Impact and benefit agreements and northern resource governance: what we know and what we still need to figure out

This chapter reviews select scholarship focused on Impact and Benefit Agreements (IBAs) to highlight what is known about IBAs and identify knowledge gaps, especially in Northern Canada. Mineral exploration and extraction in areas like Northern Canada has long been recognized as a source of economic activity and opportunity. The growing use of IBAs by Canadian Indigenous communities over the past two decades should not be read as evidence of their unequivocal embrace or trouble-free use. For many scholars, it is noteworthy that IBAs have emerged in two jurisdictions, Canada and Australia, where regulatory processes governing mining, such as Environmental Assessment (EA), are relatively progressive. Relations between firms operating mines and their partner Indigenous communities in Canada have been tested by the passing of the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act (2014), which requires Canadian companies to disclose payments to Aboriginal governments, formed through confidential IBAs.

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