Mapping the predicted and potential impacts of metal mining and its mitigation measures in Arctic and boreal regions using environmental and social impact assessments: a systematic map protocol

The Arctic and boreal regions, its people, ecosystems and economy are changing at a fast pace. While a warming climate is often mentioned as a major driver of current change, the establishment and expansion of extractive industries—mining and the extraction of hydrocarbons—have been major drivers of both social and environmental changes in many northern places, both historically and in recent years [1]. As mining activities increase regionally [2] and globally [3], there is an urgent need to assess social and environmental impacts as well as mitigate negative impacts.

Since the 1970s, environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are routinely conducted and in many cases enforced for all large development projects, including changes in industrial land use and decommissioning activities. Social impact assessments (SIAs) are fairly recent add-ons to the assessment of environmental impacts. Together, these assessments should describe the positive and negative effects and alternatives to a proposed activity on ecological (EIA) and social (SIA) systems, including biodiversity, flora and fauna, abiotic components (such as air quality), human health, security, and wellbeing [4]. They also describe and estimate the nature and likelihood of damaging events in connection with a proposed activity and propose measures to eliminate, reduce, control or compensate these impacts and ameliorate impacted systems. They typically evaluate the significance of indirect, direct and cumulative impacts. EIAs are the basis of many permitting and licencing decisions (unlike SIAs for which there is often no legal requirement). The strengths and weaknesses of EIAs and SIAs are currently in focus of both research and policy (e.g. [5]), which is important for improving impact assessment and licensing processes.

The key difference between EIAs and SIAs is that the latter focuses on the impacts to local human communities, which is important not only in attempting to minimise harm (as with EIAs), but also to consider the voices of local communities in the proposed activities. All EIA legislation has a requirement for public consultation, which is not always the case in SIA processes. SIAs may be part of EIA (as is the case in Finland) or, as of more recently, can be a separate stand-alone document (as in Greenland).

The process of producing EIAs and SIAs is different in different countries/regions across Arctic and boreal regions [5, 6]. For example, in Sweden, prospecting and/or exploring can be done without an EIA [5], but for a mining permit (concession) a developer must submit a ‘concession EIA’ to the Mining Inspectorate. After the mining permit has been approved, the developer needs to submit an application for an environmental permit along with a second EIA (without the sections already covered by the concession EIA) to the Land and Environment Court [7]. There is no Swedish requirement to produce SIA, but some impacts to local communities and human wellbeing, and their mitigation measures, are usually listed within the (concession) EIA. In Alaska, the impact assessment process is guided by federal environmental law and the National Environmental Policy Act. The proponent submits an environmental assessment, after which the government determines if a much broader and detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) is needed. EISs include both social and environmental impacts. In Canada, under the federal EIA legislation, after the government has determined that there is a need for a detailed assessment of the impacts, they issue guidelines for preparation of an EIS to the proponent (for example of the guidelines see here: [8]). The government then reviews the submitted EIS, writes a report with conclusions, and the minister issues an environmental assessment decision document [9]. The EIA systems in Canada’s 3 northern territories (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut) are different than the federal EIA system. For example, in Yukon, the Yukon Environment and Socio-economic Assessment Board prepares the EIS, not the project proponent [10].

As summarised by Haddaway et al. [11], mining activities can have multiple, positive, negative, direct and indirect impacts on social and environmental systems. They can cause land use change, soil and water contamination, increase in noise level and dust. Mining activities can have multiple impacts on biodiversity [12, 13] and human wellbeing [e.g. [14, 15], often affecting traditional practices of Indigenous peoples [16]. Still, there is a paucity of reviews of the impacts on indigenous peoples and lands (see [17–19]). Evidence on the direct and indirect effects of mitigation measures is disparate; spread across disciplines and knowledge systems, including science research knowledge, indigenous and local knowledge, and practitioner knowledge. This map will collect information on the impacts and their mitigation measures of metal mining in Arctic and boreal regions in order to collate knowledge held within EIAs and SIAs.

The primary question for this systematic map is:

What predicted and potential direct and indirect impacts of metal mining and related mitigation measures in Arctic and boreal regions are identified by environmental and social impact assessments?

This review aims to generate a list of predicted and potential, direct and indirect impacts of mining and its mitigation measures based on a review of EIAs and SIAs in Arctic and boreal regions (see Population, below). This mapping exercise will produce a framework of different mining impacts and related mitigation measures from practitioners’ knowledge base (and reflected in EIAs and SIAs). This framework will further form the basis of a multiple knowledge base (sensu [20]) on mining impacts and mitigation measures generated from different knowledges including scientific, Indigenous, and practitioners’ knowledge (for more information see the project website: https://osf.io/cvh3u/ and a protocol of a map that aims to collate research evidence on the same subject [11]).

This review will follow the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence guidelines and standards for evidence synthesis in environmental management [22] and it conforms to ROSES reporting standards [23] (see Additional file 1).