Indigenous-led Cumulative Effects & Bridging the Informational Gap for Informed Decision Making

ABSTRACT TITLE: Indigenous-led Cumulative Effects & Bridging the Informational Gap for Informed Decision Making MOTIVATION: The Salish Sea and its ecosystem are vital to the health, heritage, livelihood, and way of life of a multitude of First Nations. Our mission is to ensure that we are supporting our members with usable baseline and cumulative effects data to make informed decisions as it pertains to development and resource policy in our Traditional Territories. Our work is intended to be a regional amalgamation of data that bridges the gap of information and is intended to complement the ongoing stewardship programs of individual First Nations. THE PROBLEM: Regulatory assessments have continuously indicated a lack of an overarching baseline and cumulative effects database that allows for 'informed decision making' for avoidance, mitigation and accommodation. Furthermore, the data collected is piecemeal and does not reflect an 'Indigenous perspective' that adequately takes into account traditional use, history, culture/heritage, livelihood etc. OUR SCOPE OF WORK: The Indigenous lens will be layered into each level of information/category through feedback from our member communities and will be tested out to ensure relevancy and usability. 2021/2022 - INAUGURAL YEAR (TRADITIONAL FOOD SOURCES) We were incorporated in February 2021 and our inaugural year is focused on: • Building our database from publicly available data (e.g. Member data, 3rd party non profits/ENGOs, government, industry) • Determining how to establish baseline thresholds and areas of focus our members • Feedback and information sharing with our member communities for 'Indigenous overlay' (e.g. interviews with Elder and Knowledge Holders etc.) • Report and recommendations • Build and test out database • Develop accompanying monitoring programs plans • Training programs for monitoring program CONCLUSION: Our plans, approaches (for the inaugural year and future years) and findings are what we hope to present in April 2021.