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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