Certainly, thank you.
There were a lot of questions asked in that one series of questions at the beginning, but I will say this. I think there's very much a general consensus among our members that on the air, water, and land side we're actually not near the levels or thresholds where emissions or water withdrawals, for example, would damage the environment.
The intent of CEMA is to design management systems for the future that will prevent damage either to the ecosystems or to the air or to the water. We are being proactive before the level of development would reach those management objectives or thresholds. I'm sure everyone around our CEMA table would support that statement, that we are being proactive to set up those management systems before we do have major damage in the region. I think that's a really important point that you need to remember.
I would also say that we are not decision-makers; we are helping to provide the tools for the decision-makers. So we are providing management recommendations that would be translated into policies or regulations that could be used by regulators as more development comes on board.
We do not have within our mandate right now the issue to address CO2 and climate change, but it is one of the issues on the RSDS strategy that I talked about. When we go through our clarification of mandate and reprioritization of environmental issues in the Wood Buffalo region, that is one that may come to a higher profile and be set as a priority.
The last thing I would say is that when cumulative effects assessments are done in environmental impact assessments in the region, they do take into account all the projects in the region. You were talking about a “death by a thousand cuts” concept, and this is well known and it's being addressed at CEMA by setting in place these management systems. But when cumulative effects are done within environmental impact assessments for various developments in the region, we do look at not only existing projects and the applications but proposed projects in the region.
So we are looking at the maximum conservative levels of damage that could be caused to the environment, and CEMA is responsible now to help set the management systems and then provide those to the government to implement.