Benefits And Costs Of Oil Sands

Sunridge Energy gets 5-year bitumen extraction technology license from CES

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Conservation and industry side by side

By Rebecca Nesbit

The relationship between conservation and economics is a complex one. We rely on the natural world for vital services. Without these we wouldn’t even have an economy – they are everything from pollination through to water purification and climate regulation. But on a local scale there are often trade-offs, at least in the short term. Saving endangered species can be expensive.

A paper published this month by researchers from the University of Alberta (Canada) looked at a trade-off between proposed industrial developments and protecting habitats the industry would destroy.

How you choose which areas of land to preserve is a much-debated issue . In this paper they worked on the premise that by protecting every ecosystem type in the area most species will have their needs met.

Oil and gas extraction and forestry occur across much of Alberta’s forested areas. There is concern that the cumulative environmental impact of this isn’t being addressed, particularly in the oil sands . As a result there are plans to create biological reserves to protect the species within them. This paper takes a new approach to choosing where to locate these reserves, based partly on the trade-offs between conservation targets and economic costs (including lost revenue from not using that land for industry).

They found that the proportion of the area which is protected could double from 15% to 30% while maintaining access to 97% of the region’s resources. This is partly because the presence of oil sands means much of the valuable resources are concentrated in a small area. So the oil sands can be seen as an enabling factor for conservation in Alberta, not a barrier; economic activity can be concentrated in a small area yet provide valuable revenue which can be directed towards conservation nearby. Of course other environmental concerns about the industry, such as pollution, still need to be addressed.

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