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Dieser Artikel geht der kritischen Frage der kumulativen Auswirkungen der industriellen Entwicklung auf die Landnutzung indigener Völker im Nordosten Albertas, Kanada, nach. Es identifiziert vier Schwerpunkte: die Unzulänglichkeiten konventioneller Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfungen (UVP) bei der Berücksichtigung indigener Belange, die Integration indigenen Wissens (IK) mit Simulationsmodellen, die Entwicklung eines Instruments zur Bewertung kumulativer Auswirkungen und die Fallstudie der Fort McKay Métis Nation (FMMN). Der Artikel enthüllt, dass konventionelle Umweltverträglichkeitsprüfungen häufig nicht das volle Ausmaß der Auswirkungen auf indigene Gemeinschaften erfassen, da sie sich nur auf die Auswirkungen auf Projektebene und unzureichende räumliche und zeitliche Skalen konzentrieren. Indem sie IK mit Simulationsmodellen kombinieren, entwickeln die Autoren ein Werkzeug, das die kumulativen Auswirkungen auf Skalen bewertet, die indigene Perspektiven widerspiegeln, und dabei eine natürliche Ausgangslinie und ein regionales Studiengebiet heranzieht. Die Fallstudie des FMMN veranschaulicht, wie dieses Instrument eingesetzt werden kann, um die Auswirkungen der industriellen Entwicklung auf indigene Landnutzungsmöglichkeiten zu bewerten. Die Ergebnisse zeigen einen signifikanten Rückgang der zugänglichen Gebiete für indigene Landnutzung aufgrund der industriellen Expansion und der Einrichtung von Schutzgebieten. Der Artikel schließt mit dem Plädoyer für eine Verschiebung hin zu regionaler Planung, die die indigene Führung und Prioritäten vollständig berücksichtigt, um die kumulativen Effekte angemessen anzugehen und indigene Rechte, Kultur und Lebensweise zu wahren.
KI-Generiert
Diese Zusammenfassung des Fachinhalts wurde mit Hilfe von KI generiert.
Abstract
The capacity of environmental impact assessment to adequately consider cumulative effects on Indigenous territories in Canada is limited by several deficiencies, including the problematic use of recent or current state as a baseline, adopting a narrow spatial and temporal scope, and marginalizing Indigenous knowledge and experiences. The result is an environmental assessment process that strains Indigenous community resources yet fails to address concerns. Using the Fort McKay Métis Nation (FMMN) of northeastern Alberta as a case study, Indigenous knowledge and simulation modeling were brought together in pursuit of a more comprehensive assessment of cumulative effects on Indigenous land use. Focus group meetings and interviews established that the ability of FMMN members to hunt, fish, trap, and harvest in their territory has rapidly diminished in recent decades, a finding also documented by a simulation that reconstructed landscape changes occurring over the past 120 years across a 103,000 km2 region. The direct footprint from industrial activities, negligible until the 1970s, has since expanded to over 5000 km2, largely due to oil sands and forestry development. Although impacts to moose, fisher, and low-bush cranberry habitat have been relatively minor, opportunity for Indigenous land use has declined substantially due to the effects of industrial footprint, protected areas, and military sites on the accessibility of the land. To facilitate application of this strategic perspective to project assessment, a web application was developed that allows FMMN to assess impacts of development proposals in combination with other past and potential future development relative to a natural baseline.
Introduction
In Canada, cumulative effects from industrial development pose an ongoing challenge for Indigenous1 communities, impacting the land and natural resources they rely on and affecting their ability to exercise their rights and maintain their way of life. Section 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982, provides protection for Indigenous rights to use the land, recognizing that the inherent land-use practices of Indigenous peoples are necessary to maintain their culture, livelihood, and way of life, particularly in connection with their traditional territories (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms 1982). These protections are further reinforced by Canada’s passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (UNDRIP Act) in 2021, committing to aligning federal law with UNDRIP (United Nations General Assembly 2007). Additionally, the Impact Assessment Act (IAA), passed in 2019—and amended in 2024 to comply with a Supreme Court ruling—requires federal assessments of development projects to consider potential impacts on Indigenous rights and on the ability of Indigenous peoples to sustain cultural practices tied to the land (Impact Assessment Agency of Canada 2025). However, despite these legal safeguards, the environmental impact assessment (EIA, or environmental assessment, EA) process generally fails to adequately address the needs of Indigenous communities (Adams et al. 2023; Eckert et al. 2020), and encroachments on Indigenous lands and infringements upon Indigenous rights persist (Muir 2022).
The failure of EIAs to address Indigenous concerns is at least in part due to a narrow scope that focuses on project-level impacts as opposed to accumulating regional effects that influence the capacity of the ecosystem to support Indigenous land use (Hegmann 2021). A common structure used in EIAs is to compare a “base case”—the described state of the current landscape and environmental or social parameters of interest—with an “assessment case”—the predicted state of the landscape and these parameters if a proposed project were to proceed (Powter and Johnson 2021). In this structure, each individual proposed project is evaluated against environmental conditions occurring immediately prior to its development. Most Indigenous communities do not view the EIA base case as a suitable baseline against which the cumulative effects of industrial development can be compared. Instead, Indigenous communities assess effects against times in which the landscape was less altered by development, such as a pre-colonial time period, or at the time of signing a Treaty2 (Muir 2022). The EIA base case does not provide any information on these earlier time periods, and in this way may under-represent actual cumulative effects. Conventional EIA practice utilizes a shifting baseline approach (Pauly 1995) that fails to provide appropriate reference points when assessing loss and change. There is an abundance of knowledge of past environmental conditions in Indigenous communities, but as Pitcher (2001) discusses, the “Accounts of former great abundance are discounted as anecdotal, methodologically naïve, or are simply forgotten,” which contributes to the shifting baseline syndrome.
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Another shortcoming of EIAs is that spatial scales are often inadequate for understanding cumulative effects, particularly across an Indigenous Nation’s territory. Regional study areas used in EIAs are often physically based (e.g., watersheds) and narrowly scoped, but generally do not cover the majority of a Nation’s territory. This scale discrepancy is particularly challenging when assessing large proposed industrial developments, in that a recurring and prevalent argument against significant infringement on Indigenous rights is that Indigenous peoples can “go elsewhere” to practice their land stewardship and rights. However, smaller spatial scales used in assessment do not support the evaluation of whether there are remaining “elsewhere” places to go that are capable of supporting these practices in the face of ecological degradation and loss of access due to forms of land tenure such as private ownership (O’Faircheallaigh and MacDonald 2022).
EIAs also present other unique challenges for Indigenous communities, which often marginalize their knowledge and perspectives. In many Indigenous territories, the large number and ongoing nature of proposed development projects strain community resources and force communities into a reactionary position, particularly due to short timeframes that are often imposed by industry or the regulator (Kwon et al. 2024; O’Faircheallaigh 2017). Additionally, the EIA process continues to be driven by Western science and colonial frameworks, which rely on narrow and reductionist conventions that limit acknowledgment and inclusion of Indigenous knowledge (IK) (Mantyka-Pringle et al. 2017; Tulloch et al. 2024). Here, we use the term IK to refer to the cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs, both handed down through generations and evolving by adaptive processes (Davidson-Hunt and Berkes 2003; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2013). Western approaches to EIAs are not designed to be meaningfully informed by Indigenous perspectives, often excluding critical information such as the values, knowledge, and concerns of local community members (Eckert et al. 2020). As Kwon et al. (2024) note, the agencies conducting these assessments are not trained to adequately gather and promote the knowledge of Indigenous rights-holders. Meanwhile, Indigenous-led assessments frequently struggle to secure adequate funding, and their findings are ultimately absorbed into an imposed regulatory system that does not allow them to exercise free, prior, and informed consent3 (FPIC, Eckert et al. 2020). As a result, Indigenous perspectives are limited to the minimum requirements for completing the EIA process.
In collaboration with the Fort McKay Métis Nation (FMMN) of northeastern Alberta, this case study explored a shift in emphasis from project-level impacts to regional cumulative effects assessment in order to increase the relevance of EIA to Indigenous concerns. The FMMN are Métis people descended from the Athabasca River Regional Métis Community and are part of an extensive interconnected group of Métis communities in northeastern Alberta and northwestern Saskatchewan (Human Environment Group 2018). The community has a long history of subsistence land use, and many FMMN members still exercise traditional practices that are integral to the community’s culture and way of life. FMMN members have Indigenous rights that include rights to hunt, trap, fish, and gather resources, yet changes to the quality of and access to the environment and resources due to the cumulative effects of industrial development are significantly impacting members’ ability to practice these rights (Integral Ecology Group 2023). The ability for FMMN members to continue exercising their rights is contingent on understanding and addressing cumulative impacts and safeguarding what remains of the suitable land base in the region. Maintaining intact subsistence areas is important not only for procuring resources but also for sharing knowledge, values, culture, language, and traditional skills with the next generation.
The objectives of this research were to: (1) bring together IK and simulation modeling to assess cumulative impacts from development on the opportunities for FMMN members to access the land and resources, exercise their rights, practice their culture, and maintain their way of life on their ancestral lands; (2) assess cumulative impacts at spatial and temporal scales commensurate with Indigenous perspectives through the use of a natural (i.e., not involving human impacts) baseline and a regional study area that captures traditional land use areas; and, (3) develop a cumulative effects assessment tool that FMMN can use to respond effectively to proposed development projects on the community’s ancestral lands.
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Methods
To make cumulative effects assessment more relevant to FMMN members, the following activities were pursued: community focus groups and interviews were conducted to understand cumulative impacts from the perspective of FMMN members; landscape change across the traditional territory over the past 120 years was assessed and ecological indicators were compared to a natural baseline; the reconstructed historical landscape trajectory was applied to explore proportional changes in Indigenous land use opportunity; and a tool was developed to enable FMMN to assess proposed development projects in a cumulative effects context.
Community Engagement and Qualitative Data Analysis
Research protocols were reviewed and approved by staff from the McKay Métis Sustainability Centre (MMSC)—the consultation arm of the FMMN community. Focus groups and one-on-one interviews were accepted as culturally appropriate and were held in Fort McKay with twelve FMMN community members between September 2022 and January 2023. The participants were selected by MMSC staff to represent a range of ages and genders, and members’ knowledge of community land uses and relationships with the land in the region. Focus group meetings and interviews were conducted using a semi-structured format with open-ended questions (Jamshed 2014)4 to encourage participants to share their perspectives and to explore topics through conversation (Patton 2002). The goal of the meetings and interviews was to provide an opportunity for members to share knowledge and experience related to: (1) historical and current land use in the study area, and (2) challenges members face when accessing and using the land. By “land use” we are referring not only to Indigenous harvesting activities (e.g., hunting, trapping, fishing, plant gathering) but also the connections to the land and resources that connects with culture, identity, wellbeing, and way of life, including but not limited to ceremonies, customs, governance, trade, and transmission of stories, language, and knowledge. To FMMN people, land is an inclusive reference to air, water, plants, animals, and landforms. Participants were also invited to complete a quantitative survey to provide additional details on how various development features impact their land use, which features they avoid, and the distances they stay away from these features due to concerns about contamination, safety, and other factors. The results of the survey (in addition to provincial hunting and trapping regulations and community input during focus groups and interviews) helped to inform the development of an Indigenous land use accessibility framework for landscape modeling that specified areas on the landscape that restrict Indigenous land uses, including development footprints with distance setbacks, private and leased land, and protected areas. The meetings and interviews were conducted by two researchers and were documented using audio and video recordings, Google Earth, and note-taking. The recordings were transcribed and then analyzed in Dedoose (Dedoose version 9.2.12) using a qualitative content analysis approach to categorize focus group and interview data into broad themes related to the key topics, as well as specific emerging sub-themes (Graneheim and Lundman 2004; Fereday and Muir-Cochrane 2006).
Landscape Analysis
Landscape analysis for the project was completed using ALCES simulation software that has been used for cumulative effects assessment in multiple Canadian jurisdictions (see Carlson et al. 2019; 2022; Rempel et al. 1997). ALCES operates by manipulating raster layers to represent the consequences of development, natural disturbance, and climate change to land cover and indicators such as wildlife habitat affected by land cover. Analyses can represent three types of time periods: (1) natural to estimate baseline conditions; (2) backcast to assess impacts of historical development trajectories; and (3) forecast to project plausible future landscape dynamics and associated impacts. This paper focuses on the natural and backcast time periods. A new version of ALCES, referred to as ALCES Flow, was used for the project to take advantage of: (a) cloud-based computing and massive parallel processing to run detailed, long-term simulations at high spatial resolution; and (b) a customizable user interface and workflow to deliver a simulation tool that can be used by MMSC staff and FMMN members who may not have a computer modeling background. In addition to the customized tool for Indigenous cumulative effects assessment, other unique aspects of the project compared to previous published studies using ALCES include: the assessment of how restricted accessibility to the land and degraded ecosystem capacity combine to reduce Indigenous land use opportunity; and the comprehensive reconstruction of historical development patterns to assess degradation of Indigenous land use opportunity over the past 120 years.
The analysis first required the preparation of spatial data in raster format representing current land cover and forest age. The study area for the analysis was a 103,000 km2 region in northeastern Alberta comprised of hydrologic unit code level 6 watersheds (Alberta Environment and Protected Areas 2023) that encompass existing traditional land use sites and priority areas, as identified by the FMMN community (Fig. 1). A synthesized current land cover dataset was assembled using anthropogenic footprints from the 2021 Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) Wall-to-Wall Human Footprint Inventory (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program 2023); wetland features from the 2018 ABMI Wetland Inventory (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute 2021; DeLancey et al. 2020); water features from the Base Waterbody Polygon dataset (Alberta Environment and Parks 2022), and natural land cover from the 2020 Land Cover of Canada dataset (Natural Resources Canada 2022). To accommodate the Land Cover of Canada dataset, the resolution of the assembled raster dataset was 30 m, which provided substantial detail relative to the size of the study area (over 100 million pixels). The 30 m resolution was also compatible with the habitat model coefficients, which equate to the probability of finding an animal’s tracks on a 1 km snow-track transect or the probability of the plant species occurring in a 50 × 50 m quadrat (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute 2017b). Assembly of the land cover raster layer was achieved by converting the vector-based human footprint, wetland, and water feature datasets to a 6 m raster grid, sequentially merging the features using a scheme that prioritized development features and more detailed land cover data, such as the wetland inventory, and resampling to the 30 m grid. Although the data assembly approach has the potential to introduce disagreement in footprint extent between the synthesized raster land cover dataset and the vector source data (i.e., human footprint inventory), comparison for a test area indicated that the difference in coverage was only 0.5%. Linear footprints, such as roads, were not included in the land cover dataset but instead were tracked separately as line segments because their width is typically less than the resolution of the raster dataset (30 m). A 30 m forest age dataset was generated from historical wildfire (Canadian Forest Service 2024) and timber harvest (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute 2023; Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute and Alberta Human Footprint Monitoring Program 2022) data. Forest not overlapped by wildfire or timber harvest, according to the historical data, was assigned an age using a national forest age dataset (Maltman et al. 2023). The 30 m resolution of the data and subsequent analysis is suited to cumulative effects assessment, where the focus is less on details of an individual development project but rather on the consequences of multiple disturbances affecting a larger region, such as a watershed.
Fig. 1
The study area and location of the Fort McKay Métis Nation community
A natural land cover dataset was derived by replacing the human footprint in the synthesized land cover dataset with natural land cover. Small-scale footprints were reclassified according to the dominant terrestrial land cover type among adjacent pixels. Larger footprints were reclassified based on multiple sources, listed here from highest to lowest priority: the ABMI Wetland Inventory, the Base Waterbody Polygon dataset, an older version (2010) of the Land Cover of Canada dataset (Natural Resources Canada 2018), the Phase 1 forest inventory prepared between 1949 and 1956 (Government of Alberta, Environment and Parks 2025), and the dominant natural land cover type by natural subregion (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute 2017b). Natural forest demography was derived from natural fire return interval estimates and the negative exponential distribution (Van Wagner 1978). The average natural fire return interval was 65 years for most of the study area, except for a northern portion, which had a fire return interval of 75 years (Andison 2019). At the local scale, the fire return interval varied to reflect differences in fire selectivity among forest types, with coniferous forest being the most flammable, followed by mixed forest and then deciduous (Bernier et al. 2016). The natural land cover dataset was used as a baseline when assessing the amount of change caused by development in the region.
Starting with the current land cover dataset, the backcast simulation removed footprints based on their year of origin to create land cover maps at decadal increments back through time to c. 1900. Footprints were replaced by land cover according to the natural land cover dataset. ABMI’s human footprint inventory provides the year of origin for numerous footprints, but has limited data for farmland, settlements, roads, pipelines, and seismic lines, necessitating the use of additional sources of information. The AAFC Semi-Decadal Land Use (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 2021) and Canada Land Use Inventory (Department of Regional Economic Expansion 1970) datasets were used to estimate settlement and agricultural footprints existing as of c. 2000 and c. 1970, respectively. When historical land cover inventories or year of origin data were not available, agricultural and settlement trajectories were derived from historical population and agriculture censuses available at decadal intervals. Census data were available at the resolution of census subdivisions, a spatial unit analogous to counties; an exception is agricultural censuses in 1900 and 1910, which were available at the coarser census division scale. Within each census subdivision, the settlement footprint was assumed to have expanded outwards at the rate of population growth. Farmland was assumed to have expanded at the rate of improved land and to have prioritized higher quality farmland, as assessed using the Canada Land Inventory agricultural capability layer (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 2013) as well as slope and vegetation indices (Simonson 2002). The year of construction of roads was based on road year of origin data available from the human footprint inventory, except for the region’s most important highway (Highway 63), which was constructed in 1962 (Klinkenbery 2012). When road year of origin data were not available, the origin date of roads was based on that of the oldest anthropogenic footprint (e.g., cutblock, well site, acreage, etc.) along a road segment. Similarly, the origin year of pipeline and seismic line segments was based on the oldest energy sector footprint (e.g., well sites) located along the segment. The need to make assumptions regarding the year of origin of some footprints, especially for early portions of the backcast, is such that the backcast is more suited for representing regional shifts in landscape composition and indicator performance through time as opposed to capturing detailed spatiotemporal patterns.
Indicators
The effect of natural and backcast land cover on fisher (Pekania pennanti), moose (Alces alces), and low-bush cranberry (Viburnum edule) habitat was assessed using relative abundance models estimated for Alberta’s forested region by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (2017a). These species were selected because they are harvested by community members, as expressed during community interviews. According to the ABMI models, relative abundance for mammals equates to the probability of finding an animal’s tracks on a 1 km snow-track transect 5 days after snowfall. For low-bush cranberry, relative abundance equates to the probability of the species occurring in a 50 × 50 m quadrat. Model coefficients differ between cover types, forest ages, forest origins (fire vs. harvest), footprint types, and coverage by vegetated and non-vegetated linear footprints. In the case of coniferous forest and some wetland types, the land cover types appearing in the relative abundance models were more detailed than the classification available from the land cover inventory used in the analysis (Land Cover of Canada). To address this, forest type and canopy cover information from a lower resolution (250 m) forest attribute dataset (Beaudoin et al. 2017) was applied to differentiate the coniferous forest into non-pine upland, pine, and black spruce types, and to differentiate swamp and fen into treed and non-treed types. When wetland could not be differentiated by type, for example, in the case of historical land cover inventories such as Phase 1, the average habitat coefficient across wetland types was applied. The resulting generalization of pre-disturbance wetland contributed inaccuracy of natural baseline habitat estimates. However, because habitat coefficients for wetland tended to be higher than those for footprint, regardless of the wetland or footprint type, the inaccuracy did not affect the conclusion that conversion of wetlands to footprint causes habitat loss.
More generally, the greater uncertainty associated with pre-disturbance as compared to current land cover implies that habitat estimates for earlier time periods are also more uncertain. The uncertainty was relatively low for small footprints (e.g., well sites, roads, pipelines, and seismic lines) because pre-disturbance land cover type could be assigned based on adjacent natural land cover. Estimates of pre-disturbance land cover for larger footprints, on the other hand, were informed by older land cover inventories if available, and otherwise were assigned based on a natural subregion’s dominant land cover. Older inventories, such as Phase 1, may underestimate wetlands due to their low resolution and focus on merchantable forest. As a result, natural baseline habitat may be underestimated for moose given the species’ positive association with wetlands. Assigning pre-disturbance land cover based on a natural subregion’s dominant land cover type, on the other hand, likely resulted in an exaggerated abundance of black spruce in the pre-disturbance landscape because black spruce was the dominant land cover in most natural subregions. An implication is that the natural habitat may be underestimated because black spruce has low habitat value for the three species assessed. Another uncertainty affecting natural habitat estimates was forest age. Natural forest age distribution was derived using natural fire return intervals from Andison (2019) for portions of the Boreal Plains that overlap the study area. Given that the Boreal Plains is identified as having a mixed severity fire regime (Andison 2019), the fire return interval estimates likely incorporate stand-maintaining fires. An implication is that the natural abundance of older forest may be underestimated because our application of natural fire return intervals assumed fires to be stand-initiating. As a result, natural baseline habitat may be underestimated for species that prefer older seral stages, such as moose and low-bush cranberry.
To determine the opportunity for Indigenous land use, the net land base accessible to FMMN members was calculated by developing an Indigenous land use accessibility framework to identify areas on the landscape that restrict Indigenous land uses, including development footprints with distance setbacks, private and leased land, and protected areas. These types of lands restrict Indigenous land uses by reducing access to the land, prohibiting certain activities, and/or by otherwise making members feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. The accessibility framework was developed based on results from the quantitative survey, community feedback during focus group meetings and interviews, and provincial regulations for hunting (Government of Alberta 2021, 2023a) and trapping (Government of Alberta 2023b). Based on regulations, military sites, as well as the following types of protected areas, were inaccessible for trapping and gathering: ecological reserves, national parks, and wilderness areas. When assessing accessibility for historical decades, protected areas and military sites were only inaccessible if the protected area or military site was established at the time of the historical decade. Areas inaccessible for hunting based on regulations included those areas inaccessible for trapping and gathering, as well as: additional types of protected areas (provincial parks, provincial recreation areas); areas within 180 m of settlements, rural residential, mines, industrial facilities, and well sites estimated to be active based on an age of ten years or less; and private land as estimated based on agricultural land and recreational properties such as golf courses. Based on feedback from community members, the following types of areas were considered inaccessible due to safety concerns: areas within 100 m of farmland due to potential harassment by non-Indigenous landowners, and areas within 100 m of roads. In addition to areas that were excluded due to regulations and safety concerns, the following areas were assumed to have 50% accessibility based on community concerns related to noise, industrial emissions, health concerns, and dust: within 1000 m of mines, industrial facilities, active wells, settlements, rural residential, recreation sites, and paved roads; within 500 m of unpaved roads and transmission lines; the direct footprint of aggregate pits and inactive wells; and wilderness provincial parks. Wilderness provincial parks permit hunting but are rarely used by community members due to challenges related to limited motorized access, uncertainty about regulations, and potential conflict with other types of park use. These areas were assumed to be 50% accessible in recognition of variability among community members regarding the degree to which the areas are used for Indigenous land use.
The assumption of 50% accessibility where participant responses varied implies a degree of uncertainty in the accessibility estimate, but is appropriate given that Indigenous land uses are often context-dependent, with tolerances shifting due to immediate needs within families and the community for food and plant medicines. Two other sources of uncertainty are also worth noting. First, due to time and budget constraints, we were unable to gather detailed community feedback for every type of anthropogenic footprint in the land cover data. As a result, we made some generalized assumptions by grouping similar footprint types (e.g., mines, wells, industrial facilities, settlements) and applying uniform setback distances. Where community feedback was unclear or unavailable, we did not add a distance setback under the conservative assumption that people can use the land adjacent to the edge of that footprint if it is accessible. Second, participants explained that they frequently encounter new physical barriers such as gates, fences, and “no trespassing” signs, which hinder access to important hunting areas on Crown land that had previously been accessible. In some cases, undeveloped industry leases are fenced, and access roads are gated, forcing members to take longer, alternative routes or deterring access altogether. While permission to access some areas can be obtained, members say that the process is often cumbersome and discourages use. This study did not account for these types of barriers and newly inaccessible areas due to the absence of relevant data, likely resulting in an overestimation of accessible land. Future research should involve on-the-ground verification with participants, but this was not feasible in the present study due to time and budget constraints.
Once the inaccessible areas in the study area were determined, the net land base accessible to FMMN members was calculated as the proportion of land cover that is not overlapped by inaccessible areas. Indigenous land use opportunity for moose, fisher, and cranberry harvest was then calculated by multiplying each species’ habitat index by accessibility, based on the rationale that the capacity for community members to practice activities on the landscape is affected by the status of the habitat and accessibility of the landscape to members.
Cumulative Effects Assessment Tool
The natural and backcast analyses assessed cumulative effects over large areas and an extended period. To facilitate the application of this strategic perspective to assess cumulative effects when responding to proposed projects, a web application was developed that integrates simulation outputs with information about proposed development projects. The application (hereafter referred to as the CEA tool) applies a streamlined workflow to make the tool accessible to those without a background in geospatial analysis and simulation modeling. Using the CEA tool, an analysis is prepared by: (1) selecting a study area such as a watershed; (2) populating the study area with current land cover and existing footprint data; and (3) assigning spatial footprint layers from one or more development proposals. When an analysis is run, the land cover data are modified by incorporating the proposed project footprints, and indicator models are applied to generate maps illustrating the response of indicators such as wildlife habitat and Indigenous land use opportunity. Indicator relationships are also applied to the natural and current landscapes without proposed projects to estimate natural baselines and the current state. A web map allows the user to toggle between the natural and developed time periods to view impacts, a chart displays average indicator status relative to the natural baseline, and maps and charts can be exported for use in reports.
Results
Community feedback shared during this research indicated that ancestors of FMMN community members lived on a landscape in a mostly pre-industrial setting where natural resources were abundant, and where people were able to hunt, trap, fish, and gather plants widely throughout the region, with few restrictions and according to their own customs and laws. However, community members explained that in the decades following the onset of intensive industrial development in the region (i.e., 1960s–1970s), the community has experienced a rapidly diminishing land base that has become less accessible and restricts opportunities for members to exercise their rights, practice their culture, and maintain their way of life. Table 1 provides a summary of the major themes and sub-themes that emerged from analysis of the focus group and interview data with respect to the impacts of cumulative industrial development. It is important to note that this summary does not capture the full scope of challenges that FMMN community members confront when using the land.
Table 1
Summary of key themes that emerged from the analysis of focus group and interview data
Key challenges
Related effects
Impacts on members
1. Increased industrial emissions and dust
- reduced quality of air, water, soil, and harvestable resources
- increased rates of human health ailments
- travel on the land is more dangerous and unpredictable
- negative experiences on the land and reduced enjoyment
- reduced hunting and harvesting opportunities
- increased avoidance of harvesting areas and activities
- members must travel further and spend more money to achieve harvesting success
2. Increased physical disturbances
- land clearing and fragmentation leads to loss of harvesting areas and other cultural sites
- loss of natural habitat leads to decreased plant and animal populations
- increased development and contamination leads to reduced quality and quantity of plants, animals, and water
3. Increased sensory disturbances
- noise, traffic, odors, and light pollution affect wildlife habitat and behavior, resulting in reduced wildlife populations
4. Changes to access
- development and fencing of industrial projects reduces access to harvesting areas and trails
- new roads lead to increased public access and resource competition from non-Indigenous land users
The analysis reveals that community members face four primary challenges in accessing and using the land: increased industrial emissions and dust, greater physical disturbances, heightened sensory disruptions, and restricted access to the land. These challenges and related effects are deeply interconnected and reflect the reality of the community’s location at the center of an expanding network of oil sands projects and associated infrastructure. Members have observed significant changes in the landscape, including a decline in the quality and availability of plants, animals, and other essential resources, the loss of natural habitat and harvesting areas due to land clearing and fragmentation, and reduced access to remaining harvesting sites. These changes have far-reaching consequences for the community. For instance, members expressed that they can no longer reliably or successfully hunt, fish, trap, or gather near their community or within a reasonable distance. As a result, some members spend less time on the land or avoid harvesting altogether, while others are forced to travel farther to find suitable areas—an option that is cost-prohibitive for many. Additionally, members emphasized that access to land is essential not only for the harvest of natural resources, but also to support aspects of identity, cultural practices and protocols, the transmission of knowledge and language, and other elements relating to culture and way of life.
The simulation modeling results demonstrate a narrative that aligns with descriptions shared by community members. With the exception of agriculture in the southern tip of the study area, the backcast simulation indicates that the development footprint was negligible until the 1970s. Thereafter, footprint steadily increased to reach its current coverage of 5.1% (Fig. 2). The primary contributors to footprint include cutblocks harvested within the past 30 years (2.0% coverage), hydrocarbon footprints such as well sites, plants, and pipelines (1.8% coverage), mine footprint associated with oil sands extraction (0.8%), and farmland (0.4%). Oil sands mines have heavily disturbed the central portion of the study area north of Fort McMurray. In contrast, disturbance from in-situ bitumen and forestry development is less intensive but occurs across much of the region, resulting in extensive networks of roads (0.26 km/km2), pipelines (0.16 km/km2), and seismic lines (1.67 km/km2). To the north, accessibility is compromised by protected areas where hunting is either not permitted (e.g., Wood Buffalo National Park) or is limited by remoteness (wildland provincial parks). Avoidance buffers applied to industrial footprints, such as active well sites, result in widespread loss of accessibility, with the most pronounced loss occurring in areas with higher footprint density, such as the in-situ bitumen operations south of the oil sands mines. The combined effect of the evelopment footprint and protected areas that dissuade use is to make 31.7% of the study area inaccessible to community members for hunting (Fig. 3).
Fig. 2
Growth in proportional coverage by development footprint in the FMMN territory over the past 120 years, estimated using ALCES Flow
The effect of simulated landscape changes on habitat was minor. At the start of the backcast (c.1900), habitat was essentially equivalent to the natural baseline due to the minimal development footprint occurring within the study area. Over the backcast period, relative habitat abundance declined by 4.1% for moose, 2.4% for fisher, and 0.6% for low-bush cranberry (Fig. 4). Although anthropogenic footprints caused noticeable habitat loss in areas with intensive land conversion such as oil sands mines, the effect of dispersed footprints such as well sites, roads, and pipelines was small due to the small proportion of the study area converted to these features. More influential than footprint expansion were shifts in forest age. A reduction in older forest caused a decline in moose habitat relative to the natural baseline, although this effect was offset in recent decades by an increase in young harvest-origin forest. Low-bush cranberry habitat fluctuated in response to the negative effect of burns, which again was partially offset by the positive effect of harvest-origin forest.
Fig. 4
Historical change in moose, low-bush cranberry, and fisher habitat and opportunity for Indigenous harvest in the FMMN territory over the past 120 years, estimated using ALCES Flow
In contrast to the subtle response of habitat, the opportunity for Indigenous land use displayed large declines over the backcast simulation. During the past century, it is estimated that the opportunity for moose, fisher, and low-bush cranberry harvest declined by 35.0%, 29.8%, and 23.1%, respectively, relative to the natural baseline (Fig. 4). The larger response is driven by the effect of footprint and protected areas on accessibility. For example, wetlands in the central portion of the study area supported high-quality moose habitat and harvest opportunities until in-situ bitumen development in these areas caused degradation of access. Similarly, extensive wetlands in the northern part of the study area provide high-quality moose habitat but are not accessible for hunting because of land protection (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5
Decline in Indigenous land use (ILU) opportunity for moose harvest in the FMMN territory over the past 120 years, estimated using ALCES Flow
To illustrate how the strategic assessment of cumulative effects across the FMMN territory could be applied to inform project-level assessment, the CEA tool was used to evaluate a hypothetical development project. The project, located in the Hangingstone River watershed in the central portion of the study area, included eight well sites connected by pipelines. The disturbance footprint layers were imported into the CEA tool and combined with the strategic assessment to assess impacts on Indigenous opportunity for moose harvest. The impact of the project footprint on Indigenous opportunity for moose harvest in the watershed was relatively small, causing a 2% decline relative to current conditions. The more important outcome, however, was the cumulative effect of the project and existing disturbance, which combined to cause a 43% decline in opportunity for moose harvest compared to the natural baseline (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6
Moose Indigenous harvest opportunity index in the Hangingstone River watershed for the natural landscape (map A) and the present-day landscape with a hypothetical development project applied (map B). The location of the development project footprint is identified by the black crosshatching. The 0 to 1 scale refers to the Indigenous harvest opportunity index. The maps were generated using the CEA tool
EIAs in Canada are insufficient in scope to assess cumulative impacts to Indigenous land use, and typically fail to incorporate community knowledge and perspectives. We applied simulation modeling and worked closely with the FMMN community to address these issues, and in so doing, identified impacts that would likely be missed by EIAs. Landscape change across the FMMN territory over the past 120 years was applied to assess impacts on Indigenous land use. Although changes to habitat were minor, loss of access to the land caused substantial declines in opportunity for wildlife and plant harvest, and interact with the small negative direct effects on habitat. EIAs do not typically assess accessibility to the land, especially across large regions, an oversight that has likely caused substantial under-representation of impacts to Indigenous communities (Bruce and Hume 2015). The failure of EIAs to evaluate long-term changes and to sufficiently engage with IK to understand impacts to rights, culture, and way of life has likely also contributed to under-representation of impacts to Indigenous communities (Baker and Westman 2018; Eckert et al. 2020; Kwon et al. 2024). Development footprint in the territory has increased five-fold or more during the lifetimes of some community members, leading to reduced time on the land and impacting FMMN culture. The CEA tool provides an efficient way for FMMN to meaningfully assess cumulative effects by incorporating a natural baseline and impacts on accessibility. In the case of the hypothetical project that was assessed using the tool, cumulative effects on rights and culture (i.e., large decline in opportunity for moose harvest) were identified that would likely be obscured by conventional project-level assessment.
The use of a natural baseline and a historical backcast when assessing the effects of development resulted in simulation outcomes that were consistent with knowledge from community members detailing substantial loss of ability to hunt, trap, and harvest. The lost opportunity for Indigenous land use was not the result of a few influential developments but rather the cumulative effect of numerous developments and land management decisions occurring over the past century. As such, the use of current or recent state as a baseline would substantially under-represent the impact of development and land management on Indigenous land use. Although agreement between the simulation outcome and community knowledge suggests that estimated natural land cover and forest age provide an appropriate baseline, it is important to note that it does not capture certain aspects of the pre-colonial landscape. Prior to colonization, Indigenous people in northern Alberta used fire as a land management tool, for example, to maintain meadows, increase berry production, and improve animal habitat (Christianson et al. 2022). De-emphasizing the effect of Indigenous people on the pre-colonial landscape risks perpetuating racist colonial structures (Armstrong et al. 2023), and incorporating IK when estimating pre-industrial/pre-colonial baselines is an important area for future research. Another issue with the pre-colonial landscape estimate is that it may under-represent wetlands, which are poorly addressed by historical land cover inventories, and research to improve estimates of wetland loss is needed (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute 2024).
The adoption of conservative assumptions when encountering uncertainty, as described in the Methods section of this paper, implies that estimates of lost opportunity for Indigenous land use are unlikely to be exaggerated. However, generalizations made during the analysis mean that the analysis is better suited for identifying regional change in Indigenous land use opportunity rather than for estimating change at high levels of spatial and temporal detail. Examples of generalizations include grouping of wetland types when estimating baseline habitat or grouping of footprint types when applying accessibility coefficients. The broad scope of comprehensive cumulative effects assessment is such that generalizations are often needed to address knowledge gaps. An implication is that cumulative effects assessment should ideally be used to inform strategic processes such as regional planning as opposed to more detailed project-level considerations. Unfortunately, opportunities for Indigenous communities to provide input to land-use planning are often limited to tactical processes, such as responding to project-level impact assessment. Due to this constraint, project-level impact assessment should take into account long-term, regional loss of Indigenous land use, even if information describing that loss is at times limited in its detail.
We are pursuing several opportunities to expand the scope of the cumulative effects assessment to further increase its relevance to FMMN members. Most important is opportunity to incorporate more FMMN knowledge. Importing FMMN traditional land use data into the tool will make it possible to include cultural sites on maps and run queries to identify cultural sites that are at risk due to their proximity to proposed development projects. We are also developing a companion application for mobile devices that FMMN staff can use in the field to collect spatial data related to values such as water and traditional land use. Data entered into the mobile application will be linked to the CEA tool, thereby expanding knowledge available in the tool over time. The mobile application could also provide a mechanism for validating land cover data used in the analysis. For example, although the human footprint inventory is based on 2021 imagery, it does not attempt to differentiate between footprints that remain heavily disturbed and footprints that are in the process of recovering to natural vegetation (Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute 2023). The mobile application could be used to identify footprints that should be considered recovered, or conversely, to identify footprints that occur on the landscape but are not captured by the inventory. We are also pursuing opportunities to expand the scope of the simulations. Although not presented in this paper, we have completed forecast simulations that assess potential future impacts to Indigenous land use under higher and lower rates of change. The forecasts will allow FMMN to not only include proposed developments but also other plausible future developments when assessing cumulative effects. We are also working to expand the set of indicators to include additional ecological attributes that are needed for Indigenous land use, including fish and water, by linking ALCES with a hydrological model.
In addition to being insufficient in scope and focus to address impacts to Indigenous communities, EIAs strain community resources due to the volume of project proposals that require a response. One of the objectives in developing the CEA tool is to provide an efficient way for communities to assess and demonstrate impacts in a cumulative effects context. This is, at best, a partial solution that fails to address fundamental problems of an approval process that is not guided by strategic planning and that provides little control to Indigenous communities within their territories. Despite recognition of their rights under Canadian law, Indigenous communities in Canada often have limited governance and control over project developments occurring within their traditional territories, as decision-making power largely remains with federal, provincial, or municipal governments (Nishima-Miller et al. 2024; Eckert et al. 2020). Although consultation is required, it frequently does not result in meaningful participation or free, prior, and informed consent, leaving communities with little influence over developments that impact their lands and livelihoods (Adams et al. 2023; Eckert et al. 2020; Tulloch et al. 2024). To address cumulative effects, the focus needs to shift from project to regional assessment with meaningful engagement of Indigenous communities (Council of Canadian Academies 2019). Decisions on project approvals should be informed by targets established through a regional plan that articulates where and how much development can occur to satisfy shared ecological, cultural, and economic goals (Gunn and Noble 2009). To properly address cumulative effects and their substantial impacts on Indigenous communities, we urge governments to involve Indigenous communities in strategic land-use planning to identify development guidelines that are consistent with the protection of their rights, culture, and way of life.
Cumulative effects assessment and impact assessment literature involving Indigenous communities highlight that IK and worldviews are often marginalized or inadequately represented in assessment processes. One prevailing structural issue with cumulative effects assessments, and impact assessments more broadly, is that they frequently reinforce existing power imbalances where Indigenous participants do not have opportunities to meaningfully participate in the assessment process (Mantyka-Pringle et al. 2017; Darling et al. 2023). Instead, IK is typically distilled into pieces that can easily be integrated into scientific assessment frameworks. This “scientization” of IK results in information being taken out of its cultural, place-based context and separated from the knowledge-holders who shared it (Ellis 2005; Nadasdy 1999). Recent studies indicate that the appropriation of IK is an ongoing problem in cumulative effects assessment processes that impacts the accuracy of assessments and the control that Indigenous members have over assessment outcomes, and erodes trust between Indigenous participants and non-Indigenous assessment practitioners (Kwon et al. 2024; Larsen 2018; Eckert et al 2020). In addition, the scientific concepts used in impact assessments are often incompatible with Indigenous communication styles and language, creating an additional barrier to meaningful Indigenous participation (Ellis 2005).
Arnold et al. (2024), Kwon et al. (2024), Mantyka-Pringle et al. (2017), and others outline principles and recommendations for Indigenous-led cumulative effects assessment approaches. Building on these approaches, our study intended to give FMMN members a guiding role throughout the assessment process. Engagements with FMMN members were treated as spaces for reciprocal knowledge sharing, where participants were encouraged to discuss their concerns and ask questions. The knowledge that was shared by participants was analyzed with consideration of its cultural context and used to inform the results alongside scientific findings, as opposed to trying to make the IK fit into a predetermined scientific narrative. The quantitative data shared by members through the survey also informed the land use accessibility framework for landscape modeling. Finally, the customized CEA tool developed through this research was shared with FMMN to enhance their capacity to conduct independent assessments and decision-making regarding future project proposals. Although our approach still generally aligns with Western methods of assessing cumulative effects, it represents a positive step towards more inclusive Indigenous-led assessments that prioritize community knowledge, concerns, and governance.
Conclusions
Around the world, Indigenous communities that rely on the land and natural resources to sustain their way of life experience profound and disproportionate cumulative effects of anthropogenic development. However, these impacts are often difficult to detect using conventional environmental assessment processes, which focus on individual projects with limited spatial and temporal scopes that do not align with Indigenous perspectives of landscape change. This study addressed these limitations by assessing cumulative effects at scales reflective of IK, using a natural baseline and a regional study area encompassing the traditional lands of the FMMN. Through focus groups, interviews, and surveys, community members described a sharp decline in their ability to hunt, fish, trap, and harvest since the onset of intensive industrial development in the 1960s–1970s—a finding corroborated by simulation modeling that reconstructed 120 years of landscape change. The results indicate that industrial expansion and the establishment of protected areas that restrict or discourage use have reduced accessible areas for Indigenous land use by 32% compared to natural conditions. While habitat impacts on moose, fisher, and low-bush cranberry were relatively minor, land use opportunities related to these species have declined substantially due to accessibility constraints imposed by development and regulatory protections.
Beyond their limited scope in addressing impacts to Indigenous communities, EIAs also place significant demands on community resources due to the overwhelming number of project proposals requiring a response. This burden forces communities into a reactionary position, limiting their ability to engage meaningfully, particularly given the short timeframes often imposed by industry or regulators. The CEA tool developed in this study offers a more efficient way for Indigenous communities to independently assess and demonstrate cumulative effects by applying a regional study area and a natural baseline to capture broader landscape changes. While this tool is only a partial solution, it marks an important step toward supporting Indigenous-led cumulative effects assessments by enabling communities to participate more effectively in assessment processes or undertake independent strategic assessments. However, a fundamental issue remains: the approval process lacks strategic planning and provides Indigenous communities with little governance or control over development within their traditional territories. Addressing cumulative effects adequately requires a shift from project-specific assessments to regional-scale planning that fully embraces Indigenous leadership and priorities. Project approvals should be guided by regional plans that establish clear limits on where and how much development can occur in alignment with shared ecological, cultural, and economic goals. To ensure that cumulative effects are properly managed and that Indigenous rights, culture, and way of life are upheld, governments must meaningfully involve Indigenous communities in strategic land-use planning and decision-making processes that directly shape development within their territories.
Acknowledgements
Fort McKay Métis Nation members are thanked for sharing their knowledge, experiences, and time. The Indigenous Centre for Cumulative Effects and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada are thanked for financially supporting the project. Mike Newton is thanked for his support in preparing the report figures, and Max Ryan is thanked for his support in investigating wildlife habitat relationships. Brad Stelfox is thanked for his contributions to the ALCES model.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest
Financial support for the project was received by Fort McKay Métis Nation from the Indigenous Centre for Cumulative Effects and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, and subsequently provided to the Integral Ecology Group to conduct the research. FF and DG are employees of Fort McKay Métis Nation.
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In this discussion, the term “Indigenous” is internationally accepted terminology as articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, 2007. In Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982, the term “Aboriginal” is defined as “Indians, Métis and Inuit” representing all Indigenous peoples within Canada.
“Treaties” are agreements made between the Government of Canada, Indigenous groups, and often provinces and territories that define ongoing rights and obligations on all sides.” Seventy (70) historic treaties in Canada were signed between 1701 and 1923 (Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada 2024).
“Free, prior and informed consent” (FPIC) is found throughout the UNDRIP Declaration. FPIC emphasizes the importance of recognizing and upholding the rights of Indigenous peoples and ensuring that there is effective and meaningful participation of Indigenous peoples in decisions that affect them, their communities, and territories (Government of Canada 2024).
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