Strengths And Weaknesses Of Environmental Law In Canada

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Q4.1: (a) Does Boyd consider Canada to be a leader in environmental protection, or a laggard? (b) Why does he suggest that this should be surprising? (c) State briefly in your own words two weaknesses of environmental law in Canada. (d) What might an ultimate cause of these weaknesses?

Answer: (a) Boyd does consider Canada to be a laggard in environmental protection with all the potential to be a leader. Canada’s environmental record is compared to 28 other industrialized nations, with performance tracked for over two decades. Using 5 indicators in 10 broad categories, overall Canada is amongst the 3 worst countries with one of the dirties economies in the industrialized world.
(b) He suggests that Canada being ‘laggard’ is rather surprising
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(2009) writes about ‘making ES operational’. (a) What do you think they mean by that? (b) What advance in the approach they propose enables that? (c) What would be a good practical example, drawing from the article?

Answer: (a) ‘Making ES operational’ means not only acknowledging the existence of ES but also main streaming it to the decision making and putting forward a valid argument for bringing in the framework for valuing ES to guide natural resource management and setting up the right institutions. These institutions further create incentives so that decisions made by individuals, corporations, government promote shared values towards environment protection.

(b) One of the key approach of making ES operational according to the paper is to primarily acknowledge that ES are beyond provisioning services and there are several interlinkages between various ES. Further, integrate the values of ES into decision making through innovative schemes like payment for ecosystem services and management actions. In the paper Daily et al proposes this approach in the framework given below. According to the framework decisions motivate the integration of ES into management and policy
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However, according to me out of all the recommendations that Ricketts & Hildebrand have for Canada to better manage its oceans and coasts understanding the value of Coastal Ecosystem Goods and Services is the most promising one for effecting real change. Reason 1: To improve any policy development and decision making capacity of institutions the capacity to value ecosystem services and goods should be advanced (ref the framework of Daily et al 2009 which supports this reasoning). Reason 2: Valuation is extremely important for an ecosystem based management policy or regulation to be successful especially like ICOM to ensure long term management of ocean and coastal resources. In addition, with the new US policy for stewardship of oceans, coasts and Great lakes where marine management imbibes principles of ecosystem based management complementing with the Canadian ICOM brings in an added reason to consider valuation of marine and coastal

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