The Political Economy of Pollution Remediation on Public Lands

Abstract

This paper examines how investment in pollution remediation differs between different types of federal land. We draw on a unique dataset of 157,017 potentially contaminated sites in Canada. When we isolate Indigenous territories, we find that, compared to other types of federal land, Indigenous territories are 19.8% more likely to be contaminated, progress more slowly toward pollution remediation, and that the investment in the remediation process of contaminated sites is on average 77.3% lower in Indigenous territories. We propose a number of possible explanations for our results, notably the tragedy of the anti-common and inefficiencies associated with multilevel governance.

Keywords: Land Pollution, Remediation, Fragmented Ownership, Indigenous Lands

JEL Classification: J15, Q52, Q56, Q58