Collective impacts: using systems thinking in project-level assessment

ABSTRACT

Systems thinking is a way to better assess the collective effects of impacts arising from an individual project. Organizational silos have led to individual project-specific impacts being assessed in isolation, often ignoring the systemic interactions between impacts from the same project. This myopic approach does not properly capture the interrelated collective and systemic impacts of individual developments. This paper explores the problem, looks at addressing it through systems thinking, provides practical examples, and reflects on what this means for impact assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Systems thinking
• collective impacts
• silos
• integration
• socio-ecological systems
• indigenous
• holistic

Acknowledgments

This paper describes my perspectives largely based on my EIA experiences with the Review Board, but my views are not necessarily shared by the Review Board. I am grateful to Robert Gibson for discussions on sustainability and systemic well being, to Mark Cliffe-Phillips for discussions on systems thinking under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, and to Bill Ross for thoughtfully reviewing the draft paper. Any errors are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Examples of this model of linear pathway abound in proponents’ predictions of their projects’ impacts, such as in Dominion Diamond Corp. 2014, (p. 6–13); Fortune Minerals Ltd 2011, (p. 6–11); Indian and Northern Affairs Canada [INAC] 2010, (p. 3–12); and De Beers Canada 2010, (p. 6–13 to 6–15).

2. Morrison-Saunders and Bailey (2000) observed such a risk over 20 years ago in a review of the EIA process of Western Australia. They state, with respect to ecological components, that ‘[t]here is a danger that, by breaking each proposal down into discrete parts and assigning environmental objectives to them, it may not adequately represent overall environmental functions … There is a need for the evaluation stage in EIA to consider the overall performance of a particular proposal, not just the constituent parts alone’ (p. 270). This conclusion does not appear to have widely adopted in EIA practice in the two decades since.

3. The Indigenous interconnected worldview was poetically described, allegedly by Susquamish Chief Seattle (Seathl) in 1854, saying ‘All things are connected … Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself’ (Kaiser 1987, p 527). For more recent examples, please see (Alberta Education 2005, p. 12); (Indigenous Corporate Training Inc 2017; Kaminski 2013; and; First Nations Health Authority 2021). Zen Buddhism teaches a similar worldview (e.g. Rahula 1974; Allendorf 2018).

4. The same act says that in an EA the Review Board will decide whether ‘the development’ is likely to cause significant adverse impacts on the environment (128 (1)). This wording suggests that the test pertains to the development as a whole – the test is not about ‘components of the development’ – and therefore should include collective impacts as described here.

5. Indigenous communities elsewhere share similar struggles. Roche et al. said that for Indigenous communities in Papua New Guinea impact assessment ‘is about living with the impacts, individually and collectively [emphasis added], perhaps over generations … ’.

6. Meadows (2008 p. 5) describes the advantages of using diagrams instead of words for describing systems, noting that ‘(w)ords and sentences must, by necessity, come only one at a time in a linear, logical order. Systems happen all at once. They are connected not just in one direction, but in many directions simultaneously … Pictures work for this language better than words, because you can see all parts of a picture at once’.

7. The predicted socio-economic impacts included reduced hunting and trapping success, less harvesting, more alcohol and drug use, increased safety risks for young women, and increased pressure on health and social service providers, and greater risk of vehicle accidents and emergency response challenges. (Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board [MVEIRB] 2018 p. 92–107).

8. The predicted impacts on boreal caribou included direct habitat loss, indirect habitat loss of effective habitat from sensory disturbance, barriers to movement and habitat fragmentation, increased predation and more hunting from increased access (p. 179–180).

9. Meadows (2008 p. 145–165) identifies leverage points in systems where interventions may be used to deliberately influence system functioning. These may be applicable in impact assessment as ways to mitigate impacts on systems. Meadows’ leverage points include introducing incentives, disincentives and constraints; balancing and reinforcing feedback loops; increasing buffers; increasing information flows for adaptive management; and, identifying new goals for the larger system.

10. The same approach has been applied to cumulative effects, and in this case included both cumulative effects and collective effects. Ross (1998, p. 274) describes the how the range of mitigative options to manage cumulative effects can be broader than for impacts that are not cumulative.