Canada and Agenda 21

CHAPTER 8

Integrating Environment and Development in Decision-Making

-- Fran‡ois Bregha --

Fran‡ois Bregha is the President of Resource Futures International. The views expressed in this assessment are those of the author with input from a number of other stakeholders, and do not necessarily reflect the views of RFI or the Projet de Société.

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

Most decisions are made through a process that separates socio-economic and environmental factors. This is true in government, business, or in cases of individuals making decisions.

It is necessary to understand the links between environment and development in order to make development choices that will be economically efficient, socially responsible, and environmentally sound.

Governments should create global cross sectoral sustainable development strategies and integrate socio-economic and environmental policies in all ministries and at all levels. The strategies should aim for environmentally responsible economic development. The strategies should be developed through the widest possible societal participation.

PROGRAM AREAS AND OBJECTIVES

There are four main program areas in this chapter:

(1)Integrating environment and development at the policy, planning and management levels.

(2)Providing an effective legal and regulatory framework

(3)Making effective use of economic instruments and market/other incentives.

(4)Establishing systems for Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (IEEA).

In essence, the chapter argues that integrating environmental concerns with other aspects of development policy, planning and management is essential; and that doing so requires the strengthening of a) data and information systems, b) institutions and mechanisms at all levels, c) policies, laws, regulations and economic instruments as well as increased participation, awareness, information dissemination and requisite training.

CANADIAN POSITIONS AT RIO

1.Official Canadian Position

Canada had six main objectives pertaining to the integration of environment and development in decision-making.

(1)To seek to support actions that deal with the dissemination of public information and access to information in the public domain;

(2)To seek to ensure a coordinated approach between all proposals in Agenda 21 which propose information activities;

(3)To focus on priority areas already agreed to by 38 countries at the International Forum on Environmental Information held in Montreal in may 1991;

(4)To avoid mention of specific targets in favour of wording which commits to progress but not to unrealistic timetables;

(5)To avoid proposals to implement specific economic instruments or to shift the taxation base away from income taxes and towards resource taxes; and,

(6)To avoid discussion of questions relating to information/data that is private or otherwise protected.

2.Business and Industry

This chapter is primarily fashioned around the needs of Government to integrate environment and development into decision making. Business and industry did not input material directly related to this chapter. However, the subject matter is as relevant for business as for others. Without integrating environmental management systems into daily business decision-making, it continues to be an add on and therefore does not provide the strong emphasis required to continue the evolution towards sustainability.

3.Non-Governmental Organizations

One of them main objectives of Canadian NGOs was that the chapter include strong wording with regards to active participation of non-governmental groups in all decision-making.

With regards to the focus of the chapter being on integrating environment and development in decision-making, NGOs were generally interested as it was one of the few chapters which straight-forwardly tackled the issue of integrating environmental and developmental concerns rather than discussing first the environmental issue(s) and then the developmental issue(s). In general, NGOs felt that, while the chapter did discuss the main substantive points around the issue, the chapter reflected (but did not resolve) a widespread lack of clarity about why environmental concerns are presently not well integrated into development decision-making, and how they could be in the future.

4.Indigenous

Indigenous Peoples recommended models of development that are holistic approaches whereby their decision-making reflects their culture, political, economic and social values which are so intimately intertwined and integrated with the environment.

Indigenous Peoples are recommending that Agenda 21 be implemented whereby they are informed, consulted and allowed to participate at the national level for decision making. Support is required from all levels of government, industry and other NGOs to assist Indigenous Peoples to maintain their own NGOs.

COMMITMENTS MADE BY CANADIANS

1.Legally-Binding Documents

None.

2.Political Pronouncements

During his disclosure of the National Statement of Canada on June 11 1992 at UNCED, Minister of the Environment Jean Charest stated, "This UN conference has brought two separate public policy tracks irrevocably together." Minister Charest also stated that, in Canada, " environment and development have become one in the course of our two-year dialogue..."

3.Alternative NGO Treaties and Kari-Oca

NGO Treaties

At the same time as UNCED, two major international events were also held at Rio. One was the International Non-Governmental Organization Forum (Global Forum). At the Global Forum, 3,100 NGOs discussed a number of matters related to environment and development and produced a parallel set of documents: an NGO Earth Charter and 38 Alternative NGO Treaties. Of these treaties, one addressed the issues discussed in Chapter 8.

Rio Framework Treaty on NGO Global Decision-Making

Within the Rio Framework Treaty on NGO Global Decision-Making, NGOs agreed to;

strengthen existing networks and global alliances;

work towards the recognition of all NGOs;

secure NGOs participation in decision-making processes at all levels;

enhance and promote participatory democracy; and

seek the empowerment of all oppresses peoples, especially those who are socially and ecologically marginalised.

Within this treaty, NGOs agree to reinforce the recognition of all NGOs, at both national, regional and international levels as one of the key agents of sustainable development. Moreover, as NGOs have a specific and responsibility towards the North-South relationship, they will work to build on the gains achieved in the UNCED process for NGO participation. NGOs also intend to strengthen their rights and means of influencing the decision-making processes at international, national and local levels.

Kari-Oca

The second alternative forum at Rio was the International Conference on Territory, Environment and Development (the Kari-Oca Conference). The Kari-Oca Conference was held immediately prior to UNCED by and for the world's indigenous peoples. More than 650 indigenous representatives participated in meetings and cultural events during the conference. They developed and adopted a 109-point Indigenous Peoples Earth Charter.

Within the Kari-Oca Declaration and Indigenous Peoples Earth Charter, developed at the parallel Aboriginal Summit in Rio, Indigenous peoples stated that they are victims of development and that in many cases they have been exterminated in the name of development programs. As such, indigenous peoples insist that they must consent to all projects in their territories, that they must be involved, fully and entirely, in any decision-making processes. Failure to do so should be considered a crime.

DEFICIENCIES, GAPS AND CONSTRAINTS WITHIN CHAPTER 8

The chapter suffers from several weaknesses for which the authors can hardly be blamed (given the extensive process of negotiation which shaped the chapter) but which do however limit its value.

The chapter fails to take into account the political world in which the changes it recommends would take place. Yet, vested interests will oppose some of these changes making it difficult for governments to follow-up on such recommendations. In other words, implementing sustainable development is not just a matter of knowing what to do; it is also a matter of translating it into politically viable actions. Adopting, for instance, a "national strategy for sustainable development" as recommended in Chapter 8, may be a complex process involving pursuing societal consensus on values and life styles as well as the formulation of broad national sectoral strategies such as industrial strategies, energy strategies or agricultural strategies.

It would also involve in the case of Canada, a significant element of negotiation between the two orders of government. A great deal of Agenda 21 chapter 8 recommendations could not be acted upon until such national sustainable development strategy would be put together. Basically, Chapter 8 is written as though everything were equally important and all reforms could be undertaken at once. This is clearly untrue.

COMPARISON BETWEEN CURRENT GOVERNMENT POLICY AND COMMITMENTS MADE

The integration of environmental concerns at the policy, planning and management levels will require attention to the following:

Objectives which integrate environmental concerns into departmental mandates provide essential criteria against which policies and programs can be developed and assessed. Have government departments formulated such objectives?

Coverage Are environmental factors to be considered in all programs or just a few?

Methodology What analytical tools do departments now use (e.g., cost-benefit analysis)? which ones do they need?

Skills Policy assessment can be a complex process involving a variety of conceptual, analytical, organisational and consultative skills. Do these skills exist or do they have to be developed?

Resources What resources are allocated to environmental policy assessment?

Institutional arrangements. How is the consideration of environmental factors integrated into existing legal frameworks and mandates of institutions and into their decision-making processes?

Are there jurisdictional overlaps which undermine formal integration of environmental factors into developmental activities.

Who is responsible for environmental policy assessment? What incentives exist to perform such policy assessments? Do departments have access to the environmental information they need from other agencies?

Accountability Is the integration of environmental factors into departmental policy part of the reward and accountability system of public sector management.

Evaluation How do decision-makers know that environmental policy assessment is making a difference? Do they have the information on which to gauge the effectiveness of their policy assessments?

Public consultation The integration of environmental considerations into sectoral program and policies entails weighing and trading off various values which, in a democratic society, should be negotiated rather than imposed. How do departments solicit views from the public, how do they factor these views into policy formulation?

Federal departments are making slow progress against most of these issues but the list above shows that the task is greater than usually recognised. It is important to note the importance of the first item on the list: the definition of objectives. This is an absolutely crucial step and one which is often overlooked. But without a statement of the environmental objectives which departments can use as criteria to make the inevitable trade-offs among competing demands, they would be unable to integrate environmental considerations into their planning and programs effectively.

With its Green Plan, the Federal Government made in 1990 a first attempt to formalize global national environmental objectives. The Plan, however, was criticized as not providing adequate benchmarks for effective integration of environmental factors in the main stream of departmental policy.

Ontario is taking a significant step in formalizing its environmental objectives in its Environmental Bill of Rights through which each ministry will have to develop a Statement of Environmental Values within 9 months of the proclamation of the Bill. Currently, most provincial\territorial governments have, or are in the process of adopting environmental objectives as part of their sustainable development strategies. These will eventually guide provincial\territorial departmental integration of environmental concerns into policy. It should be noted that, in most cases the formulation of such objectives has been achieved through a consensus building process provided by provincial and territorial Round Tables on the Environment and the Economy.

A priority: Defining objectives

Governments and their departments need to define their own environmental objectives against which they can be held publicly accountable, so must they improve the quality of information on environmental effects. Better information about ecosystems is especially needed.

As they do with respect to financial management, human resource management, communications, etc, departments should develop five-year action plans to reach these objectives and report annually on their progress in achieving them.

The inclusion of a requirement in the legislation which created Forestry Canada that the department report back annually on the sustainability of Canada's forests is a good example of how this practice might work.

Institutional arrangements

The definition of environmental objectives, of course, provides no guarantee that these will be pursued. Ministers will continue to be subject to competing pressures in making policy. It will be important, therefore, to ensure that the integration of environmental factors in the consideration of a policy's purpose and its alternatives is obligatory, and to provide the means of monitoring and enforcing compliance with this obligation.

One possible mechanism to strengthen ministerial accountability is the creation of an office of an Environmental Auditor or Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Models from which Canada could gain inspiration include the New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner, to a lesser extent, the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

The power of these agencies lies principally in their ability to disclose information. This power can have considerable impact on public policy: the disclosure that the United States had released 22 billion pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment in 1988 was the main factor which broke a long regulatory logjam to control these chemicals.

In the long run, Canada will need to develop broadly accepted principles of environmental assessment and accountability. These principles may eventually have to be constitutionally entrenched as a charter of environmental rights. In the interim:

Areas where broad agreement already exists or binding commitments have been made should be listed to serve as guides to policy-makers.

Every government department should be asked to develop its own environmental objectives and an action plan to achieve them.

A method to build up a body of "environmental assessment case law" within the new federal environmental assessment process needs to be developed.

Sufficient information upon which to hold decision-makers accountable must be made available. Independent disclosure and standard criteria will facilitate public understanding of the environmental implications of a given policy.

One of the main reasons for ensuring greater openness would be to reveal societal trade-offs made in policy decisions and the value base underlying these tradeoffs. The public will want to be reassured that environmental issues are well and honestly handled. All relevant environmental analysis used in making decisions should therefore be made available.

Environmental stewardship

An important element in integrating environment and development at the policy, planning and management levels is "getting the Federal Government house in order". Through its significant purchasing decisions, the thousands of buildings it owns or leases, its investments, etc., the Federal Government exerts pervasive environmental impacts. Although it has taken steps to reduce that impact (e.g., Part IV of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Code of Environmental Stewardship), these steps have been largely ineffective because of a failure of political will and the high costs involved in upgrading the environmental standards of performance.

Providing an effective legal and regulatory framework for sustainable development.

Three matters need to be noted here. The first is that the federal government committed itself in the Green Plan to begin in 1991 "a comprehensive review of the environmental implications of existing statutes, policies, programs and regulations, and will propose modifications as necessary". (p 162) This initiative has been abandoned, making it much more difficult therefore to ensure that government programs promote sustainable development.

The second is that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is not yet proclaimed. The Act and the regulations to be made under it are extremely important to reforming federal decision-making. Delays in proclaiming the Act weaken the government's ability to integrate environmental considerations into project planning.

Finally, the government committed itself in 1990 to require environmental impact assessments of all proposals going to Cabinet for decision. In addition, the Governor in Council was to release a public statement regarding Cabinet's own environmental assessment of major policies. Very little has happened in this regard and only a handful of assessments have been completed. Departments argue that they do not have the resources or do not know how to implement this requirement and as a result, this commitment has been honoured more in the breach than otherwise.

Making effective use of economic instruments and market and other incentives

Canada lags considerably behind the Nordic countries and the United States in applying economic instruments to environmental ends and has preferred to rely to date on a regulatory approach to environmental protection. The economic instrument most used in Canada is the deposit-refund system which is widely used for beverage containers. Surveys by the Department of the Environment (DOE) and the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) reveal little else of substance. The Prime Minister's commitment not to introduce new taxes places a question mark on the application of economic instruments at the federal level in Canada. The current tax system could however be altered (tax substitution) to reflect such needs without adding new taxes.

The Government should also move towards "greening" its own budget. In most industrial economies, public expenditures now amount to about 40 per cent of gross domestic product. Government spending affects the environment in many ways. Governments affect environmental quality directly when they protect natural resources and clean up pollution. Because of their size, governments are very large consumers of goods and services: governments purchase supplies and equipment, lease buildings. These procurement decisions also have an environmental impact. Only recently have some governments begun to consider how they could reduce these impacts. Through its incentive (subsidies, taxes, regulations, etc) the Government can also have a tremendous impact on the Country's environmental performance.

The indirect impact of government spending is much larger still. The budget is the most important tool the government uses to achieve its policy objectives. Through a combination of tax and spending measures, the government pursues a variety of objectives, chiefly related to the promotion of economic growth and the redistribution of income. It has become recognised that many of these measures, particularly those related to natural resources, impose unintended environmental costs. Thus, subsidies to agriculture may also degrade soils; incentives to the energy industry may increase environmental risks; transportation programs may favour options that are not environmentally desirable.

In essence, through its incentive policies the Government can have a tremendous impact on the Country's environmental performance. Taken together, these measures are contributing to environmental degradation even when they meet their social or economic objectives. The result is a degradation of Canada's natural assets (natural capital) and an accumulating "environmental debt" similar in many ways to the financial debt which preoccupies so many decision-makers today. Scientists warn that this environmental debt is evident in a continuing deterioration in environmental quality and in unsustainable forestry, fishery and agriculture practices which deplete productive resources faster than they can be replenished. A painful example of this constraint is the almost complete closure of the East Coast fishery with the resulting loss of tens of thousands of jobs. Just as Canadians are passing on a high level of financial indebtedness to future generations by living beyond their means, so are they leaving a degraded natural environment to their children by polluting it and over-exploiting its renewable resources. In both instances, future generations will face more restricted development choices.

One of the ways of remedying the causes behind Canada's mounting environmental debt is by ensuring that the federal budget not promote unsustainable practices. Jim MacNeill, the former Secretary General to the Brundtland Commission and former member of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, has described the annual federal budget as the most important environmental policy statement that the government issues from year to year. This is because the decisions the government makes about how it raises money and spends it (through taxes, incentives, subsidies and programs) have a greater potential to do environmental harm or good than any other single policy.

The government should therefore identify how its revenue-raising and spending practices affect the environment, gradually reduce fiscal measures which are environmentally harmful and explicitly take environmental considerations into account in the design of fiscal instruments and programs.

The steps Canada has taken to date (e.g., Environmental Choice, the publication of a discussion paper on economic instruments, the work of the Economic Instruments Collaborative are all worth while but insufficient.

Establishing systems for integrated environmental and economic accounting.

Agenda 21 stresses the importance of improving information systems in developing countries but the same point applies to a lesser extent to Canada as well. The material below is extracted from work which Resources Futures International (RFI) has done on sustainable development indicators for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE). The report is available from the NRTEE.

Information, presented in a comprehensible, balanced, accurate and timely manner, is the indispensable base upon which sound policy-making rests. In the mid-1980's, the federal government spent three quarters of a billion dollars annually and employed over 10,000 persons in collecting basic information about Canada, its people, its economy, its natural resources and its environment. It was estimated that the provinces spent a further $125 to $150 million per year at that time.

There is a striking difference between the ways in which the economic surveys and the environmental and natural resource surveys are organized, how they receive their policy direction and set priorities. Statistics Canada is the lead agency in collecting socio-economic information. Its mandate is clear, in part because the federal government's responsibilities over economic policy are clear. The responsibility for collecting information on the environment and natural resources, however, is shared among many government agencies. This institutional arrangement has militated against the integration of environmental information concerning the environment and natural resources. Furthermore, the absence of widely-accepted indicators of environmental health have made it more difficult to determine what and how much to survey.

The concept of sustainable development redefines the policy questions which governments need to answer and, hence, their information needs. The governments' "standard agenda" applies a sectoral approach to policy-making. Institutional arrangements parallel and reinforce this division of responsibilities: thus, the department of energy is responsible for energy policy (typically, increasing energy supply), the department of fisheries manages fish stocks, the department of environment controls pollution, and so on. Policy-makers have traditionally defined their information needs to reflect these mandates. The information they have accumulated has been similarly compartmentalised.

As we have come to understand better the many links between environmental quality, human health, social well-being and economic prosperity, we have become aware of the need to pursue an "alternative agenda", one which explicitly integrates all of these dimensions of development. Not surprisingly, governments are finding that many of the information systems which served them well in meeting the needs of the standard agenda are deficient in helping them address this "alternative agenda".

Thus, governments have accumulated considerable information on soil degradation, nitrate pollution of groundwater and the eutrophication of surface waters in order to resolve each of these problems. They have collected far less of the information needed to anticipate and prevent these problems by reformulating the agricultural policies which cause them. Governments have been collecting information on the effects of environmental problems rather than on their root causes. They have collected economic, social and environmental information in isolation.

As the World Commission on Environment and Development put it, "the ability to choose policy paths that are sustainable requires the ecological dimensions of policy to be considered at the same time as the economic, trade, energy, agricultural, industrial and other dimensions -- on the same agendas and in the same national and international institutions. This is the chief institutional challenge of the 1990's".

The way in which governments collect information leads to the paradox described by Brown (1991) of mutually incompatible descriptions of wellbeing: while economists point to increasing standards of material welfare, ecologists document the dangers to the planet's life-support systems posed by rising affluence and increasing population.

The way in which policy-makers define sustainable development will determine their requirements for information. Sustainable development is a normative concept implying trade-offs among economic, environmental, social, cultural, ethical and other values. Decision makers are likely to require different information if they emphasise achieving intergenerational equity as opposed to, say, improving the efficiency of the market in a sustainable development strategy.

Human wellbeing

Ideally, the Canadian government would have access to information on this wide spectrum of indicators. Individual data sets, focused on health, economics, demographics, etc. should be linked to enable a study of the actual relationship between economic development, human well being and the state of the environment.

For instance, at least four developments are required to improve health information. First, the institutional constraints must be reduced. In this regard the new health information institute currently being established by Statistics Canada and HWC will be very important. Second, a new conceptual framework for health information is required. Health information should reflect the more comprehensive understanding of the determinants of well being described by the Ottawa Charter, and, as mentioned above, should emphasize the links between health, economics and the environment. In addition, both the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation at the University of Manitoba and CCHI have attempted to develop systems of health statistics based upon the determinants of health. Third, administrative and household data should be merged. A number of provinces, including Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and B.C., are now developing systems to link records of hospital visits to individuals. These initiatives should improve tracking of individual use of medical resources. Finally, an overall health outcomes index is required to link benefits and treatments.

Like health data, economic data should be linked to overall measures of ecosystem and social well being. These links should reflect environmental and social impacts, as well as measures of economic performance.

Problems With Current Information

Traditional economic indicators ignore the state of the environmental resource on which the economy is built, and provide only limited reference to social dimensions of well being.

Income accounting measures economic activity for which exchange occurs in monetary terms in a given time period. It can indicate the level of economic activity, its variations from year to year, the size of savings and investment, factor productivity, industrial structure, and comparable performance. These indicators are important, but do not present a complete measure of sustainable development. Traditional income accounting is deficient in several important respects, three of which are briefly outlined below.

Traditional measures of productivity, such as output per person-hour, inaccurately reflect the value of research and development. For example, public expenditures on health research which lower the incidence of morbidity have little impact on national income figures. At first approximation, a decrease in morbidity would raise both GNP and hours worked, leaving output per person-hour largely unchanged.

Aggregated economic indicators fail to account for a wide range of activities that have social value, including leisure, unpaid work and subsistence activities. In particular, the SNA, as currently constructed, do not account for the value of environmental amenities, let alone for ecological values.

Finally, current national accounting procedures primarily reflect rates of consumption, and are therefore blind as to whether that consumption has been produced by the sustainable use of resources, or whether it has occurred at the expense of present or future environmental capital. The SNA therefore fail to account adequately for natural resource depletion, degradation, and protection. For example, man made assets are valued as productive assets, and are written off against the value of production as they depreciate. However, the depletion of natural resource assets is not so accounted for, and this loss produces no charge in the national accounts against current income to reflect the decrease in potential future production. The SNA also misrepresent the costs and benefits of environmental protection. For example, these indicators treat expenses by governments on environmental protection as outputs rather than as inputs. On the other hand, commercial expenditures on environmental protection are included in the SNA, but the corresponding benefits of a cleaner environment are not. Conversely, where environmental protection expenses are not made, the resulting environmental damage is not counted as a cost.

Existing economic indicators thus measure only a limited portion of economic activity, and fail to reflect social welfare fully. They reflect the value system implicit in the macroeconomic conceptual framework that is rejected by sustainable development (Victor, Kay and Ruitenbeek, 1991). There are several schools of thought about the best way to resolve this accounting problem (UNEP-World Bank, 1989). To its credit, the Canadian Government is actively engaged in attempts to resolve the issue. For example, a number of countries, including Canada are in the process of establishing satellite environmental accounts, not explicitly linked to the SNA. The object is to use indicators of physical change to influence public opinion and environmental policies. Thus, Statistics Canada is developing a set of four inter-related accounts on natural resources and the environment: (i) natural resource stock accounts (quantities and values of natural resources); (ii) natural resource flow accounts (supply and disposition of natural resources in quantity and value); (iii) waste and pollutant output accounts (generation of unwanted byproducts by sector); and (iv) environmental expenditure accounts (expenditures on environmental protection by sector).

A number of prominent economists argue that environmental accounting will not have an adequate effect unless the accounts are monetized and integrated into the SNA. The argument is that the SNA are and will continue to be widely relied upon, and therefore it is imperative to produce an adjusted national income that is more sustainable. To this end, Statistics Canada is in the process of incorporating the monetary values of the natural resource stocks into the Canadian National Balance Sheet Accounts.

One of the most promising initiatives is being undertaken by the Environmental Statistics Section of the National Accounts and Environment Division. This Section prepared 1978, 1986 and 1991 versions of Human Activity and the Environment. The 1991 version contains an analysis of the environmental impacts of economic activity. As many economic activities as possible are classified based on the categories used in the input output tables of the Statistics Canada SNA. These tables provide information about the commodity transactions involved in each type of economic activities, including the cost of primary inputs, a measure of the value added by sector, and the flow of commodities to end users. This information is used to estimate the total value of inputs and outputs for each industry category - leading to calculation of the GDP. This information also permits estimates of the proportion of inputs constituted by "energy", "raw resource", "potential contaminant", or "other". Estimates are then made about the impact of each input of each category: e.g.. the poultry products industry had $1.5 billion of total inputs, comprised of 56.5% raw resources, 1.2% energy, 0% potential contaminants, and 42.3% "other"; and was rated as high impact in terms of raw resources, but low impact in terms of energy, potential contaminants, and water.

Environmental wellbeing

There is more information now available about Canada's environment than ever before. Unfortunately, information often exists for some parts of the country, or for some components of the environment, and not others; data exist for limited periods of time, thereby precluding analysis of environmental trends; and regional data cannot be compared because measurements are not standardised (Environment Canada, 1991).

The 1987 report of the stakeholder group on environmental reporting noted the following barriers to environmental information in Canada:

-no comprehensive network of information sources;

-no comprehensive framework describing the scope or extent of interactions between human actions and the environment;

-little knowledge of, and often no means of obtaining, data collected by industry, hospitals, universities and research institutions for their own specific purposes;

-insufficient data to permit understanding of linkages between economic activity and resource activity or to permit effective risk analysis or epidemiological studies;

-no independent institution or agency capable of assembling environmental data and assisting in interpretation;

-inadequate ongoing national monitoring program to determine levels of toxic substances in human, fish and wildlife populations;

-significant regional variations in the availability of data. (Stakeholder Group, 1987)

CANADIAN ACTIVITIES EVOLVING THROUGH THE SUSTAINABILITY PROCESS

Among other Canadian initiatives, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy's Consensus Decision Making Task Force has written and published Guiding Principles For A Sustainable Future outlining principles for the use of consensus to tackle some of the problems of sustainable development. These principles have been signed onto by all provinces and territories. Currently, the Task Force is preparing a training module for workshops to be given to senior government officials throughout Canada explaining the consensus process. As well, an inventory of case studies where the consensus model has been used is being assembled for future publication.

OTHER RELEVANT INTERNATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY-RELATED FORA

Social Development Summit

United Nations Commission on Sustainable Develoment

SUGGESTED READINGS AND INFORMATION SOURCES

Ahmad, Y.J., S. El Serafy, and E. Lutz (eds.). Environmental Accounting for Sustainable Development. A UNEP-World Bank Symposium. (Washington, D.C: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank, 1989).

An Initiative Undertaken by Canadian Round Tables. Building Consensus For a Sustainable Future: Guiding Principles, (August, 1993).

Bregha, Benidickson, Gamble, Shillington and Weick. The Integration of Environmental Considerations in Government Policy. (Ottawa: Canadian Environmental Assessment Research Council, 1990).

Conklin, Hodgson and Watson.Sustainable Development: A Manager's Handbook (Ottawa: National Round Table on Environment and Economy, 1991).

Government of Canada. Canada's Green Plan. (Ottawa: Environment Canada, 1990).

. Canada's Green Plan and the Earth Summit. (Ottawa: Environment Canada, 1992).

. Canada's National Report: United Nations Conference on Environment and Development Brazil, June 1992. (Ottawa: Environment Canada, 1991).

International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Agenda 21: Abstracts, Reviews, andCommentaries. (Theodora Carroll-Foster, editor), (Ottawa: IDRC, 1993).

Keating, Michael. Agenda for Change: A Plain Language Version of Agenda 21 and the Other Rio Agreements. (Geneva: Centre for Our Common Future, 1993).

Jacobs and Saddler. Sustainable Development and Environmental Assessment: Perspectives on Planning for a Common Future (Ottawa: Canadian Environmental Assessment Research Centre)

National Task Force on Environment and Economy (NRTEE). Report (Toronto: Canadian Council of Resource and Environment Ministers, 1987).

Repetto, R., W. Magrath, M. Wells, C. Beer, and F. Rossini. Wasting Assets: Natural Resources in the National Income Accounts. (Washington, D.C.: World Resources Institute, 1989).

World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future (Oxford University Press, 1987, Toronto).

Information Sources:

National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), 1 Nicholas Street, Suite 1500, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7B7, tel (613) 992-7189, fax (613) 992-7385.

United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, Department of Policy Coordination and Sustainable Develoment, Room S-3060, United Nations New York, N.Y. 10017, USA< tel (212) 963-5959.

Cite as: Projet de société: Canada and Agenda 21.Winnipeg: IISD, 1995. Online. Internet. http://iisd.ca/worldsd/canada/projet/c08.htm.

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