A political ecology of southern resident killer whale endangerment: are environmental assessments failing to protect the species?

This project uses a political ecological theoretical framework to explain the state's investment in large-scale capitalist infrastructure and the limits on state environmental action, grounded in an analysis of southern resident killer whale endangerment and Roberts Bank Terminal 2 ("Terminal 2"). The southern resident killer whales are a critically endangered species, and their Species At Risk Act listing protects their critical habitat from destruction. However, the federal government recently approved Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in Delta, British Columbia, a port mega-expansion that will destroy at least 168 hectares of southern resident killer whale habitat, and pollute their habitat with underwater noise from project-associated marine shipping. This research seeks to understand how this approval was possible. By engaging with theories of the state centred on its role in enabling capital accumulation and seeking legitimacy, this research explains that the proponent for the project, and the state more broadly, downplayed how harmful Terminal 2 would be to species in the project's environmental assessments. There were four key ways the state downplayed harm: via unproven mitigation measures; utilizing uncertainty; resetting baselines; and oversimplifying the species. Additionally, this project looks to answer what Terminal 2 says about the environmental state's ability to protect endangered species. I argue that a culmination of problems within environmental assessments, such as lack of scientific rigour, uncertain economic projections, the infringement of Indigenous rights, and low faith in the process from environmental assessment experts, suggests that environmental assessments, and the environmental state more broadly, need deep and transformational change to fulsomely protect and recover the southern resident killer whales.