Multistakeholderism in Oil Sands Governance
32 Pages Posted: 4 Jun 2008 Last revised: 5 Aug 2008
Date Written: August 2008
Abstract
Governance increasingly involves the opening up of decision-making to greater participation by the public. Multistakeholderism is one manifestation of this increased public participation and, in the context of oil sands development, has led to the establishment of groups like the Cumulative Environmental Management Association (CEMA) and the Oil Sands Consultations Multistakeholder Committee (MSC). The purpose of this paper is to trace the historical development of the structures of interest representation in the context of the development of the Alberta oil sands. It is argued that oil sands development and governance has been dominated by the interests of two key groups of actors, government and industry, and that the emergence of key multistakeholder bodies has thus far done little to alter the historic government-industry model of interest representation.
Keywords: multistakeholderism, governance, oil sands, Alberta
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