Premium
Environmental Legislation and Harms to Remote Resource‐Based Communities: The Case of Atikokan, Ontario
Author(s) -
CARSON A. SCOTT
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
business and society review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1467-8594
pISSN - 0045-3609
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8594.2010.00371.x
Subject(s) - legislation , harm , government (linguistics) , stakeholder , resource (disambiguation) , business , compensation (psychology) , public administration , environmental planning , public relations , political science , law , psychology , computer network , philosophy , linguistics , environmental science , computer science , psychoanalysis
Environmental ethics research pays much attention to the rights of individuals, future generations, and nonhuman stakeholders to have a clean environment. Moral condemnation is directed at polluters for violation of stakeholder rights. However, little consideration is given in the research literature to those who are harmed by well‐intended progressive environmental legislation. This article addresses the moral entitlements of small, remote resource‐based communities not to be harmed by environmental legislation that results in the elimination of the major employer that economically sustains them. It is argued that these communities are morally entitled to the best attempt by a government to mitigate the harm or compensate for it. The article shows how a government can go beyond compensation to form collaborative public–private partnerships to promote strategically viable future directions for communities.