Celesa Horvath brings a practitioner’s perspective to this session, exploring IA streamlining as an opportunity to do Better, Faster, Together.
A common concern about streamlining is that it will be at the cost of people, communities, and the environment. Some fear protections are being removed or ignored. In Canada, for example, streamlining has been framed amid promises of ensuring continued protection of the environment and Indigenous rights, without supporting detail of how those promises will be kept. This has eroded trust and increased the risk of litigation and delay. Yet ongoing review and reform of IA occurring in many jurisdictions also presents important opportunities… It presents an opportunity to shift assessment upstream in the planning and decision-making process, to strategic and regional assessments that are broader in scope, focused on public interests, and more forward-looking. It presents an opportunity to rely on the body of knowledge built up over decades of practice and research, to establish minimum standards and conditions to address well-understood effect pathways that are known and do not warrant further debate. This would allow us to simplify project-specific assessments, so they can focus on key local issues. Most importantly, this is an opportunity to pursue greater collaboration to leverage expertise where it resides, whether at a national or sub-national level of government, in industry, academia, Indigenous groups, or other interested parties. In other words, streamlining IA is an opportunity to do Better, Faster, Together. In her talk, Celesa Horvath will build on themes shared at IAIA26 and consider issues arising in the ongoing streamlining process in Canada by way of example.
Celesa Horvath is an independent consulting practitioner with over 35 years’ experience in impact assessment and regulatory processes in mining, energy, infrastructure, and other sectors.