The two faces of 'integration' in resource management.

• Author: Kennett, Steven A.
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL law

Proposals to improve integration in natural resource management are attracting attention from governments and stakeholder groups across Canada. In fact, the idea that existing law, policy, and decision-making processes can and should be better integrated is now relatively uncontroversial.

Like other popular concepts, integration means different things to different people. It is commonly applied to decision-making at both the landscape and the project levels. Integrated landscape management and integrated project management are both worthy objectives and are sometimes combined under the banner of integrated resource management. While these two perspectives share a common vocabulary and are complementary in certain respects, they are not identical.

Integrated landscape management focuses on the ability to set and achieve landscapelevel objectives. The problem is that resources sharing the same land base are managed separately, and individual decisions are taken in the absence of a policy and planning framework that sets out a vision and specific guidelines for overall land and resource use. These fragmented and incremental decisionmaking processes may therefore fail to address cumulative environmental effects.

The solution is to improve integration in three respects:

* across sectors and activities (e.g., forestry, oil and gas, wildlife, recreation);

* among the stages of decision-making (e.g., broad policy, land-use planning, issuance of resource rights, project review, and regulation); and

* over spatial and temporal scales that reflect important ecological, social, cultural, and economic values at the landscape level.

For example, landscape-level objectives and limits or thresholds for development could be set through a planning process, and cumulative effects could be explicitly considered at all stages of decision-making.

Integrated project management, in contrast, is concerned primarily with the efficiency and effectiveness of regulatory regimes. The problem also stems from fragmented and incremental decision-making processes. Multiple review and approval processes may apply to a single project or resource, and these processes may not operate well together, thereby increasing costs and unpredictability for proponents. Furthermore, the resulting regulatory requirements may be duplicative or even inconsistent.

The solution is to streamline and consolidate decision-making. Measures to achieve these objectives include eliminating overlap...