KIVALLIQ
A long-time Kivalliq Inuit Association (KIA) employee was honoured for his work on the 2014 Baker Lake Watershed Cumulative Effect Monitoring Program in June with the Deputy Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada's (AANDC) Recognition Award.

Luis Manzo, director of lands for the Kivalliq Inuit Association, seen here doing a lands inspection at the Meadowbank mine near Baker Lake, received the Deputy Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada's (AANDC) Recognition Award in Ottawa June 16. He received the award for his work on the 2014 Baker Lake Watershed Cumulative Effect Monitoring Program. - photo courtesy of Luis Manzo

Luis Manzo is the director of lands for KIA, with responsibility for land management and environmental impact assessment for Inuit-owned lands in the Kivalliq. He has worked for KIA since 1996 and over the years he has had a hand in ensuring the Kivalliq environment is protected. The honour was given to him for pulling together a variety of team members from various agencies to create a monitoring framework that would ensure water quality in the Baker Lake watershed is protected

As Manzo explains it, there has been monitoring in the region; however, "when you tried to find information, you couldn't find it."

The main problem is a baseline had never been established, which is important moving forward. A variety of data collection and research projects had taken place by Inuit on the land, government, agencies such as the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Kivalliq Inuit Association, academic researchers and exploration and mining companies. But the results were scattered and methods inconsistent.

In the Kivalliq, there are already two large projects moving forward, Meadowbank and Meliadine, with one in limbo at the project certification stage, Kiggavik, and more to come in the future. To move ahead with a mine, companies need to provide information - usually many binders full - showing that they have fully examined the state of the environment and explored every effect a mine might have on it. This is the environmental assessment.

"In order for a proponent to put these documents together and for me to understand it, we need to have a baseline, a really good baseline data of all the elements in the environment," said Manzo.

"Then when I review the project I objectively will say to the proponent, 'This section, why are you doing this section the way you're doing it if the data we have doesn't reflect what you will do, or how you will impact the environment or how you will mitigate those impacts.'

"All proponents have to do an environmental assessment and that is dangerous in the territory when you don't have a baseline data."

In 2013, with KIA as lead, a framework report was released outlining the need and the vision for monitoring the Baker Lake watershed that would see data gathered together so that it could be shared, be consistent and to provide a co-ordinated approach to monitoring in the region over time.

"One of the difficulties in the water part, just the water quality part, is the different agencies dealing with water resources collecting water in different ways," he says.

Manzo prides himself on two things: his capacity for teamwork and motivation to protect the environment.

The sizable job of implementing the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement is unprecedented and the land claim itself, he says, "Will never be achieved in another part of the world." Part of what's unprecedented is where development and environmental monitoring meet.

"The implementation of the land claim - they didn't know how big it was," says Manzo, adding his department works on a very small bit of it.

"If we don't do it in groups and teams, no projects can be done. You can't do things in Nunavut alone."

This Baker Lake watershed project has culminated in a series of reports but, more importantly, it, along with many other similar projects and collections of information, feeds into the one-stop shop on the KIA's website: the KIA Land Management Application.

Here, researchers, exploration companies and mining companies - anyone who wants to do something on the land in the Kivalliq region - can access all the information necessary on a sophisticated, user-friendly map system. That includes current mineral claims on Inuit-owned land, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) exploration agreements and a variety of other licences through AANDC, water sample locations, Kivalliq Inuit-owned land, municipal boundaries, environmentally sensitive areas, restricted areas, distribution of sensitive species, among others.

"We started in 1998 with a small, simple database," says Manzo.

In effect, what Manzo and the KIA have created over several years, step-by-step and with the help and cooperation of other agencies, is an easy-to-access system intended to ensure the environment is protected into the future, while streamlining the land-use process. NTI has twice honoured Manzo in recognition of his service, dedication and contribution to ensuring responsible management of Inuit-owned lands and in 2009 he received the Canadian North Nunavut Mining Mike Hind Award.

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