I will, thank you.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for inviting us to share with you the important work that the Cumulative Environmental Management Association is doing in the Wood Buffalo area.
My name is Judy Smith. I am currently the vice-president of CEMA, and I'm one of the original founders of the organization, which started back in 1997. With me is John McEachern, who is the executive director of the association.
Today I will provide you with three sets of information: first, some background on our organization to help you understand what we do; second, the current focus of our work; and finally, in conclusion, some comments on the challenges we face and what we are doing to address these challenges.
I have brought a brochure with me that we will be sending you electronically. It has more information on CEMA, and also the website, which you can look at, which will give you even further information.
First, let me tell you a little bit about our background, the mandate, and the organization of CEMA.
CEMA is a registered not-for-profit non-governmental organization established in Alberta in June 2000, although the work of this group officially began in 1997. CEMA provides a forum for stakeholders to discuss and resolve environmental issues related to development.
Note that when I say “development”, I'm not talking only about oil sands development or oil and gas. It includes other types of development, such as forestry, gravel pits, and linear disturbances. More specifically, the mandate of CEMA is to make recommendations on how best to manage cumulative impacts from development, and hence protect the environment and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
These recommendations and management frameworks are based on scientifically founded limits, on the values of the regional stakeholders, and we use information from existing scientific research as well as traditional environmental knowledge. Where information for decision-making is lacking, CEMA funds experienced researchers from around the world, and frequently over several years, to fill knowledge gaps.
CEMA has made excellent progress. To date, more than 150 technical reports have been prepared and over 20 workshops have been held by CEMA, the findings of which form the basis of management recommendations that are provided to provincial governments and to industry on approaches to protect the environment.
CEMA uses consensus-based decision-making at all levels of our organization. This process results in scientifically based recommendations that are acceptable to all CEMA members.
CEMA's member board consists of 47 organizations. The organizations represent six environmental groups, nine first nation and Métis groups, seventeen industries, and fifteen government groups at the local, provincial, and federal levels.
The primary products of CEMA include recommendations on management systems and management objectives to address concerns related to air, land and reclamation, and water. Five working groups and three committees of CEMA develop these recommendations that are referred to the appropriate regulatory body for implementation. Such agencies include Alberta Environment and Alberta Sustainable Resource Development.
Now I'd like to say a few words about the work we have completed, the work that is under way, and the work that's planned at CEMA.
The regional sustainable development strategy developed by Alberta Environment in 1999 has largely guided CEMA's work plans for the Athabasca oil sands region. This initiative identified 72 priority environmental issues in the region. CEMA is responsible for addressing 35 of these issues. Other RSDS issues are being addressed through other regional committees or by the provincial government.
In 2004, CEMA established a five-year strategic plan to provide better focus and direction for our work. At this time, industry also established a five-year, $20 million budget to provide long-term funding for the establishment of regional management systems.
Since the inception of CEMA, six final recommendations and a seventh draft management framework have been forwarded to the Alberta regulators. This work has covered air missions, land disturbances and reclamation, and in-stream flow needs.
I'll list for you the six final recommendations for the oil sands regions: a trace heavy metals management framework in 2001; an acid deposition management framework in 2004; a landscape design checklist in 2004, ecosystem management tools to minimize habitat fragmentation in 2004, the third edition of the landscape capability classification for forest ecosystems in 2006, and an ozone management framework in 2006. In addition, a significant body of work and draft recommendations on an in-stream flow needs management system for the lower Athabasca River were provided to the Alberta government and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the end of 2005. This information is being used by the governments to develop a water management framework for the lower reaches of this northern river system.
As I noted, CEMA's work is accomplished through five technical working groups and through the traditional environmental knowledge committee, the communication committee, and the management committee. I won't go into the details on each of these groups. Suffice it to say, we have a significant amount of work on our table.
Key projects currently being completed include the following: developing a management system for terrestrial ecosystems and landscapes; designing a management framework for trace air contaminants; setting water quality objectives for the lower Athabasca River; developing a watershed integrity management system for the Muskeg River; developing a nitrogen management framework for eutrophication; revising existing reclamation practice guidelines; and creating new predictive models for reclamation activities, such as the design event at lakes. Some of this work is expected to be completed by 2007, while other projects will extend into 2008 and beyond. Much of the work we do in the area of reclamation best practices and guidelines will continue for several years, as new research is completed and new technologies are developed.
The traditional ecological knowledge committee was established to guide the work of CEMA in the integration and use of traditional knowledge in our baseline studies and in our management systems. We know the incorporation of this traditional knowledge is key to developing best products and will result in the strengthened recommendations for the protection of the environment.
The last topic I'd like to talk about is the challenges and opportunities for our organization. As I said in the introduction, CEMA is a non-profit organization. The strategic direction of CEMA is set by our members board and is crafted by including input from all of the members. As I'm sure you can appreciate, finding balance and consensus amongst 47 members with a wide diversity of views and interests is a challenge in itself.
I would like to speak to four challenges we are facing with our organization. They are, first, developing clarity of our mandate with other parties, and indeed within our group; revalidating environmental priorities in the oil sands region; the complexity of our work and timeframe expectations; and lastly, communication.
I'll just say a few words about each of these four items. On developing clarity of our mandate, I need to be clear here. CEMA is an organization that brings together a diversity of stakeholders, as I described a few minutes ago. The strength of our work lies in the involvement of this diverse membership in designing regional environmental management systems. We have active participation by government departments working alongside industry, environmental, and aboriginal groups. CEMA's role is complementary and supportive to the role of government and developing policies and regulation but is not meant to replace the responsibility and accountabilities of the various levels of government. CEMA makes recommendations on ways to improve existing management systems. The government is responsible for reviewing, revising if need be, and implementing and enforcing the management recommendations.
The next challenge we face is revalidating environmental priorities. The regional sustainable development strategy and the environmental priorities in the oil sands region were set back in 1999. It is now time to revisit this strategic framework, update regional environmental issues, and reset priorities in the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo. For example, groundwater is a higher-profile issue now amongst the aboriginal groups, and greenhouse gases and climate change are not being managed under CEMA's mandate. The revision of this strategy has already been recommended to Alberta Environment by CEMA.
The third challenge I'd like to speak about is the complexity of CEMA's work and the timeline expectations. The original thinking was that the RSDS issues could be addressed over a five-year period. Six years into CEMA's work schedule, we can declare that the time estimate was unrealistically short.
We also know that the work we are undertaking is paradigm-shifting. We are also dealing with groundbreaking scientific work that integrates traditional ecological or environmental knowledge. It takes time to do this right, and doing it right is extremely important.
The design of the CEMA process, with a consensus-based board of 47 members, adds to the complexity and timeline to move work forward. You may ask if it is worth the extra time. My emphatic answer would be yes. The recommendations that we have completed are built on a solid foundation of involvement by our stakeholders and on consensus. We believe the additional time taken for public discussions through the CEMA process will be time saved during the implementation phase of the recommendations by the government.
We have many pressures on our time and resources. I am pleased to say that we have tremendous support from our funding community: the oil sands industry. Many of our members, including government departments, contribute significant amounts of in-kind resources, through staff assigned to various CEMA working groups. All of our members participate, though from many of their perspectives they do not have the capacity to participate at the level they would desire.
At the same time, we experience constraints on our ability to move projects as quickly as some parties may want. To continue to increase the rate at which we develop environmental management frameworks, CEMA is implementing an improved goal-setting and performance-tracking system, providing training in project management, requesting increased participation by senior government representatives, and pursuing methods to increase levels of accountability and participation by all organizations on CEMA. In addition, the use of regulatory backstops to ensure the completion of key management systems on set timelines is being reviewed.
The last topic I'd like to speak to is communication, which is our fourth challenge. One of our shortcomings at CEMA has been our failure to communicate adequately about the extensive groundbreaking work we have done in developing regional environmental management systems for the Wood Buffalo region. To correct this important oversight, we have hired a communication officer and re-established a communication committee. We are developing a communication plan for both internal and external stakeholders.
In closing, I would like to say that CEMA is conducting paradigm-shifting work that is producing robust management recommendations that are supported by multi-stakeholders and are based on science and traditional environmental knowledge. CEMA has a pivotal role in designing regional world-class management systems to address the cumulative effects of development and to protect the air, water, and land in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the brief from CEMA.