The effects of tar sands development on Alberta’s Indigenous peoples: a case of ecocide
Northern Alberta is home to the second largest known deposit of bitumen in the world. Locked in the tar sands of the Athabasca region, this deposit has become the economic engine of the province. Over the past half-century, the tar sands have witnessed a dramatic expansion of production, growing from an output of 50,000 barrels of oil per day in 1976 to 2.5 million barrels per day in 2014.[1] But this explosion of production has resulted in mass ecological devastation, irreparably altering the landscape of the Athabasca delta and watershed. Tar sands development has resulted in mass deforestation, open-pit mining, depletion of water systems, toxic contamination, and destruction of biodiversity.[2] A once lush boreal forest has been replaced by a vast industrial wasteland visible from space, spotted with toxic tailings lakes, and criss-crossed by bitumen pipelines.[3] Yet, while the Alberta tar sands have become a hot topic of debate in environmental management, scholars have noted a considerable gap in the social science literature of studies which assess the impact of the extractive project on the region’s Indigenous peoples.[4] The region remains home to many Indigenous communities, including Cree, Chipewyan, Prairie Dene and Metis nations, and the tar sands lie almost entirely within their traditional territories.[5] The ecological devastation inflicted by tar sands development has had a crippling impact on the ability of Indigenous communities to practice and maintain their traditional ways of life and their Treaty rights. The shrinking accessibility to healthy land undermines subsistence lifestyles and threatens senses of place, language, and knowledge.[6] Furthermore, Indigenous communities living downstream of the tar sands experience disproportionate rates of deadly diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, and colon cancer.[7] This paper will examine the environmental impacts of tar sands development on the Indigenous peoples of northern Alberta through the lens of ecocide. It will argue that the environmental impacts of tar sands development have had a violent effect on the Indigenous peoples of the region, threatening the physical and cultural foundations of their existence. The paper concludes that continued tar sands development constitutes ecocide against northern Alberta’s Indigenous peoples, and briefly examines the ethical and political implications of said conclusion.
Coined in 1970 by American biologist Arthur Galston, the definition of ecocide has evolved considerably as understandings of ecology and anthropology have evolved. The most commonly accepted definition comes from the Scottish lawyer Polly Higgins, who defined the term in a submission to the United Nations Law Commission proposing the establishment of an international law of ecocide. Higgins defined ecocide as “extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.”[8] Ecocide can involve deliberate destruction of habitats, but it can also include reckless behaviour, such as exploiting resources “without regard for the known or foreseeable risk of destruction,” or negligent behaviour such as undertaking “inappropriate development projects” or “improperly regulating development.”[9] Higgins’ definition also recognized that ecocide can lead to cultural destruction via the undermining of an ecological or cultural way of life.[10] Indeed, a number of scholars have demonstrated that ecocide can function as a method of genocide in cases where environmental destruction “results in conditions of life that fundamentally threaten a social group’s cultural and/or physical existence.”[11] This assertion is not a significant departure from the original conception of genocide. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish legal scholar who coined the term of genocide in 1944, recognized the destruction of culture as a key method of group destruction. Underpinning his theory was the “central ontological assertion” that culture integrates human societies, and is a “necessary precondition for the realization of individual material needs.”[12] Processes associated with ecological destruction, such as land dispossession, displacement, forced migration, and a spike in environment-related diseases can disrupt the “cultural and material subsistence” of a group, and therefore result in the destruction of its physical and cultural foundations as a distinct people.[13] It is therefore argued that if ecological destruction erodes the socioecological relations which constitute the cultural and physical foundation of a particular group’s existence, then ecological destruction can be understood as a method of group destruction, and therefore a genocide.[14] This insight provides not only a definition for ecocide, but an applicable framework for how it can effect group destruction. Ecocide requires ecological destruction on a mass scale resulting in a threat to the physical and/or cultural foundations of a group’s existence. Using this definition and framework, this paper will now present the evidence that the environmental externalities produced by the development of the Alberta tar sands constitute an ecocide against the region’s Indigenous peoples.
The development of the Alberta tar sands certainly meets the qualification of causing ecological destruction on a mass scale. Development begins with the clear-cutting of thousands of hectares of boreal forest, the draining of lakes and wetlands, and the diversions of rivers. Then the mining commences. After strip mining, tar sands are combined with steam, compressed air, and chemical solvents to make the sand less viscous and easier to transport.[15] Toxic byproducts of the process are held in massive tailing ponds, which are often unlined, and have broken or seeped into local water sources on at least ten reported occasions since 2010 alone.[16] The contents of these ponds are so toxic that some energy companies employ workers to scoop dead birds off the surface.[17] The process of extracting, processing, and transporting tar sands releases toxic pollutants, such as heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs, chemicals found in crude oil) into both groundwater and atmosphere.[18] A University of Alberta study conducted in 2010 found that the tar sands industry releases 13 different chemicals considered “priority pollutants” under the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act, via air and water, into the Athabasca River and its watershed.[19] This is not to mention the output of greenhouse gases (GHG) associated with the process. If the popular ‘well to wheels’ approach is used, where the combustion of the product itself is included, tar sands extraction, processing, and use generates anywhere from 8 to 37 per cent more GHGs than conventional oil.[20] In fact, Alberta tar sands development is Canada’s fastest growing source of GHG emissions and is “a leading source of air pollution on a continental scale.”[21] The impacts of these processes have raised concerns regarding the region’s ecological health. Ecological literature has noted long-term decreases in both plant and animal life near tar sands developments.[22] Community members have echoed these concerns, noting declines in populations of moose, caribou, birds, and fish.[23] Moreover, these environmental impacts have been demonstrated to pose a threat to human health in the region. A study of the tar sands industry’s environmental impact on the Athabasca region was conducted in 2009 and found that levels of contaminants in the lower Athabasca River system, including mercury, arsenic and PAHs, had reached levels dangerous to human and ecosystem health.[24] Data comparing changes over time found increased levels of PAHs in sediment, of mercury in fish, of arsenic in water and sediment, and of sulphur dioxide in the air.[25] In all cases, the authors concluded that the increases were related to tar sands development and posed acute health risks to humans, animals, and plant life in the region. This scientific data certainly provides adequate evidence of ecological destruction on a mass scale, and thus meets the first criterion of an ecocide.
As the second criterion, ecocide requires that mass ecological destruction result in a threat to the physical and/or cultural foundations of a group’s existence. In the case of the Alberta tar sands, the environmental impacts of the industry have had a devastating effect on the physical and cultural wellbeing of the local Indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities near developments have cited “caustic changes to river water quality, meat quality, and to the availability of wild fish and game.”[26] Threats to these natural resources pose a threat to traditional subsistence lifestyles. The remote community of Fort Chipewyan had previously relied on an 80 per cent subsistence diet, but tar sands pollution, mass deforestation, and ecosystem destruction have made it near impossible to sustain.[27] Many residents are now too afraid to drink the water, harvest plants, or rear animals.[28] Environmental pollution from tar sands development has also been linked to disproportionate levels of leukemia, lymphoma, and cancer in local Indigenous communities.[29] The Mikisew Cree and the Athabasca Chipewyan nations, who live downstream of tar sands developments, have documented aggressively high rates of rare cancers.[30] In 2006, a local medical professional in the Fort Chipewyan community published a report which found “disturbingly disproportionate incidence of deadly diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, colon cancer, and Graves disease.”[31] Studies conducted since then have not only corroborated his medical conclusion, but have also concluded that the provincial and federal governments have been deliberately ignoring or downplaying evidence of toxic contamination among downstream Indigenous communities as a result of tar sands development.[32] This evidence suggests a direct threat to the physical wellbeing of Indigenous communities in the region, in some cases resulting in death.
Tar sands development also poses a threat to the cultural wellbeing of the region’s Indigenous peoples. Environmental degradation undermines ways of life which Indigenous peoples in the region have practiced for millenia, threatening their ability to exercise Treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather, practices which are “integral to the maintenance and transmission of traditional knowledge.”[33] Hunters and trappers throughout the region have documented damage to fish, berries, wildlife, and other resources in the vicinity of tar sands developments.[34] Local Indigenous communities have also expressed concern about water levels. The flow of the Athabasca River has decreased considerably due to the massive water uptake required for the processing of tar sands.[35] Lower water levels have reduced the navigability of waterways which are used as a primary means of transportation for remote communities to access traditional hunting, trapping, fishing, and gathering areas.[36] Tar sands development therefore directly undermines the ability of local Indigenous peoples to continue their traditional subsistence lifestyles, thus alienating them from their land. The degradation of the natural environment and the consequential alienation of Indigenous peoples from that environment poses a threat to the cultural foundations of the Indigenous population’s existence. The relationship between Indigenous peoples and their land is crucial. As Westman explains, Indigenous peoples in northern Alberta have not only used lands, waters, plants, and animals for subsistence, but rather have “entered into relations” with spirits connected to plants, animals and physical places.[37] For Indigenous peoples, practices, ritual, traditions, and political and socio-economic cohesion as a group are “inextricably bound” to the land.[38] Most Indigenous peoples see that relationship with the land as “vital to their physical and cultural survival,” and “constitutive of the Indian cultural identity.”[39] Alienation from that land thereby renders them “socially dead,” for they are no longer able to “carry out, develop, and preserve their cultural heritage and traditions,” or indeed pass on those traditions to future generations.[40] Given this complex socio-ecological relationship to the land, the mass destruction of ecosystems can lead to group destruction “via the essential conduit of culture.”[41] The degradation of natural ecosystems, the “over-exploitation” of land and water, and “the desecration of connections between people, their cultures and their lands” can all amount to group destruction for populations who are “materially and spiritually dependent” upon their environments.[42] In fact, George Poitras, a member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation affected by tar sands development in Fort Chipewyan said that “If we don’t have land and we don’t have anywhere to carry out our traditional lifestyle, we lose who we are as a people. So if there’s no land, then it’s equivalent in our estimation to genocide of a people.”[43] The Indigenous population’s physical and cultural existence necessarily depends on the preservation of the socio-ecological relationship to the land. The ecological devastation of Indigenous territories therefore undermines the “very ontological and cosmological knot of the Indigenous existence.”[44] Thus, the ecological devastation of Indigenous territories in northern Alberta poses an existential threat to the cultural foundations of the Indigenous population’s existence. In sum, the mass ecological devastation associated with tar sands development threatens both the physical and cultural foundations of the region’s Indigenous populations. Tar sands development thus satisfies the second criterion of ecocide.
In conclusion, the environmental externalities produced by tar sands development in northern Alberta produce effects which meet the criteria of an ecocide against the region’s Indigenous peoples. At each stage of development, tar sands extraction and processing executes ecological devastation on a mass scale, particularly by clear-cutting habitats, diverting waterways, and emitting toxic by-products into air, water, and soil. The long-term effects of these environmental externalities pose an existential threat to the physical and cultural existence of the region’s Indigenous peoples. Toxic emissions cause abnormal rates of deadly disease and the destruction of habitats and the toxication of soil and water undermines their traditional subsistence lifestyle. The degradation of the natural environment severs crucial socio-ecological ties between the population and their land. Combined, these threats to the Indigenous population’s physical and cultural existence may have genocidal effects in the long-term. Other authors, recognizing the colonial framework underpinning relations between the Canadian state and the Indigenous peoples of northern Alberta, have used the term genocide to describe their situation. However, the term ecocide is a better classification for two reasons. First, ecocide centers the crucial socio-ecological relationship of Indigenous peoples to their land, and therefore recognizes how ecological destruction affects Indigenous populations in a distinct way.
Second, ecocide recognizes the potentially devastating effects of ecological destruction on a mass scale as being akin to group destruction. Genocide, whether by definition or by historical connotation, implies and suggests intentional mass killing. This narrow conception leaves out many crimes of group destruction. By adopting the framework of ecocide for tar sands development, scholars can recognize ecological devastation as being a direct threat to a cultural group’s existence and therefore genocidal in nature. Recognizing the effects of tar sands development as ecocide also carries significant policy implications. Future industrial resource extraction projects should be examined for their potentially ecocidal effects against Indigenous peoples. Governments must be made to understand that the ecological devastation produced by industrial resource extraction is distinctly violent to Indigenous populations. No project whose environmental effects pose a fundamental threat to the physical and/or cultural existence of a distinct cultural group should be allowed to proceed. The framing of tar sands development in northern Alberta as ecocide can therefore provide a valuable case study, example, and framework to understand the especially violent and devastating effects of industrial resource extraction on Indigenous lands. If Canadian policy makers recognize these realities, then the moral imperative to shut down tar sands development immediately and permanently becomes inescapable.
[1] Sean Pearson & Emily Ray, “Sustainable Colonization: Tar Sands as Resource Colonialism,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 29, №3 (2018): 71.
[2] Jennifer Huseman & Damien Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide’: tar sands and the Indigenous peoples of northern Alberta,” The International Journal of Human Rights 16, №1 (2012): 230
[3] Jen Preston, “Racial extractivism and white settler colonialism: An examination of the Canadian Tar Sands mega-projects,” Cultural Studies 31, №2 (2017): 366.
[4] This literature gap is noted and addressed in Clinton N. Westman & Tara L. Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada: a Review of Impacts and Processes Concerning Indigenous Peoples,” Human Ecology 47 (2019): 233–243.
[5] Preston, “Racial extractivism and white settler colonialism,” 366.
[6] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 235.
[7] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 224–225.
[8] Polly Higgins, Damien Short, & Nigel South. “Protecting the planet: a proposal for a law of ecocide.” Crime, Law, and Social Change 59, №3 (2013): 257.
[9] Mark A. Gray, “The International Crime of Ecocide.” California Western International Law Journal 26, №2 (1996): 218.
[10] Higgins, Short, & South,” Protecting the planet,” 258.
[11]Martin Crook & Damien Short, “Marx, Lemkin and the genocide-ecocide nexus.” The International Journal of Human Rights 18, №3 (2014): 298.
[12] Crook & Short, “Marx, Lemkin and the genocide-ecocide nexus,” 305.
[13] Tim Lindgren, “Ecocide, genocide and the disregard of alternative life-systems,” The International Journal of Human Rights 22, №4 (2018): 533–534.
[14] Lindgren, “Ecocide, genocide and the disregard of alternative life-systems,” 526.
[15] Pearson & Ray, “Sustainable Colonization,” 75.
[16] Pearson & Ray, “Sustainable Colonization,” 75
[17] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 221.
[18] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 235.
[19] Preston, “Racial extractivism and white settler colonialism,” 369.
[20] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 221.
[21] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 237.
[22] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 235–236.
[23] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 236.
[24] Kevin P. Timoney & Peter Lee, “Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute? The Scientific Evidence,” The Open Conservation Biology Journal 3 (2009): 78.
[25] Timoney & Lee, “Does the Alberta Tar Sands Industry Pollute?,” 78.
[26] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 224.
[27] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 228.
[28] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 228.
[29] Crook & Short, “Marx, Lemkin and the genocide-ecocide nexus,” 310.
[30] Preston, “Racial extractivism and white settler colonialism,” 369.
[31] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 224–225.
[32] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,’” 225.
[33] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 235.
[34] Clinton N. Westman, “Making and Breaking Community in the Oil Sands Region,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 38, №2 (2013): 217.
[35] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 236.
[36] Westman & Joly, “Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada,” 236.
[37] Westman, “Making and Breaking Community in the Oil Sands Region,” 215.
[38] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,” 221.
[39] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,” 223.
[40] Huseman & Short, “‘A slow industrial genocide,” 221.
[41] Martin Crook, Damien Short, & Nigel South, “Ecocide, genocide, capitalism and colonialism: Consequences for indigenous peoples and global ecosystems environments,” Theoretical Criminology 22, №3 (2018): 305.
[42] Crook, Short, & South, “Ecocide, genocide, capitalism and colonialism,” 299–300.
[43] Crook & Short, “Marx, Lemkin and the genocide-ecocide nexus,” 310.
[44] Lindgren, “Ecocide, genocide and the disregard of alternative life-systems,” 533.
