Executive Summary

Ecological standards, objectives and guidelines - termed "ecological benchmarks" in this research - provide a point of reference based on the importance of ecosystem functions such as the provision of habitat, maintenance of water quality or regulation of hydrologic flows. They establish practical limits or guideposts for sustainability to improve the capacity of all resource managers to make better decisions.

Ecological benchmarks may be found in laws or policies established by federal, provincial and municipal agencies. They may also be found in implementation guides, land use or ecological restoration plans, or in science-based reports that recommend criteria for establishing protected areas.

This project provides evidence that ecological benchmarks could contribute to the determination of significance in environmental assessments (EAs) under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA). The project identified 53 candidate benchmarks from 30 sources.

• Almost one-third were judged to have utility for distinguishing significant from non-significant adverse effects in all or most assessment circumstances. They used unequivocal terms, specified functions that required protection or the type of effects that were unacceptable, and in many cases located - or provided criteria to locate - applicable sites.
• Forty-five percent of the candidate benchmarks were judged moderately effective in distinguishing significant effects, due primarily to less precision in defining activities that should not be permitted or functions that must be protected.
• The remaining one-quarter were very general in nature and could play a role in supporting other more effective benchmarks or informing decisions at a strategic level.

In the evaluation of the benchmarks, substantial variation was found in how authoritative, relevant, sound, straightforward and practical each benchmark was.

There are a number of good reasons for applying ecological benchmarks to significance decisions. They:

• Promote coordinated action among the range of sustainable development initiatives operating on a landscape at any one time, including land use planning, wildlife management, protected areas, and ecological restoration initiatives;
• Improve efficiency, consistency and defensibility of EA decisions across Canada about the significance of adverse effects, based on current scientific understanding and public policy objectives;
• Provide a more informative framework within which to consider the cumulative effects of project proposals; and
• Focus information gathering and assessment on the issues of most concern from a scientific and public policy perspective.

The challenge is to provide ecological benchmarks to EA practitioners across Canada in a format that facilitates access and integration into project decisions. This is becoming more urgent in light of limited resources for preparing and reviewing individual assessments, steadily increasing legal and policy requirements for environmental protection, and the continually evolving scientific and practical knowledge base for natural resources management.

This research illustrates how current database and Internet technologies provide an opportunity to gather and organize benchmarks in a way that is most meaningful to EA decisions, and allow quick identification of benchmarks applicable to a proposed project. The project proposes a Web-based central database of Canada's ecological standards, guidelines and objectives, similar to Europe's Sustainability Targets and Reference (STAR) database (European Environment Agency 1999). The database could organize ecological benchmarks by criteria that would link them to project assessments, such as geographic region, ecological function (e.g. habitat, water quality, hydrology), issue (e.g. climate change, biological diversity, invasive species), or sector (e.g. agriculture, forestry, aquaculture). The project also outlines the option of combining this database with a user interface to systematically lead the EA practitioner through questions that would identify benchmarks that are relevant to the project proposal at hand.

Although ecological benchmarks can provide effective guidance to significance decisions, this project shows that government experts and specialists are required to interpret the implications of many of the benchmarks to the determination of significance, and to apply benchmarks to particular project situations.

The research is offered as a promising approach that must now be reviewed and discussed by EA practitioners. It is recommended that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and Environment Canada consider the following next steps:

1. Organize a workshop of regional EA practitioners to review the results of this research project and to:
   • Determine the practical applicability of the candidate ecological benchmarks to project assessments;
   • Identify additional analyses or interpretation required to improve the consistency and defensibility of ecological benchmarks to EA decision making, and to ensure due diligence in applying CEAA;
   • Advise on additional sources of ecological benchmarks at the municipal, provincial and federal level, within the body of traditional ecological knowledge, and in the scientific literature for critical physical, chemical and biological thresholds beyond which wetland functions are suppressed;
   • Consider whether the ecological benchmarks product should be designed as a resource for experts/specialists within Environment Canada to use in advising EA decisions or reviewing reports, or as a resource for broad distribution to all EA practitioners;
   • Recommend the best format for transferring ecological benchmark information to practitioners to optimize direct application of benchmarks to EA issues; and
   • Discuss a process to measure the value of the ecological benchmarks product to improving the practice and results of EA.
2. Contingent on the results of the workshop, consider developing a pilot project that focuses on ecological benchmarks for wetlands. Evaluate the success of the application on wetland decisions in EA as a basis for proceeding with benchmark products focusing on grassland, forest, freshwater, marine or Arctic ecosystems.