Environmental Monitoring and Ecosystem Management in the Oil Sands : Spaceship Earth or Escort Tugboat?

Spurred on by mounting international concern about the environmental impacts of the oil sands and determined to secure Canada’s status as a global energy superpower, Canada and Alberta recently announced the establishment of a “world class” monitoring plan for the Lower Athabasca Region of Alberta. Relying on recent scholarship but also Canadian experience with monitoring, this paper sets out some of the challenges to (and features of) effective environmental monitoring programs. It also situates monitoring in its proper context as a prerequisite to the successful implementation of ecosystem management (“EM”), an emerging if still not fully understood environmental policy model, the effective implementation of which presents its own set of challenges. The Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Plan (“JOSMP”) and one of the existing EM regimes in the region, the Lower Athabasca River Water Management Framework (“LAR Framework”), are then assessed against frameworks constructed around the challenges and features previously identified. The implications of an environmental law increasingly reliant on monitoring and EM are discussed in the final part