Market-based environmental governance and public resources in Alberta, Canada

Ryan Hackett

Ecosystem Services, 2015, vol. 15, issue C, 174-180

Abstract: Both proponents and critics of market-based conservation instruments (MBIs) have shared a tendency to characterize these new governance tools as a shift from former state centred management to a greater reliance on markets and market actors as a means of achieving conservation goals. A growing literature on the use of MBIs has outlined a series of characteristics and typologies thought to define these new environmental governance approaches. Chief among these has been the tendency to view such tools as either a displacement of state intervention in favour of private actors and free markets, or active state engagement in re-regulation in support of such ends. This paper draws on a case study of conservation offsets in response to resource development in the Canadian province of Alberta to complicate some of these pervasive narratives. Rather than representing a shift from state to market, or state intervention in support of market instruments, the provincial government has actively engaged in both limiting the development of a market-based system and shaping the parameters of existing industry-NGO offset projects in ways that avoid risks and conflict and support existing power dynamics around resource allocation and use in the province.

Keywords: Conservation; Governance; Canada; Neoliberalism; Offsets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoser:v:15:y:2015:i:c:p:174-180

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoser.2015.01.003

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