Offsetting dispossession? Terrestrial conservation offsets and First Nation treaty rights in Alberta, Canada.

A diverse range of actors in Alberta, Canada have recognized terrestrial conservation offsets as a way to compensate for the ecological consequences of the province’s oil sands boom. Offset programs are representative of a global trend toward the rescaling of environmental governance, and greater use of market-oriented tools for conservation practice. This global shift in conservation techniques has generated a somewhat divisive academic literature that views market oriented approaches as either utopian win–win scenarios, or as part of a larger class-based project that threatens democracy and serves to channel benefits to powerful societal actors. Much less attention has been paid to how seemingly neoliberal practices might be appropriated for a diverse range of political ends, resulting in more heterogeneous political and material outcomes. Drawing on recent scholarship that frames neoliberalism as a set of governance techniques, rather than a unified political project, the paper explores the ways in which market-based conservation tools, such as conservation offsets, might be put to progressive political ends in a manner unanticipated by the often bifurcated literature on the topic. Specifically, the paper explores recent attempts by some First Nations in Alberta to implement conservation offset programs as a means of securing greater control of traditional territory and social and cultural sustainability. The case study complicates some of the dominant narratives of market-based conservation, and works to expand our understanding of neoliberal conservation practice by focusing on how the context of particular places may complicate both the underlying logics and material outcomes of market-oriented conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]