3.7 Assessment


Assessment reviews available knowledge on value health and compares this to value goals. It often uses indicators and thresholds and leads to conclusions that direct appropriate responses. Knowledge comes in many forms, often from monitoring. Assessment considers past health, anticipated health, and trends. Cumulative effects assessment will inform the Commission’s conformity determinations. The Parties will need to work with YESAB and those involved in other processes to integrate cumulative effects assessment on an ongoing basis. They must do this as more framework components become available. In the meantime, decision-makers will use the best available information on value health in the context of value goals. They will also use development footprint indicator levels relative to LMU thresholds to inform conformity determinations specifically, and project assessment more broadly.

Effective assessment requires collaboration between knowledge-holders, recommendation bodies, and decision-makers. Knowledge-holders use indicator data (which can come in many forms) to inform expert opinion about value health and how it relates to thresholds. Decision-makers and recommendation bodies rely on these knowledge-holders for advice, and provide them with any tools and information they need to carry out an assessment. Assessment results in a conclusion about the value health range.

Assessment of cumulative effects and value health should be integrated into individual project assessments and broad-scale and long-term work, like Plan Review or legislative change. The Commission conducts a specific form of assessment when it uses cumulative effects considerations to inform conformity determinations. Projects that are likely to result in a critical threshold for any priority value within an LMU do not conform to the Plan. More holistic considerations of value health (beyond the critical threshold window) may also inform conformity.

YESAA (s. 42.1.d) requires assessors to consider the significance of cumulative effects when evaluating a project. Both the Commission, through considering cumulative effects in conformity determinations, and the Parties, through including considerations of cumulative effects on value health in their comment submissions, support YESAB in fulfilling its mandate.

Assessment should consider the past and present status of a value, and anticipate effects. This is important in predicting when thresholds may be reached (in either a positive or negative direction), and contributes to future certainty. Scenario analysis is a tool to anticipate effects, and should consider:

  • Climate change predictions and consequent anticipated changes in environmental, socio-cultural, and/or socio-economic factors.
  • Proposed or permitted projects that have yet to be developed.
  • Anticipated positive outcomes of current and proposed activities.
  • Anticipated or potential political or legislative changes.
  • Trends in industries, economies, and other aspects of society that are relevant to the value.
  • Trends in related values.

Importantly, these scenarios should go beyond considering levels of potential development or disturbance. They should anticipate both positive and negative cumulative effects, as well as growth and degrowth possibilities, and consider interconnected values. They should be undertaken with the aim of finding mutually reinforcing benefits instead of trade-offs between values.

Assessment of Values and Development Footprint Indicators

While many framework elements will take time to develop, the Parties and the Commission will begin to carry out cumulative effects assessment immediately through a values lens and using the development footprint indicators. In this process, the Parties have primary responsibility for values and the Commission for development footprint (see also Section 3.6). The conclusions of assessments will inform conformity determinations and direct management responses.

These assessments, and any relevant information that feeds into them, will help inform the participation of all bodies involved in project assessment. All governments and regulatory bodies active in the Region are encouraged to integrate cumulative effects assessment using these initial tools into their decision-making as soon as possible.

To assess cumulative effects to value health in the absence of indicators, the Parties will consider available information on value health in the context of value goals to guide their decisions. For example, the Government of Yukon periodically publishes caribou range assessments that include herd demographic data – for example, calf recruitment and adult sex ratio.

Until the Parties codevelop indicators for caribou, the health of herds as reflected in these data, relative to the caribou goal of “Healthy and resilient caribou herd populations that grow towards historic levels”, should be a prime consideration in decision-making. Considering a value’s goal(s) and health during project development and assessment uses the wide range of ongoing monitoring occurring in the Region.

Cumulative effects assessments will influence conformity determinations in the following ways:

  • Any project whose proposed development would lead to a critical threshold being crossed for either development footprint indicator does not conform with the Plan.
  • Any project whose projected effects are likely to severely threaten a value’s health, as defined by value goals, does not conform to the Plan.

The Commission’s assessment responsibilities will also include periodic calculations related to reclamation. The reclamation framework (Section 3.11) provides a mechanism to adjust calculated surface disturbance and calculated linear feature density values as reclamation proceeds.

1 Calculated surface disturbance and calculated linear feature density represent the published surface disturbance (SD) and linear feature density (LFD) values for an LMU, minus any reclamation under the reclamation framework (Section 3.11). The calculated values are used to determine LMU status for development footprint thresholds.

Implementation Actions
  1. Develop standard estimates of surface disturbance and linear feature density for different types of Class 1 and 2 activities to reduce burden on proponents of smaller projects (Government of Yukon).
  2. To enable cumulative effects assessment during project assessment, regularly update and publicly share:

    • Value health status in the context of value goal(s) (see Section 3.3) (Parties).
    • Development footprint indicator status (see Section 3.6) (Commission).
  3. During project assessments, assess cumulative effects to value health by:

    • Identifying value health status for LMU priority values and updating if necessary.
    • Evaluating how/if the proponent has considered priority values and their health, and applied the mitigation hierarchy (Section 2.2.3) in a way that reflects an understanding of priority values and potential impacts of their project.
    • Evaluating if the project is likely to cause the health of any priority value to depart significantly from its goal(s).
    • Considering other existing and proposed projects and activities in the area.

    Values identified for indicator development and those with known health concerns should be considered to a higher standard than values that are healthy and stable.

  4. During project assessments, assess cumulative effects as measured by development footprint indicators by determining the anticipated change in development footprint for the LMU based on the proposed project, and evaluating if the project is likely to result in any threshold being crossed (Commission).
  5. If assessment of monitoring data shows a sudden or large change in a value, indicator, or stressor, the Parties should evaluate the ramifications for related values and collaborate to determine appropriate responses. Responses may include Plan amendments.

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