| Summary: | Canada’s northern territories, including the Yukon, are facing significant social, economic, political and ecological change. Devolution processes and comprehensive land claim agreements with self-governing First Nations have given rise to new land and resource decision making processes, including Regional Land Use Planning (RLUP). Project level Environmental Assessments (EAs) have been a main tool for governments to meet some of their fiduciary responsibilities to Indigenous peoples under Section 35 of Canada’s Constitution and to mitigate potentially adverse environmental impacts of non-renewable resource development projects. However, project level EAs are ill-equipped to address cumulative effects, regional conservation needs, broad alternatives and overall sustainability considerations central to Indigenous interests. RLUPs, if designed and authorized to guide project planning and assessment, are a more promising tool for addressing these interests, but how well they can serve both sustainability and Indigenous interests is not yet suitably demonstrated. RLUP processes established under comprehensive land claim agreements with First Nations in the Yukon enable cooperative decision-making about the future of the territory, including the pace and scale of non-renewable resource development and regions set aside for conservation. A qualitative case study of the Peel Watershed planning process was undertaken for the purposes of this thesis. The case embodies the tensions and challenges associated with RLUP in the Yukon to date; two competing plans were developed for the region and the case culminated in a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in December 2017. In this thesis, an analytical framework is developed and subsequently applied to the Peel Watershed Planning Commission and the Yukon Government plan for the Peel Watershed in order to evaluate their potential effectiveness in meeting sustainability and First Nations interests. The framework was built through attention to case and context specified ...
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