ABSTRACT

This chapter summarizes and reviews existing scholarship, knowledge, and practices regarding the measurement of socio-economic impacts of resource development on Northern communities. Two important impacts of resource development are environmental and socio-economic. Established in 1997, the government of Northwest Territories required the Communities and Diamonds report via a socio-economic agreement to reflect the commitments and predictions made by the company during its environmental assessment. Strategic environmental impact assessment became binding for EU member countries in 2004 and is a process to assess possible environmental effects stemming from policy, policy planning, action programs, and other strategic documents and regulations. Scholars argue that the primary impediment for successful socio-economic monitoring and understanding socio-economic impact assessments in a comparative circumpolar perspective is the lack of data comparability across different geographic scales and nations.