As we come to the end of 2021, the Odonaterra team reflects on a productive year with new clients, new projects, and new team members!
In 2021, we supported Indigenous-led impact assessment, consultation, and capacity-building projects in Alberta, Ontario, Nunavut, and Quebec. We also continued work on a federal environmental assessment started in 2018 and provided ongoing reporting to support long-term socioeconomic impact monitoring on a large-scale infrastructure project.
Odonaterra hired two new team members in the first half of the year to lead Indigenous engagement and consultation and traditional knowledge and land use studies. An intern also joined our team to provide additional support to our clients for their projects to plan, study, monitor, and assess activities impacting the natural and social environment.
Our team’s project highlights from the year include:
facilitating Indigenous traditional knowledge and land use studies to support a federal environmental assessment of an interprovincial dam-bridge replacement project;
guiding the socioeconomic impact assessment for a wind energy proposal;
co-creating an Indigenous-led social impact assessment for a mining operation;
consulting First Nations on a caribou habitat recovery program in the communities’ traditional territory; and
engaging communities to develop environmental management plans and policies.
Our flexible team has been able to remain resilient as the world entered a second year of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Respecting community protocols, we were able to have several in-person meetings and discussions over the summer to strengthen relationships and support the collection of Indigenous knowledge to inform impact assessment. Virtual engagements allowed for ongoing conversations to keep up project momentum when risks of COVID-19 transmission were higher and integrating new tools within the team for internal conversations and information-sharing further enabled project collaboration and success.
As we consider what 2022 holds, we hope to see a return to normalcy so we can get back to the in-person engagements that we dearly miss and that make our work even more meaningful. Our hearts go out to those who have been and continue to be impacted by COVID-19. We know this has exacerbated already overwhelming amounts of work and personal stresses, especially in our Indigenous client communities. We thank our clients for their continued trust and confidence in our team and look forward to continuing our work with you, and engaging new clients to implement community environmental strategies that achieve reconciliation and make us all proud to be Canadian.
If you want to discuss an upcoming social environment project, visit the What we do page for more information about our services and Connect with us.
We wish you a safe and happy holiday season and prosperous new year!