Arctic Yearbook 2014 | Page 562

Arctic Yearbook 2014 562 established under the IFA to administer Category I and II lands and resources are unique in Canada. They include the Fisheries Joint Management Committee, the Wildlife Management Advisory Council (NWT), the Wildlife Management Council (North Slope), the Environmental Impact Screening Committee, and the Environmental Impact Review Board. Joint management on these boards and committees is accomplished through a 50% Inuvialuit representation. Consensusbased, they employ non adversarial methods of negotiation, and enjoy a reputation of being successful from both state and industry perspectives. In addition, each community developed its own conservation and management plans that are consistent with the regional plan developed in 1988 (Campbell, 1996). The IFA model has been reproduced elsewhere in the North. The result is an increasing number of boards, both regulatory and advisory, which have authority over economic development and its environmental impacts. Co-management boards are now found throughout all land claims areas, including Nunavut and Nunatsiavut, with differing degrees of indigenous voice and influence. The structure and function of co-management boards is quite variable, nonetheless. Some, like the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, are created by land claim agreements themselves, and some by federal legislation, such as the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board, or the Gwich’n Land Use Planning Board (White 2008). For some stakeholders, such as those invested in corporate development agendas, this creates an “over-regulated” development environment (McCrank 2008), while to others this represents a move towards more equitable and sensitive response to the need for greater civil participation within the NWT, particularly with respect to environmental and development issues (White 2008) – despite gender inequalities in representation (Natcher 2013). While co-management has increasingly been the model whereby both indigenous and nonindigenous review panels and boards evaluate environmental oversight, most co-management boards’ concerns are limited largely to environment, wildlife and land and environmental issues, rather than education, health, or social welfare, with the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board being exceptional in that it has broader powers (White 2008: 72). In total, approximately 34 co-management boards exist across the Canadian territorial North. For example, in the NWT there are several such regulatory regimes established as a result of both the IFA and the subsequent Gwich’in, Sahtu and Tlicho final agreements. The latter set of agreements saw co-management boards relating to each claim entrenched in the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. Arguably one of the most important co-management regimes, created as a result of “The Mackenzie Valley Resources Management Act (MVRMA)”, it has allowed “authorities to co-management boards to carry out land use planning, regulate the use of land and water and, if required conduct environmental assessments and reviews of large or complex projects. It also provides for the creation of a Cumulative Impact Monitoring Program (the NT CIMP) and an environmental audit to be conducted once every five years”, thereby allowing for a more robust management system (see MVRMA). The resulting landscape of regulation and control thus established were complex and often scattered, responding to local community issues under the umbrella of broader regional initiatives (see White 2008; Campbell, Fenge & Hanson 2011). Indeed, there were four land and water boards entrenched within the MVRMA, and these included the Gwich’in Land and Water Everett & Nicol