Generating prosperity, creating crisis: impacts of resource development on diverse groups in northern communities

Northern Canada illustrates the contradictory dynamics in resource development – at once generating prosperity and inclusion within some communities and for some people, and creating or perpetuating crisis in some communities and exclusion for some people. Existing literature related to resource extraction and development focuses on the impacts on the environment and government regulatory mechanisms. Few authors or policy makers pay attention to how multiple and diverse groups within communities are affected by resource development. Building from research in a community-university research alliance, the authors argue that these competing dynamics are initiated and sustained through resource development projects and have disproportionate effects on historically marginalized groups within northern communities. This article presents the results of a comprehensive scoping review of the literature related to the social and economic impacts of resource extraction in Northern Canada. Some of the impacts of resource extraction clearly generate prosperity, while others can move communities towards crises and some do both. Using intersectionality, we argue that policy makers, especially those responsible for community development and regulating resource development projects, require a multilayered analysis to understand and redress the unequal effects of resource development on northern communities.