Murray Rutherford’s research while affiliated with Simon Fraser University and other places

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Publications (38)


Metlakatla First Nation Traditional Territory on North Coast of BC. Metlakatla territory ranges from the City of Terrace in the east to the middle of Hecate Strait in the west, and from the City of Stewart in the north to Klewnuggit Inlet in the south. (Source: Metlakatla Stewardship Society 2023)
Metlakatla CEM Program Framework (4 Phases). (Source: Metlakatla Stewardship Society 2019)
Tiered management triggers concept. A series of markers that reflect increasing levels of concern about the condition of a value. Management triggers mark the boundaries between different management zones where new or more intensive actions are taken to restore or improve the condition of the value (Source: Metlakatla Stewardship Society 2019)
Metlakatla CEM method for setting tiered management triggers. Based on the six key steps of the structured decision-making process (Gregory et al. 2012)
Final tiered management triggers for FSC activity – youth participation rate

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Setting Tiered Management Triggers using a Values-based Approach in an Indigenous-led Cumulative Effects Management System
  • Article
  • Publisher preview available

November 2024

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39 Reads

Environmental Management

Katerina Kwon

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Tom Gunton

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Murray Rutherford

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Taylor Zeeg

Indigenous-led cumulative effects assessment and management (CEM) has emerged in recent years as a proactive and strategic approach for addressing the cumulative impacts of industrial development and other activities. CEM identifies and monitors high-priority values and stressors and develops management strategies to restore and improve the condition of those values. As Indigenous-led CEM evolves, it faces a major challenge in linking cumulative effects assessment and monitoring information to effective management actions. One promising approach to address this challenge is the use of tiered management triggers, which are a series of progressive markers associated with specified degrees of change in the condition of a value, designed to reflect increasing levels of concern about the value. These types of limits or thresholds inform decision-makers that they need to act, or act more intensively, to restore values to an acceptable state. In this paper, we present a novel method for setting tiered management triggers that was developed in an Indigenous-led CEM program. We co-developed this six-step method with the Metlakatla First Nation (located on the northwest coast of British Columbia, Canada) and applied it in a series of community workshops to select triggers for three values in the Metlakatla CEM Program: butter clams, housing, and food, social, and ceremonial activity. The method draws from participatory frameworks including structured decision-making and collaborative planning. The workshop results show that management triggers can successfully be established through a values-focused process of social choice, involving community engagement and informed by relevant scientific research and other knowledge.

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Indicators for the FSC Activity Value in the Metlakatla CEM Program
Alternative Sets of Tiered Management Trigger Levels for FSC Activity Indicators
Final Consequence Tables for FSC Activity Indicators
Setting tiered management triggers using a values-based approach in an Indigenous-led cumulative effects management system

September 2024

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16 Reads

Indigenous-led cumulative effects assessment and management (CEM) has emerged in recent years as a proactive and strategic approach for addressing the cumulative impacts of industrial development and other activities. CEM identifies and monitors high-priority values and stressors and develops management strategies to restore and improve the condition of those values. As Indigenous-led CEM evolves, it faces a major challenge in linking cumulative effects assessment and monitoring information to effective management actions. One promising approach to address this challenge is the use of tiered management triggers, which are a series of progressive markers associated with specified degrees of change in the condition of a value, designed to reflect increasing levels of concern about the value. These types of limits or thresholds inform decision-makers that they need to act, or act more intensively, to restore values to an acceptable state. In this paper, we present a novel method for setting tiered management triggers that was developed in an Indigenous-led CEM program. We co-developed this six-step method with the Metlakatla First Nation (located on the northwest coast of British Columbia, Canada) and applied it in a series of community workshops to select triggers for three values in the Metlakatla CEM Program: butter clams, housing, and food, social, and ceremonial activity. The method draws from participatory frameworks including structured decision-making and collaborative planning. The workshop results show that management triggers can successfully be established through a values-focused process of social choice, involving community engagement and informed by relevant scientific research and other knowledge.




Best practices for Impact Benefit Agreements

March 2021

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82 Reads

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20 Citations

Resources Policy

Impact benefit agreements (IBAs) are an increasingly common tool in resource development. However, the effectiveness of IBAs in achieving community and development objectives can vary widely depending on the negotiating process, the components of the IBA, and implementation and management of the IBA. This paper provides a comprehensive best practices framework for developing and managing IBAs from the perspective of impacted communities, based on a synthesis of recommendations from academic, industry, governmental, and non-governmental organization literature. The best practices are presented in a three-tier model comprised of 10 general best practice criteria, 44 sub-criteria and 89 indicators. The criteria are presented in the form of a checklist that can be used to guide the negotiation, implementation and management of IBAs and to conduct ex post IBA evaluations. While the best practices have been developed from the perspective of impacted communities to achieve better IBA outcomes, these best practices will also be helpful to academics and others who want to evaluate IBAs, and to resource developers who are interested in negotiating effective IBAs with their community partners.


Assessing the role of subjective judgment and science in environmental impact assessment: implications and options for reform

December 2019

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182 Reads

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11 Citations

Most environmental assessment (EA) processes are based on a rational technocratic paradigm, in which experts are expected to review value-neutral scientific evidence and objectively assess project impacts. Critics argue that this model is flawed even with increased public participation because it does not recognize the significant role of subjectivity in EA and assumes that expert analysis and judgement can be objective and value free. This paper re-evaluates the assumptions of the rational technocratic model by examining new evidence from a case study in which scientific experts in two separate, but concurrent, EA reviews of the same project came to opposite conclusions even though they relied on the same terms of reference and similar information and evaluation criteria. The case study analysis provides new evidence showing that subjective judgments of expert assessors are an important determinant of the EA findings and that there is inconsistency in the exercise of subjective judgement by experts that can result in fundamentally different conclusions, even if the experts are assessing the same project and similar evidence. The nature of the subjective judgements is assessed in detail and implications of the findings for EA are discussed.


Drawing on indigenous governance and stewardship to build resilient coastal fisheries: People and abalone along Canada's northwest coast

November 2019

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126 Reads

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42 Citations

Marine Policy

Lynn Chi Lee

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Mike Reid

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[...]

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Anne Katherine Salomon

Small-scale indigenous abalone fisheries on the northwest coast of Canada persisted for at least two millennia prior to modern commercial and recreational fisheries that lasted for four decades before collapsing, causing a coast wide closure that remains today. What traditional governance and stewardship practices fostered resilient fisheries along Canada's northwest coast and how might they inform collaborative institutions that foster ecologically sustainable and socially just coastal fisheries in future? In collaboration with two coastal First Nations, a policy analysis of northern abalone (GaalGuuhlkyan –Skidegate Haida, ǧaɫǧṇ̓íq̓ –Heiltsuk, Haliotis kamtschatkana) stewardship was conducted to assess where traditional and modern fisheries governance and management aligned or failed to align with seven theoretical principles of social-ecological resilience. The analysis revealed that traditional principles of reciprocity and contingent proprietorship of clan-based fishing areas aligned with resilience principles whereas contemporary centralized decision-making and region-wide management policies did not. Moreover, current issues of power asymmetry and lack of trust need to be addressed to build a future indigenous-state governance approach to coastal fisheries. This research demonstrates how indigenous resource governance and stewardship practices generated over millennia of social learning and experimentation offer insights that could be broadly applied to foster resilient coastal fisheries today.


Toward sustainable development: A methodology for evaluating environmental planning systems

July 2018

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167 Reads

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16 Citations

Sustainable Development

At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the world's national governments committed to preparing strategies to achieve sustainable development. This paper describes an evaluation framework for measuring the success of these efforts to achieve environmental goals in sustainable development. The framework evaluates two dimensions of sustainable development planning: the environmental planning system, and environmental outcomes. An application of the methodology to evaluate environmental performance in Germany illustrates that the proposed method is relatively easy to apply, transparent, and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of a country's environmental performance.


A Method for Evaluating Environmental Assessment Systems

September 2017

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155 Reads

Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management

This paper outlines a method for evaluating environmental assessment (EA) systems called the environmental assessment system evaluation method. The method consists of five steps: (1) develop an initial list of good practices based on a literature review; (2) validate and adjust the practices by surveying experts and stakeholders; (3) describe the EA system; (4) use the good practices to evaluate the EA system through surveying EA participants and reviewing relevant documentation; and (5) identify changes to address deficiencies. The method provides a comprehensive and transparent evaluation that identifies strengths and weaknesses and means of improvement. The evaluation method is tested by applying it in a case study evaluation of the EA system for bitumen development in Canada.


An example choice set
Profiling Farmers’ Preferences about Drought Response Policies Using a Choice Experiment in the Okanagan Basin, Canada

July 2017

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76 Reads

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10 Citations

Water Resources Management

Farmers can play a crucial role in water management during water shortages, yet little is known concerning the preferences of farmers for various options in drought response planning. In this paper we demonstrate the use of a discrete choice experiment to investigate the preferences of farmers about options for drought response policies in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada. In the choice experiment, three policy instruments were varied across possible drought response plans: mandatory reductions in water supply, reallocation of entitlements to available water, and opportunities for water trading. Results show that participating farmers, as a whole, were more likely to accept drought response plans with moderate levels of mandatory water reductions, water allocations according to the sensitivity of crops to water loss, and opportunities for water trading between farmers. When analyzed according to the primary crop cultivated, grape growers were more likely to prefer drought response plans with opportunities for water trading between all water users, whereas ranchers were more likely to prefer drought response plans that feature high levels of mandatory water reductions. We contrast our findings with preconceptions about farmers’ preferences concerning water use policies. We also discuss broader implications of the research, including the usefulness of choice experiments for informing the development of effective drought response policies.


Citations (28)


... The Metlakatla CEM Program includes four phases (Fig. 2). Phase one involved developing the CEM Environmental Management framework and identifying high-priority values and indicators through a process of community engagement (Kwon et al. 2024). The result was ten high-priority values extending across five value pillars: economic prosperity, social/health, environment, cultural identity, and governance. ...

Reference:

Setting Tiered Management Triggers using a Values-based Approach in an Indigenous-led Cumulative Effects Management System
A new model for selecting valued components in environmental assessment: Lessons from an Indigenous-led cumulative effects management program
  • Citing Article
  • May 2024

Environmental Impact Assessment Review

... Indeed, the people who live, work, and recreate across BMA 1 play a crucial role in the long-term survival and sustainability of grizzly bears (Hughes et al. 2022b). Specifically, local people can share their first-hand observa-tions of grizzly bears, which can offer insights into bear distribution, behavior, and population (Clark et al. 2014;Hughes and Nielsen 2019;Morehouse et al. 2020). This also presents an opportunity to share information with people who are keen to report their bear observations. ...

Large Carnivore Conservation: Integrating Science and Policy in the North American West
  • Citing Book
  • January 2014

... The literature on human-wildlife coexistence makes several suggestions for moving toward management approaches to facilitate this. Our research makes clear that the interactions between humans and wildlife requires a form of management that goes beyond traditional western conservation mechanisms that seek to separate humans from nature (Hussain 2020) to include stakeholders who interact with wildlife in both the processes of conservation science and management (Hughes et al. 2021;Hussain 2020) or in multi-stakeholder governance of wildlife (Rutherford et al. 2014), giving them both voice and power in decision-making processes. For example, Hughes et al. (2021) demonstrate that using a collaborative governance process that included stakeholders from multiple sectors to design and execute a study of grizzly bear population abundance in Alberta, Canada opened up opportunities for participants to share their knowledge and experiences and learn from each other, strengthening their relationships with one another. ...

Improving Governance for People and Large Carnivores
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2014

... The law sets the frame for corporations to avoid these scenarios by requiring corporations to sign binding agreements with the local community, which address the adverse environmental and social impacts of industrial activities. The agreements, sometimes called Impact and Benefit Agreements, address areas like employment, environment, and socio-cultural issues, and are a precondition for granting mining licenses (Cascadden et al., 2021). In Australia for instance, the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 (Northern Territory) stipulates that a mining exploration license is only issued if the applicant has agreed with an Aboriginal "land council." ...

Best practices for Impact Benefit Agreements
  • Citing Article
  • March 2021

Resources Policy

... Despite its popularity, the Saaty method is a subject of criticism, partly due to a lack of trust in expert assessments, which are subjective. An analysis of a specific case by Mehdic et al., in which scientific experts, during two separate but parallel assessments of the same project, came to opposite conclusions, despite relying on the same technical specifications, similar information, and assessment criteria [29]. In addition, criticisms of the method have focused on PCMs and their principal right eigenvector, the ability to generate true ranks, and the subjectivity and inconsistency of pairwise comparisons, but equally other studies of the method have focused on improving and increasing the reliability of the method's solutions [30]. ...

Assessing the role of subjective judgment and science in environmental impact assessment: implications and options for reform
  • Citing Article
  • December 2019

... Both sea otters and people are size-selective predators, preferentially targeting large size classes of shellfish, such as sea urchins, mussels, clams, crabs, chitons, and abalone (Tinker et al. 2008). Along contemporary shorelines that have experienced sea otter recovery, these benthic macroinvertebrates tend to be significantly reduced in abundance and size (Burt et al. 2018, Lee et al. 2019, Salomon et al. 2007, Singh et al. 2013. Analyses of archaeological faunal remains from ancient settlements in coastal Alaska, British Columbia, and California reveal the sustained harvest of large-sized sea urchins, abalone, and mussels by people (Corbett et al. 2008, Erlandson et al. 2005, Slade et al. 2022, suggesting that sea otters were likely rare or absent from shellfish harvesting sites along the Pacific Coast through much of the mid-to-late Holocene. ...

Drawing on indigenous governance and stewardship to build resilient coastal fisheries: People and abalone along Canada's northwest coast
  • Citing Article
  • November 2019

Marine Policy

... The alarming evidence on the extent of pollution and climate change made policymakers concern and search for solutions to the growing environmental crisis. The exhaustion of resources and the proliferation of pollution have intensified, so current government policies must be reevaluated (Zeiger et al., 2019;Akhter et al., 2020). Environmental objectives, such as lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and boosting the share of renewable energy sources (RES), have become the priority in developing energy policies in the XXI century. ...

Toward sustainable development: A methodology for evaluating environmental planning systems
  • Citing Article
  • July 2018

Sustainable Development

... In a hypothetical but realistic scenario, farmers were offered the opportunity to voluntarily participate in a regional policy where a portion of the single payment scheme would compensate for the costs associated with adopting more sustainable irrigation techniques. The attributes in the policy scenario included (i) adherence to guidelines from a regional irrigation advisory service, requiring farmers to implement the recommendations over a specified period [39,40]; (ii) reduction in current irrigation water usage, applied as a specific percentage compared to current usage [19,41]; (iii) a decrease in irrigated agricultural land by excluding selected plots from irrigation, optimizing water usage by avoiding less essential irrigation [42]; and (iv) monetary compensation for the expenses incurred from adopting more sustainable production techniques [19,21]. In the study, three levels per attribute were chosen, as they provide sufficiently accurate estimates while maintaining methodological robustness [43,44]. ...

Profiling Farmers’ Preferences about Drought Response Policies Using a Choice Experiment in the Okanagan Basin, Canada

Water Resources Management

... In the late 1960s, Paine moved his research program from its original location in Makah Bay to this exposed outer coast island in part to reduce human influence on his experiments. Tatoosh is one of many ancestral settlements of the Makah Tribe and has a thousand-year-old shell midden that includes many of the macroinvertebrates (Friedman 1976) that were studied by Paine and his students and are still harvested by the Makah today. Photo reproduced with permission from the Bert Kellogg Collection of the North Olympic Library System, Port Angeles, Washington. ...

“Everything revolves around the herring”: The Heiltsuk–herring relationship through time

Ecology and Society

... While policies are essential steps in promoting coexistence, as suggested by Clark et al. (2014), this study emphasizes that a one-size-fits-all approach and simplistic solutions to conflict resolution for peaceful human-wildlife coexistence need to be thoroughly researched. A comprehensive perspective that includes insights from various fields, including natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities, is needed to gain a holistic understanding of these complex issues. ...

Large carnivores, people, and governance
  • Citing Article
  • January 2014