Food Security Assessment: An Exploration of Canadian Offshore Petroleum SEA Practice

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) has the potential to play a crucial role in addressing global food insecurity. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of 17 recent Canadian SEAs, conducted for offshore petroleum exploration, exploring the extent of consideration for food security in current SEA practice. Document analysis was used to appraise consideration of eight core food security elements and conformity to procedural and analytical elements recommended for effective food security assessment in regional SEA. Performance variation among the SEAs in was observed. Notable deficiencies include lack of explicit consideration for food security and lack of transparency around public participation, as well as limited characterisations of the socio-political environment. Some encouraging findings, however, suggest that food security can be successfully addressed in regional SEA. In particular, the ‘system analysis’ approach typically employed in SEA in the offshore petroleum exploration industry is well-suited to food security assessment. Certain aspects of food security are already indirectly considered and incorporated in SEA; yet, there is considerable scope for improvement of integrating food security effectively in SEA.