Producing consent
How environmental assessment enabled oil and gas extraction in the Qikiqtani region of Nunavut
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8424101 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Warren Max Bernauer (0000-0002-1679-6723, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 64 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 489-501 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0008-3658 • E-ISSN: 1541-0064 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/cag.12611 |
| OpenAlex | W3018190799 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 13 |
| References cited | 20 |
There is now an extensive body of academic literature examining how the environmental movement contributed to the colonization of Indigenous peoples and development of capitalism in northern Canada. This paper contributes to these discussions by considering how environmental assessment (EA) helped enable hydrocarbon extraction in the Qikiqtani (Baffin Island) region of Nunavut in the 1970s and 1980s. When exploration activities began to threaten the Inuit harvesting economy, communities protested with letters and petitions. The federal government responded to Inuit resistance by referring proposed exploratory drilling and extraction to its new EA process. While Inuit won significant victories during some assessments of proposed exploratory drilling and extraction, federal EA ultimately helped create the conditions for Inuit to consent to oil extraction. EA helped impose material compromises between Inuit and hydrocarbon industries, including preferential hiring of Inuit, a reduction in the scope of proposed extraction, and the rejection of especially controversial proposals for offshore drilling. These concessions, combined with a collapse in the market for sealskins due to international boycotts, persuaded several Qikiqtani communities to support oil extraction in the 1980s. The ensuing extraction and export of oil from the High Arctic accelerated processes of colonial dispossession and reinforced colonial political dynamics
Arctic · Drilling · Economics · Economy · Environmental impact assessment · Environmental protection · Extraction (chemistry) · Geography · Government (linguistics) · Indigenous · Political science · Ecology · Engineering · Geology · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Law · Mining and Resource Management · Oceanography
Elsewhere and otherwise
Enhancing Indigenous impact assessment
Imposing calculations
The buzz phase of resource extraction
Indigenous engagement in oilfield remediation
Protected areas and extractive hegemony
Reproducing extractivism
Can Environmental Assessment Protect Caribou? Analysis of EA in Nunavut, Canada, 1999-2019
What does it take to stop a mine? Indigenous interventions and project rejection in Nunavut, Canada
Consequences and implications of British Columbia's failed cumulative effects assessment and management framework for Indigenous peoples
The path to Panarctic
Inconsistent, downplayed, and pathologized
All that is Frozen Melts into the Sea
Mining and Communities in Northern Canada
Animal Rights, Human Rights
Impact assessment and indigenous self-determination
Where the Rivers Meet
Social Impact Assessment and the Anthropology of the Future in Canada's Tar Sands
Forty Years of Northern Non-Renewable Natural Resource Development
Resistance
Resource sterilization
The Challenge of Arctic Shipping
The limits to extraction
Diamond Mining in Canada's Northwest Territories
Securing Indigenous politics
| Unique citing works | 13 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 11 |