Insights from First Nations, Government and Industry Leaders on Criteria for Successful Impact Benefit Agreements.

Over the past decade, British Columbia, Canada's westernmost province, has begun developing liquified natural gas (LNG) mega projects that can transport Canadian resources to foreign markets across the Pacific region. These projects have gained significant profile due to high-level debates over their environmental, social and economic impacts. While LNG projects are required to undergo environmental impact assessment procedures, there is growing recognition of the need to ensure that positive social, economic and environmental impacts are fairly distributed to local communities. Similar to other extractive industries, many corporations leading the development of these projects engage in negotiations over so-called "impact benefit agreements (IBAs)"-legal agreements between a corporation, a government and/or a community that details how projects can benefit the local community and on what timeline so as to build social license to operate and investor confidence. This contribution details the findings of a qualitative study highlighting the perspectives of First Nations, provincial and federal government, and industry leaders to examine what makes an IBA successful and from whose perspective. The paper provides an introduction to IBA structures and processes, a brief review of the legal context, a qualitative methodology co-developed between academic researchers and Indigenous community leaders, and describes key criteria to inform future successful IBA agreements that create equitable multi-party benefits in an era of Indigenous reconciliation.

OECD Case Studies of Integrated Regional and Strategic Impact Assessment: What Does 'Integration' Look Like in Practice?

Increasingly, protocols for assessing the impacts of land-uses and major resource development projects focus not only on environmental impacts, but also social and human health impacts. Regional and Strategic Environmental Assessment (RSEAs) are one innovation that hold promise at better integrating these diverse land-use values into planning, assessment, and decision-making. In this contribution, a realist review methodology is utilized to identify case studies of "integrated RSEA"-those which are strategic, have a regional assessment approach, and seek to integrate environmental, community and health impacts into a singular assessment architecture. The results of a systematic literature review are described and six RSEA-like case studies are identified: Kimberly Browse LNG SEA; HS2 Appraisal of Sustainability; Lisbon International Airport SEA; Beaufort Regional Environmental Assessment; Nordstream 2 Transboundary EIA; and the Portland Harbour Sustainability Project. The case studies are examined according to their unique contexts, mechanisms and outcomes of their assessment protocols to determine the degree to which they consider more than environmental valued components, and the means by which they were included. Findings suggest that RSEA has a contentious relationship with the integration of more than environmental values, but that there are significant lessons to be learned to support project planning, especially for assessment contexts characterized by large, transboundary projects.

Determining position, velocity and acceleration of free-ranging animals with a low-cost unmanned aerial system.

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs), frequently referred to as 'drones', have become more common and affordable and are a promising tool for collecting data on free-ranging wild animals. We used a Phantom-2 UAS equipped with a gimbal-mounted camera to estimate position, velocity and acceleration of a subject on the ground moving through a grid of GPS surveyed ground control points (area ∼1200 m(2)). We validated the accuracy of the system against a dual frequency survey grade GPS system attached to the subject. When compared with GPS survey data, the estimations of position, velocity and acceleration had a root mean square error of 0.13 m, 0.11 m s(-1) and 2.31 m s(-2), respectively. The system can be used to collect locomotion and localisation data on multiple free-ranging animals simultaneously. It does not require specialist skills to operate, is easily transported to field locations, and is rapidly and easily deployed. It is therefore a useful addition to the range of methods available for field data collection on free-ranging animal locomotion.

Canada's Census of Environment and public health.

The 2021 federal budget committed funding to a co-sponsored Statistics Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada initiative aimed at conducting a 'census' of Canadian environments. The goal of the Census of Environment (CoE) is "to deliver a full picture of the complex relationship between ecosystems and the economy, society, and human well-being", with obvious implications for the ongoing monitoring and surveillance of environmental influence on human health. This commentary reflects on the evolution of the CoE initiative in describing two opportunities for population and public health researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers in engaging with the CoE and its data. First, it describes stated CoE commitments to enhancing access to complex environmental data and the provision of data processing to support novel analyses and data utilization. Second, it highlights the relative importance of disaggregating environmental data across a variety of bio-geographical scales to engender a holistic understanding of the health of multiple elements that comprise living systems, including consideration of environmental health equity and intersectoral action. It ends with a constructive critique of the CoE's framing of 'ecosystem accounting' to support its maturation, and advocates for public health involvement in centring the importance of health in this initiative into the future.

RéSUMé: Le budget fédéral de 2021 a engagé un financement pour une initiative coparrainée par Statistique Canada et Environnement et Changement climatique Canada visant à mener un « recensement ¼ des environnements canadiens. L'objectif du Recensement de l'environnement (CdE) est de « fournir une image complète de la relation complexe entre les écosystèmes et l'économie, la société et le bien-être humain ¼, avec des implications évidentes pour le suivi et la surveillance continus de l'influence environnementale sur la santé humaine. Ce commentaire reflète l'évolution de l'initiative du CdE en décrivant deux opportunités pour les chercheurs, les praticiens et les décideurs politiques en santé publique et des populations de s'engager avec le CdE et ses données. Premièrement, il décrit les engagements déclarés du CdE visant à améliorer l'accès à des données environnementales complexes et à fournir un traitement des données pour soutenir de nouvelles analyses et utilisations de données. Deuxièmement, il souligne l'importance relative de la ventilation des données environnementales à diverses échelles biogéographiques pour engendrer une compréhension holistique de la santé de multiples éléments qui composent les systèmes vivants, y compris la prise en compte de l'équité en matière de santé environnementale et de l'action intersectorielle. Il se termine par une critique constructive de la conception de la « comptabilité écosystémique ¼ adoptée par le CdE pour soutenir sa maturation, et plaide en faveur d'une participation de la santé publique pour centrer l'importance de la santé dans cette initiative à l'avenir.

Patient- and Community-Oriented Primary Care Approaches for Health in Rural, Remote and Resource-Dependent Places: Insights for Eco-Social Praxis.

Accelerating ecological and societal changes require re-imagining the role of primary care and public health to address eco-social concerns in rural and remote places. In this narrative review, we searched literatures on: community-oriented primary care, patient-oriented research engagement, public health and primary care synergies, and primary care addressing social determinants of health. Our analysis was guided by questions oriented to utility for addressing concerns of social-ecological systems in rural, remote contexts characterized by a high degree of reliance on resource extraction and development (e.g., forestry, mining, oil and gas, fisheries, agriculture, ranching and/or renewables). We describe a range of useful frameworks, processes and tools that are oriented toward bolstering the resilience and engagement of both primary care and public health, though few explicitly incorporated considerations of eco-social approaches to health or broader eco-social context(s). In synthesizing the existing evidence base for integration between primary care and public health, the results signal that for community-oriented primary care and related frameworks to be useful in rural and remote community settings, practitioners are required to grapple with complexity, durable relationships, sustainable resources, holistic approaches to clinician training, Indigenous perspectives, and governance.

Cumulative Impacts of Diverse Land Uses in British Columbia, Canada: Application of the "EnviroScreen" Method.

(1) Objectives: Cumulative impacts refer to the legacies of land use decisions on environmental, community and health values. New integrative impact assessment tools are required to assess cumulative impacts on diverse values to meet sustainability goals in the 21st century. In this contribution, the CalEnviroScreen methodology-a screening tool capable of merging environmental, socioeconomic and health data-is applied to Local Health Areas in British Columbia, Canada. (2) Methods: The CalEnviroScreen is a method that standardizes environmental, socioeconomic and health data to depict an indicator's percentile rank in the distribution of all units of analysis. The method combines indicators to measure four dimensions of pressure: environmental exposures, environmental effects, socioeconomic conditions, and sensitive populations (i.e., health outcomes). We create two versions of EnviroScreen: one following the CalEnviroScreen suite of indicators, and another that uses nuanced indicators to approximate the realities of industrial land uses present in British Columbia. BCEnviroScreen scores are plotted by race/ethnicity to understand potential racial inequities in cumulative exposures. (3) Results: The BCEnviroScreen has a greater likelihood of quantifying the cumulative impacts of diverse industries and land uses present across resource-dependent parts of the province, relative to the more urban-centric CalEnviroScreen indicator suite. Analyzing the distribution of BCEnviroScreen scores by race/ethnicity suggests that visible minority populations may be inequitably exposed to cumulative impacts in BC. (4) Conclusion: EnviroScreen tools hold significant potential to influence Canadian environmental health policy. This research demonstrates the applicability of the tool to British Columbia and other jurisdictions, illustrates how indicators can be tailored to better represent regional context, and shows how the tool can be used to screen for potential environmental health injustices.

Climate change glossary for public health practice: from vulnerability to climate justice.

Climate change is an emerging and growing field of practice for the international public health community. As practitioners, researchers and policy-makers grapple with the local health impacts of climate change, there is an increasing need to clarify key terminology to support public health actors engage and respond in ways that promote intersectoral collaboration. This contribution introduces the public health discourse on climate change, with a particular focus on its implications for health equity. After defining key terms and existing adaptation practices, climate justice and assets-oriented inquiry into the intersectional determinants of health are discussed as future opportunities for addressing health equity in climate and health-related research and practice.

Attending to scalar ethical issues in emerging approaches to environmental health research and practice.

Accelerated changes to the planet have created novel spaces to re-imagine the boundaries and foci of environmental health research. Climate change, mass species extinction, ocean acidification, biogeochemical disturbance, and other emergent environmental issues have precipitated new population health perspectives, including, but not limited to, one health, ecohealth, and planetary health. These perspectives, while nuanced, all attempt to reconcile broad global challenges with localized health impacts by attending to the reciprocal relationships between the health of ecosystems, animals, and humans. While such innovation is to be encouraged, we argue that a more comprehensive engagement with the ethics of these emerging fields of inquiry will add value in terms of the significance and impact of associated interventions. In this contribution, we highlight how the concept of spatial and temporal scale can be usefully deployed to shed light on a variety of ethical issues common to emerging environmental health perspectives, and that the potential of scalar analysis implicit to van Potter's conceptualization of bioethics has yet to be fully appreciated. Specifically, we identify how scale interacts with key ethical issues that require consideration and clarification by one health, ecohealth, and planetary health researchers and practitioners to enhance the effectiveness of research and practice, including justice and governance.

Towards environmental health equity in health impact assessment: innovations and opportunities.

OBJECTIVES: As global environmental change drives inequitable health outcomes, novel health equity assessment methodologies are increasingly required. We review literatures on equity-focused HIA to clarify how equity is informing HIA practice, and to surface innovations for assessing health equity in relation to a range of exposures across geographic and temporal scales. METHODS: A narrative review of the health equity and HIA literatures analysed English articles published between 2003 and 2017 across PubMed, PubMed Central, Biomed Central and Ovid Medline. Title and abstract reviews of 849 search results yielded 89 articles receiving full text review. RESULTS: Considerations of equity in HIA increased over the last 5 years, but equity continues to be conflated with health disparities rather than their root causes (i.e. inequities). Lessons from six literatures to inform future HIA practice are described: HIA for healthy cities, climate change vulnerability assessment, cumulative health risk assessment, intersectionality-based policy analysis, corporate health impact assessment and global health impact assessment. CONCLUSIONS: Academic reporting on incorporating equity in HIA practice has been limited. Nonetheless, significant methodological advancements are being made to examine the health equity implications of multiple environmental exposures.

Why should public health agencies across Canada conduct climate change and health vulnerability assessments?

Climate change is increasingly impacting population health outcomes related to several areas of public health service delivery across Canada, and internationally. As a result, public health practitioners are increasingly looking for guidance on how to begin planning for and adapting to a myriad of health-related climate impacts. This paper outlines several benefits for local or regional health agencies in conducting climate change and health vulnerability assessments (CCHVAs), based on the author's experience in conducting two of Canada's first comprehensive assessments. These benefits include, but are not limited to establishing suitable baseline understandings of past, present, and future climate-related health risks; providing guidance on mechanisms to reduce health inequities that may be exacerbated by climate change; generating credibility for health agencies to engage with climate change and pursue collaborative, intersectoral relationships with a range of likely and unlikely allies; identifying suitable, cost-effective adaptation options in the form of public health programming; and encouraging decision-makers to produce proactive policy actions to redress potential climate impacts on population health. Completing a CCHVA can directly optimize health agencies' and their allies' efforts to respond to the health imperatives associated with climate change, while also fueling adaptation options that yield co-benefits across a variety of sectors.