Good Practices For Environmental Impact Assessment and Meaningful Engagement in the Arctic

Abstract

Increasing economic activity in the Arctic, including a growing number of large-scale projects, provides the rationale for the Arctic Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) project. How to plan and design large-scale projects in a way that gives consideration and value to the voice and knowledge of Arctic inhabitants is a driving force behind the project. In detail, the project identified three current topics needing specific attention to improve EIAs in the Arctic: 1) Meaningful engagement 2) Utilization of Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge as complementary to scientific knowledge and 3) Trans- boundary impact assessments. The first two themes appeared consistently throughout the workshops of the Arctic EIA project with about 180 participants total. The third theme was valued as important by the Editorial Group of the project.