHRC. For decades now, successive the Canadian federal governments have been making international and domestic commitments to climate change mitigation. So far, the record of achievement has been poor. Among the signs of inattention to effective action is that no Canadian government has made a serious attempt to define the implications of our broad commitments for planning and decision making about particular undertakings. As a result, we have been assessing and approving major projects without informed evaluation of whether or not their attributable lifetime greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would be in line with meeting our commitments. Thankfully, that may be about to change. In its June 2017 discussion paper on environmental assessment process reform, the current federal government proposed an approach to cumulative effects issues that includes “[c]onducting strategic assessments that explain the application of environmental frameworks to activities subject to federal oversight and regulation, starting with one for climate change.” Undertaking such strategic assessments has been a prime recommendation of many participants in the federal assessment processes reform exercise

The Paris to Projects Research Initiative

This working paper explores the key components and provisions that need to be incorporated into impact assessment legislation to ensure that assessed undertakings help meet Canadian climate change mitigation commitments and duties. This discussion paper includes a summary that serves as a basic briefing note on the core climate components that should be included in the new federal legislation. It also includes a box presenting the tests for determining an undertaking\u27s contributions to meeting Canada\u27s international climate change mitigation commitments, and a more detailed discussion of implications for the new law

From Paris to Projects Clarifying the Implications of Canada’s Climate Change Mitigation Commitments for the Planning and Assessment of Projects and Strategic Undertakings (Summary Report)

By signing the Paris Agreement, Canada made a commitment to do our fair share to limit global average temperature rise to “well below 2°C” relative to pre-industrial levels, and to pursue “efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.” The federal Impact Assessment Act that is now before Parliament requires consideration of whether assessed undertakings would “hinder or contribute to” meeting Canada’s climate change commitments.So far, however, Canada has done little to define what the Paris Agreement entails for planning, assessment and decision making on projects and other undertakings with significant implications for meeting the Paris commitments. That leaves a serious gap in law, policy and practice between Canada’s commitments and the assessment of major undertakings.Assessments are an important venue for proactive climate change mitigation. They guide decision making on major extractive and infrastructure projects and other undertakings that will entrench existing practices or drive key transitions for many decades. If these assessments are to contribute to meeting our climate change mitigation commitments, we need to understand what meeting those commitments entails – how far we have to go and what we have to do to close the gap between our current efforts and our promised accomplishments.To inform serious efforts to fill that gap, this paper examines• what the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals imply for global and Canadian GHG reduction targets in light of “fair share” principles and feasible pathways;• what is needed to raise Canadian climate change mitigation ambitions to the Paris Agreement level, and ensure sufficiently strengthened and clarified targets, frameworks and applied tools to inform evaluations of particular undertakings; and• how to translate these needs and tools into well-specified and authoritative requirements for effective application under federal assessment law.Our intent has not been to deliver final answers but to establish a reasonably firm working base for comparing what we are doing with what is needed to meet our Paris commitments