Bram F Noble

Bram F Noble
University of Saskatchewan | U of S · Department of Geography and Planning

PhD

About

105
Publications
102,126
Reads
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3,863
Citations
Additional affiliations
July 2002 - present
University of Saskatchewan
Position
  • Professor (Full)

Publications

Publications (105)
Article
Full-text available
If the aim of flood risk management (FRM) is to increase society’s resilience to floods, then a holistic treatment of flood risk is required that addresses flood prevention, defence, mitigation, preparation, and response and recovery. Progressing resilience-based management to flood risk requires both diversity and coordination of policy across mul...
Article
This study investigates practices of uncertainty disclosure and communication in Canadian environmental assessment (EA) in the context of the Joslyn North Oil Sands Mine project. Nineteen interviews with project stakeholders were conducted, revealing significant uncertainties about the project, attributed to multiple factors including lack of clari...
Article
Full-text available
Cumulative effects assessment (CEA), as a required practice for the environmental assessment (EA) of projects in many countries, faces several practical challenges, especially related to biodiversity. Drawing on the perspectives and experiences of Canadian EA practitioners, this paper explores options or drivers of change for improving project-base...
Article
This article examines the current practice of assessing a project’s cumulative effects to health and well-being in a region characterized by a legacy of resource development and Indigenous land use. The context is hydroelectric development in northern Manitoba, Canada. Based on a review of environmental assessment (EA) regulatory applications and p...
Article
Major flood events are likely to happen more frequently and be more severe under changing land use and climatic conditions. Adapting to floods using resilience-based flood risk management (FRM) policies and initiatives is a more appropriate solution than relying solely on flood defence structures or disaster recovery programmes. The primary authori...
Article
Cumulative effects (CE) monitoring is foundational to emerging regional and watershed CE management frameworks, yet monitoring is often poorly integrated with CE management and decision-making processes. The challenges are largely institutional and organizational, more so than scientific or technical. Calls for improved integration of monitoring wi...
Article
Full-text available
Long-term regional environmental monitoring, coupled with shorter-term and more localized monitoring carried out under regulatory permitting processes, is foundational to identifying, understanding, and effectively managing cumulative environmental effects. However, monitoring programs that emerge to support cumulative effects science are often sho...
Article
The consideration and disclosure of uncertainties is fundamental to a credible EA process, but little is known about the nature and type of requirements and guidance available to proponents, practitioners and decision makers about how to deal with uncertainties. This paper examines the provisions for considering and disclosing uncertainties in EA....
Article
Full-text available
The environmental management literature suggests that resilience is key to managing complex systems and reducing vulnerability resulting from uncertainty and unexpected change. Yet, flood risk management (FRM) has emerged largely from a culture of resistance. This paper takes the pulse of the current state of FRM research, with a focus on how the s...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Indigenous communities across Canada are far from uniform in terms of their level of support for resource development, but the very centre of the issues facing all Aboriginal communities is a need to have a voice in discussing the cumulative environmental and social effects of development on traditional lands. To a large extent they are still not b...
Article
Assessing and managing cumulative effects on watersheds involves numerous agencies, regulatory frameworks and jurisdictions, and necessitates the co-creation of new, or innovations in existing, institutional arrangements. This paper examines the institutional arrangements needed to implement and sustain cumulative effects assessment and management...
Presentation
Full-text available
This paper presents an analysis of provisions in Canadian EA for addressing and communicating uncertainty, and how uncertainties are considered in practice. We reviewed federal, provincial and territorial legislation, regulations and guidance. Provisions for addressing uncertainty exist in most jurisdictions - usually in guidelines vs. legislation...
Article
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This paper explores the opportunities and constraints to project-based environmental assessment as a means to support the assessment and management of cumulative environmental effects. A case study of the hydroelectric sector is used to determine whether sufficient information is available over time through project-by-project assessments to support...
Article
The remediation industry has grown exponentially in recent decades. International organizations of practitioners and remediation experts have developed several frameworks for integrating sustainability into remediation projects; however, there has been limited attention to how sustainability is approached and operationalized in sustainable remediat...
Article
Full-text available
There has emerged in recent years an increased industry and regulatory demand for the streamlining of environmental assessment (EA), and at the same time, persistent expectations by Aboriginal communities for more effective and meaningful engagement in development decisions. This paper examines the extent to which scholarly research has contributed...
Article
This paper explores the underlying practice-based challenges to meaningful and efficient Aboriginal participation in environmental assessment (EA) - participation that provides meaningful opportunities for Aboriginal communities to shape EA, yet assures a degree of efficiency for project proponents who need to obtain EA approvals in a timely and fi...
Technical Report
Full-text available
What most Canadians hear about Indigenous engagement with Environmental Assessment (EA) in Canada is with regard to a few large, controversial pipeline projects that dominate the national media, such as the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, conditionally approved by the National Energy Board (NEB) in May 2016. In June 2016, t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper explores perspectives about the location and consideration of uncertainty in environmental assessment (EA). The study is based on a survey of 77 Canadian EA regulators, proponents, consultants, environmental groups and academics. Results indicate that the nature of uncertainty varies throughout the EA process, and there is a misalignment...
Article
Full-text available
Identifying and communicating uncertainty is core to effective environmental assessment (EA). This study evaluates the extent to which uncertainties are considered and addressed in Canadian EA practice. We reviewed the environmental protection plans, follow-up programs, and panel reports (where applicable) of 12 EAs between 1995 and 2012. The types...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents and demonstrates a spatial framework for the application of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in the context of change analysis for urban wetland environments. The proposed framework is focused on two key stages of the SEA process: scoping and environmental baseline assessment. These stages are arguably the most informati...
Article
Increasing emphasis has been placed in recent years on transitioning strategic environmental assessment (SEA) away from its environmental impact assessment (EIA) roots. Scholars have argued the need to conceptualize SEA as a process designed to facilitate strategic thinking, thus enabling transitions toward sustainability. The practice of SEA, howe...
Article
Free download until January 29th at http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1SB7EiZ5slUsd The need to better address uncertainties in environmental assessment (EA) is well known, but less known is how those involved in, or affected by, EA processes understand and perceive uncertainties and how uncertainties are considered and disclosed. Based on a survey o...
Article
The paper presents an analytical approach to strategic environmental assessment (SEA), focused on bridging the strategic level assessment of policy objectives with tactical planning and implementation. This is done within the context of an applied SEA application for urban wetland policy development and implementation in the fast growing city of Sa...
Technical Report
Full-text available
See MacDonald-Laurier Website @ http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/mli-report-by-bram-noble-and-aniekan-udofia-fixing-a-broken-environmental-assessment-process/
Article
Environmental assessment (EA) is employed across the Arctic to assess, mitigate, and monitor the impacts of resource development. Despite the increasing pressures of resource development on Arctic communities and ecosystems and the growing demands for more efficient and effective EA processes, little is known about the needs and priorities of resea...
Article
Effectiveness is a long-standing issue in impact assessment (IA) practice and research – the theme is fundamental to the continued development and improvement of IA, and is essential to understanding its impacts on and contributions to environmental management. Understanding effectiveness not only requires attention to the variables that shape the...
Article
Canada’s watersheds are under increasing pressure from the cumulative effects of human development. There is a recognized need to assess and manage cumulative effects to Canada’s watersheds, but there has been limited assessment of the current capacity for cumulative effects assessment and management. This paper assesses the current capacity to imp...
Article
Full-text available
This paper reflects on the state of cumulative effects research in Canada and future directions and challenges. The assessment and management of cumulative effects has been an enduring theme in the impact assessment literature, and scholars have consistently identified the challenges to assessing and managing cumulative effects under regulatory, pr...
Article
Welcome to this special JEAPM issue on impact assessment (IA) research, which — besides this introductory paper — includes 16 short papers contributed by a wide range of leading IA researchers from around the world. These papers provide for an overview of achievements, gaps and future directions for IA research. The collection of papers is the outc...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents a scenario-based approach to strategic environmental assessment(SEA) for wetland trend analysis and land use and land cover (LUC) modeling in an urban environment. The application is focused on the Saskatoon urban environment, a rapidly growing urban municipality in Canada's prairie pothole region. Alternative future LUC was sim...
Article
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This paper discusses contemporary issues surrounding the efficiency of environmental assessment (EA) and the effectiveness of community engagement with focus on Canadian practice in the last two decades. Based on a review of the EA literature, we provide a brief overview of the benefits of effective engagement in EA processes. We then identify and...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the impact of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) – its direct impact on policies, plans and programs (PPPs) and its indirect and longer-term impacts. Criteria for assessing SEA's impact are developed and applied in the Canadian context based on a survey of SEA practitioners, and the perceived opportunities and challenges t...
Article
Full-text available
Wetland habitat continues to be lost to cumulative effects of development on the landscape. Part of the problem is that there currently exists only limited guidance as to how to use the existing scientific tools, conceptual frameworks and guidance documents to advance cumulative effects assessment (CEA) from the project scale to the broader regiona...
Article
This article examines watershed cumulative effects assessment and management (CEAM) in the Athabasca watershed, Alberta, Canada. Using a focus group and semi-structured interviews with 30 key informants from government, industry, NGOs, and First Nations, watershed CEAM was examined based on eight requisites to support CEAM: the presence of a lead a...
Article
Complex environment and resource policy issues such as wind energy planning can benefit greatly from public input but may also be challenging for the public to understand. This paper examines informational barriers to public engagement with policy, using a case study of wind energy planning in Saskatchewan, Canada. A document review showed four typ...
Article
Full-text available
The accumulating effects of human development are threatening water quality and availability. In recognition of the constraints to cumulative effects assessment (CEA) under traditional environmental impact assessment (EIA), there is an emerging body of research dedicated to watershed-based cumulative effects assessment (WCEA). To advance the scienc...
Article
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From 2008 to 2013, a series of studies supported by the Canadian Water Network were conducted in Canadian watersheds in an effort to improve methods to assess cumulative effects. These studies fit under a common framework for watershed cumulative effects assessment (CEA). This paper presents an introduction to the Special Series on Watershed CEA in...
Article
Over the past 30 years, the Beaufort Sea has been the site of many regional studies and planning efforts. Currently, three major initiatives are underway: the Integrated Regional Impact Study, which focuses on science; the Integrated Ocean Management Plan; and the Beaufort Regional Environmental Assessment. Despite the mounting pressures for offsho...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines the capacity to support the cumulative effects assessment and management for watersheds. The research is set in the Lower Fraser River Basin, a densely populated sub-watershed in British Columbia's lower mainland. Eight requirements or requisites for the watershed cumulative effects assessment and management are applied to evalu...
Article
The absence of Regional Strategic Environmental Assessment (R-SEA) in Canada's western Arctic has raised many questions concerning the country's preparedness for offshore Arctic energy development, given the constraints of project assessments in addressing long-term cumulative impacts of energy development on the marine environment and local commun...
Article
This paper examines the role of institutional arrangements as either facilitating or constraining the practice of watershed cumulative effects assessment and management (W-CEAM) within the context of the Grand River watershed (GRW), Canada. The research is based on document review, a focus group and 29 interviews conducted with academic experts, pr...
Article
A strategic environmental assessment (SEA) framework for electricity sector planning is developed and applied to evaluate electricity supply scenarios for Saskatchewan, Canada. The overall goal of the SEA application was to identify a preferred future electricity production path, demonstrate the application of a quantitative SEA process that operat...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines methods promoted and used in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) practice, practitioner choices about methodology and the nature of SEA guidance. Results show that SEA is not challenged by a lack of methods, but the range of methods promoted and used is restrictive. A major challenge to practice is making the ‘right choices...
Article
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) for offshore oil and gas planning and development is utilized in select international jurisdictions, but the sector has received limited attention in the SEA literature. While the potential benefits of and rationale for SEA are well argued, there have been few empirical studies of SEA processes for the offsh...
Article
Renewable energy is receiving increased attention as a viable alternative to non-renewable electrical generation, however, meeting global energy demands will require a more ambitious renewable energy program than is currently the case. There have been several reviews of potential technological, economic, social, or public barriers and solutions to...
Article
Next to agriculture, road development is one of the most significant sources of stress to wetlands in Prairie Canada. However, there currently exists limited guidance for incorporating direct, indirect, and induced effects to wetlands in impact assessment and mitigation planning for small and often routine developments, including access roads or hi...
Article
Full-text available
Watersheds are under increasing pressures from the cumulative environmental effects of human actions. Reviews of recent practice suggest that cumulative effects assessment and management (CEAM) has failed to capture the full range of stressors to Canada's watersheds. Indeed, the limitations to CEAM have been well documented; yet, there has been lim...
Article
Full-text available
Considerable attention has been given to the role of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in policy, plan and program assessment; however, there is very little consensus on an appropriate methodology for SEA. Two basic perspectives on SEA methodology emerge from the literature: first, that appropriate SEA methodologies are readily available bas...
Article
This paper highlights perhaps one of the most fundamental issues constraining strategic environmental assessment (SEA) practice — its definition. Current reviews fail to explain why certain assessments are referred to as strategic while others are not. Furthermore, there appears to be very little attention given to the basic characteristics of stra...
Article
Full-text available
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is taking place in diverse forms, and SEA requirements vary considerably from one nation to the next. While the true measure of effectiveness of SEA is its influence on decision output and policy, plan and program (PPP) outcomes, an effective SEA requires a quality assessment process. This paper suggests tha...
Chapter
Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a systematic process designed to identify and predict the potential impacts of human activity on the biophysical and human environment. It also functions as an environmental management tool to identify measures to avoid, mitigate or compensate for those effects. EIA is intended to be an iterative process to...
Article
Fast-paced watershed change, driven by anthropogenic development, is threatening the sustainability of freshwater resources across the globe. Developments within watersheds interact in a manner that is additive and synergistic over space and time. Such cumulative environmental effects are defined as the results of actions that are individually mino...
Article
The constraints to assessing and managing cumulative environmental effects in the context of project-based environmental assessment are well documented, and the potential benefits of a more strategic approach to cumulative effects assessment (CEA) are well argued; however, such benefits have yet to be clearly demonstrated in practice. While it is w...
Article
A significant volume of literature has emerged in recent years on negotiated agreements between the mining industry and indigenous communities. The focus of much attention, however, has been on characterizing and explaining the emergence of such agreements and identifying their potential to supplement existing regulatory-based processes. There has...
Article
Notwithstanding various environmental assessment legislations and policies for wetland conservation in Canada, wetland habitat continues to be lost to the cumulative effects of development on the landscape. Ensuring no net loss of wetlands requires consideration of the direct, indirect, and potentially induced effects of development; however, many...
Article
Negotiated environmental agreements are becoming common practice in the mining industry. In principle, negotiated environmental agreements are said to respond to many of the shortcomings of environmental impact assessment by providing for improved follow-up of project impacts through, among other things, data provision, engaging stakeholders in the...
Article
Full-text available
A public registry can be a basic means for public access to environmental assessment and related project information. Registries are used in Canadian EA at the federal level and to various degrees by Canada’s provincial jurisdictions. We examine the Canadian Environmental Assessment Registry and outline the structure and content of the Registry and...
Article
The northern Great Plains of Saskatchewan is one of the most significantly modified landscapes in Canada. While the majority of anthropogenic disturbances to Saskatchewan's grasslands are the result of agricultural practices, development of petroleum and natural gas (PNG) resources is of increasing concern for grassland conservation. Although PNG d...
Article
Full-text available
Recognizing that each additional disturbance in a region can represent a high marginal cost to the environment, there is an increasing awareness of the need to better asses and manage cumulative environmental effects. Yet, cumulative effects are one of the most perplexing issues in environmental assessment and natural resource management, and the p...
Article
Full-text available
The need to better assess and manage the cumulative effects of human development is well recognized; however, the practice of cumulative effects assessment has been constrained by the current project-based approach. Further, the broader regional and strategic frameworks designed to ensure a more proactive and futures-oriented cumulative effects ass...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Residents of Saskatchewan have a golden opportunity to consider whether and how to plan for the sustainability of the province’s northwestern region in the face of rapid environmental, economic, and social changes brought on by present and proposed resource development, including the possibility of large-scale oil sands extraction. Saskatchewan’s n...
Article
Full-text available
The need to advance the assessment of cumulative environmental effects beyond the individual project, to the broader regional scale and strategic tier, is well argued. However, regional strategic environmental assessment (SEA) frameworks that facilitate cumulative effects assessment (CEA) at this scale and tier have been slow to evolve. The need fo...
Article
Full-text available
The concept of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) has received considerable attention in recent years; however, the focus has been on the pre-decision stages of policies, plans and programs with much less attention to post-decision follow-up and monitoring. In those instances where SEA follow-up has been addressed, it has been done so much mo...
Article
Has strategic environmental assessment (SEA) finally reached a point of maturity in Canada? Or, is it still stumbling to find its place in the impact assessment family? Strategic environmental assessment has been ongoing in Canada for a number of years, both formally and informally, and under a variety of labels and institutional models. The result...
Article
The Great Sand Hills region of southwestern Saskatchewan is among the largest and, unfortunately, last intact native prairie ecosystems in the Great Plains. The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis is thus a fitting title. Filled with spectacular photography alongside narrative text telling the story of the prairie’s past, present, and future, this 12...
Article
New Urban Planning is defined as proactive and focused on making the connections between people, economic opportunity and the environment. These elements are very similar to Strategic Environmental Assessment, a recently evolved decision support tool in Canada. Based on theory and practice in the field of strategic environmental assessment, this pa...
Article
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This paper examines the experience with regional cumulative effects assessment (CEA) in the Great Sand Hills, Saskatchewan, Canada, and the lessons that emerge for better practice. The benefits of a regional approach to CEA are widely discusssed; however, in practice, regional CEA, particularly in Canada, has fallen short of its potential. Part of...
Article
Full-text available
Advancing cumulative effects assessments (CEA) to the regional scale, spatially and strategically, has been well argued but slow to evolve. Part of the problem is that "regional" CEA is a flexible concept, varying considerably in form and function from the project to the more strategic levels. This paper steps back from current discussions of asses...
Article
Full-text available
This article presents a methodological framework for strategic environmental assessment (SEA) application. The overall objective is to demonstrate SEA as a systematic and structured policy, plan, and program (PPP) decision support tool. In order to accomplish this objective, a stakeholder-based SEA application to greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation pol...
Article
The need to address the human health implications of northern development is well founded, and the role of health determinants in environmental impact assessment is increasingly recognised; however, there is limited understanding of the nature of health determinants and current practices in northern project assessment and decision making. This pape...
Article
Based on a case study of health integration in Canadian northern EA, this paper further demonstrates the lack of consistent integration of health in EA practice. A survey was administered to northern EA and health practitioners, administrators and special interest groups to assess current northern health assessment practices, the scope of health in...
Article
In 1996, the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization released its ISO 14001 guidelines for environmental management systems (EMSs). By implementing an EMS, an organization is better situated to manage the environmental effects of its operations which, in turn, should lead to better environmental performance. However, research on...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines the integration of human health considerations into environmental impact assessment (EIA) in the Canadian North. Emphasis is placed on the northern mining sector, where more land has been staked in the past decade than in the previous 50 years combined. Using information from interviews with northern EIA and health practitioners...
Article
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In this paper, using two case studies from the Hibernia offshore platform construction project, we argue that follow-up based on the hypothesistesting approach typically adopted in biophysical effects monitoring could be more widely adopted in socio-economic effects monitoring. While there are some significantly different issues associated with soc...
Article
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The importance of follow-up in the EIA process is clearly recognized in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (Act) in which, where it is considered appropriate, the responsible authority for a project will design a follow-up program and ensure its implementation. The Act is also explicit in recommending that the results of follow-up programs b...
Article
Since the introduction of the 1999 Canadian Cabinet Directive on the environmental assessment of policies, plans, and programs (PPPs), higher-order environmental assessment has been receiving increased attention in Canada. However, while practices and systems are advancing at the federal level, there has been very little attention given to recent d...
Article
Full-text available
Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is gaining widespread recognition as a tool for integrating environmental considerations in policy, plan, and program development and decision-making. Notwithstanding the potential of SEA to improve higher-order decision processes, there has been very little attention given to integrating SEA with industry p...
Article
This paper presents a multi-criteria analysis of Canadian electricity supply futures. Based on the results of Natural Resources Canada's Energy Technology Futures Project, a panel of energy and environmental experts was selected to evaluate alternative electricity supply futures according to several competing environmental, social and economic crit...
Article
Assessment panels and expert judgment are playing increasing roles in the practice of strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Thus, the quality of an SEA decision rests considerably on the quality of the judgments of the assessment panel. However, there exists very little guidance in the SEA literature for practitioners concerning the treatment a...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents a multi-criteria methodological framework for the application of strategic environmental assessment (SEA). The methodology, based on a generic seven phase assessment framework, is explained and demonstrated through a case study assessment of alternative options for Canadian energy policy. Five energy policy scenarios are present...
Article
The project-specific nature of current environmental assessment (EA) practice is often seen as a constraint on accounting for sustainability. Sustainability will only be realized if consideration is given to the environment at all significant decision points; this includes decisions at the policy, plan and program (PPP) level. Strategic EA (SEA), t...

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