Writing the Rules of Socio-Economic Impact Assessment: Adaptation Through Participation

New governance initiatives like co-management can be made effective through the use of agency rulemaking. Using the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Assessment Board as a case study, this paper affirms that it is possible for marginalized stakeholders to participate in new governance arrangements like co-management and to alter decision-making. The study of participation presented here illustrates: 1) that a high level of agency support for community participation in rule-making can lead to rules which reflect community values, and 2) that agency implementation of community values has led to the increased use of stakeholder collaboration through private agreement. Nonetheless, the paper also reveals that there are limitations on the ability to translate social needs into privately negotiated agreements. Where negotiations depart from highly commoditized terms and attempt to include diverse community values, stakeholder participation is bounded. Consequently, this paper questions the use of negotiated agreements to meet the goals of stakeholder participation, as conceived by deliberative democratic strands of new governance

Harmonizing Through Judicial Review: Statutory Interpretation and Participation in Sub-Arctic Resource Management

This article describes how statutory interpretation by the courts can impact the effectiveness of co-management initiatives in Canada. Canada has recently undertaken a massive restructuring of the administrative regimes that license and permit resource development across the country to better incorporate Indigenous participation. These co-management boards now take part in governing resource use across Canada and most recognizably in parts of British Columbia, the Yukon Territories, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Nevertheless, the degree to which Indigenous participation may impact the regulatory output of co-management boards remains uncertain in law. This article uses one co-management statute in Canada, the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, to explore the complexities of accounting for participation in resource management in the sub-Arctic. The article argues that construction by the courts of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act as similar to its predecessor, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, has the effect of construing the former statute as a procedural tool, which effectively divorces participation from the regulatory output of co-management boards. While by no means settled, this trend towards participation as a procedure of co-management is construed from a reading of the legislation as a legal transplant and its concomitant harmonization by the court with other statutory schemes. This article thus analyzes how the effectiveness of co-management is impacted by assumptions that the meaning of law can remain unaltered despite stakeholder participation

Writing the Rules of Socio-Economic Impact Assessment: Adaptation Through Participation

New governance initiatives like co-management can be made effective through the use of agency rulemaking. Using the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Assessment Board as a case study, this paper affirms that it is possible for marginalized stakeholders to participate in new governance arrangements like co-management and to alter decision-making. The study of participation presented here illustrates: 1) that a high level of agency support for community participation in rule-making can lead to rules which reflect community values, and 2) that agency implementation of community values has led to the increased use of stakeholder collaboration through private agreement. Nonetheless, the paper also reveals that there are limitations on the ability to translate social needs into privately negotiated agreements. Where negotiations depart from highly commoditized terms and attempt to include diverse community values, stakeholder participation is bounded. Consequently, this paper questions the use of negotiated agreements to meet the goals of stakeholder participation, as conceived by deliberative democratic strands of new governance

Assessing Stakeholder Participation in Sub-Arctic Co-Management: Administrative Rulemaking and Private Agreements

This paper argues that participatory governance initiatives like co-management can be made effective through agency rulemaking. Using the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board as a case study, this paper affirms that it is possible for marginalized stakeholders to participate in co-management and alter decision-making. By using its formal authority to generate rules that reflect community perspectives, this board contextualized environmental assessment in community-based perspectives. The study of participation presented here illustrates: 1) that a high level of agency support for community participation in rule-making can lead to rules which reflect community perspectives; and 2) that agency implementation of community perspectives has led to the increased use of stakeholder collaboration through private agreement. Nonetheless, the paper also addresses limitations on the ability to translate social needs into privately negotiated agreements where negotiations depart from highly commoditized terms. Consequently, this paper questions the use of negotiated agreements to meet the goals of stakeholder participation, as conceived by deliberative democratic strands of new governance. Dans cet article, l’auteure soutient que le pouvoir de règlementation d’un organisme peut rendre plus efficace de nouvelles initiatives en matière de gouvernance telles que la cogestion. Prenant l’Office d’examen des répercussions environnementales de la vallée du Mackenzie comme exemple, elle affirme que des parties prenantes marginalisées ont la possibilité de participer à de nouvelles modalités de gouvernance comme la cogestion et d’influer sur la prise de décision. En exerçant son pouvoir d’adopter des règles inspirées des valeurs communautaires, l’Office a procédé à une évaluation environnementale en tenant compte du contexte communautaire. L’étude de participation présentée ici démontre: 1) que, lorsqu’un organisme appuie fortement la participation de la collectivité à l’élaboration des règles, les règles adoptées peuvent davantage refléter les valeurs communautaires; et 2) que l’adhésion de l’organisme aux valeurs communautaires favorise une plus grande collaboration entre les parties prenantes, grâce à la conclusion d’ententes privées. Quoi qu’il en soit, l’article révèle également que la capacité d’exprimer des besoins sociaux dans des ententes privées négociées est limitée. Lorsque les négociations dévient des termes hautement standardisés et tentent d’inclure différentes valeurs communautaires, la participation des parties prenantes est restreinte. L’article remet par conséquent en question l’utilisation d’ententes négociées pour atteindre les buts fixés en matière de participation des parties prenantes, telle que les conçoivent les courants de pensée s’appuyant sur la démocratie délibérative au regard de la nouvelle gouvernance