The Agri-Environmental Partnership of Alberta’s roles include identifying agri-environmental priorities and developing broad policy directions for dealing with those priorities. To address issues, the AEPA establishes project teams to explore identified priorities in detail and develop innovative, balanced policy recommendations.
Project teams are typically composed of people from various parts of Alberta’s agri-environmental community, including agencies participating on the AEPA Board and others. An agency with an interest in a particular issue can send a representative to sit on the project team for that issue.
The project team members work together to build a common understanding of their issue by gathering information and creating an inventory of the state of knowledge on the topic. They identify the gaps and key requirements, and look for creative and innovative solutions to the issue. They do this by brainstorming, seeking out expertise if need be, and engaging the industry.
The team develops a set of draft recommendations (or key messages) and brings them forward to the AEPA Board. The Board members take the draft recommendations back to the agencies they represent, so all agencies can have input. That input is then discussed by the Board, with the goal of reaching consensus on recommendations to take forward to the government of Alberta and/or other relevant agencies.
Currently there are 2 AEPA Project Teams.
- Land-use Framework Advisory Team
- Water Advisory Team