Offshore Oil, Environmental Movements, and the Oil‐Tourism Interface: The Old Harry Conflict on Canada's East Coast

Abstract

Offshore oil development and nature‐based tourism offer alternative ways of living with and making use of coastal environments. We analyze a recent controversy over offshore oil extraction in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in eastern Canada, and identify key points of alignment between environmentalism and the tourism industry that structure resistance to oil development. Our results are based on interviews with tourism operators, government, environmental groups, and recreational organizations, as well as an analysis of key Web sites and Web 2.0 content. Four discourses are used to challenge the normal separation of offshore oil and tourism development in Atlantic Canada: wilderness and wildlife; ecological risks of oil disaster; protecting existing social–ecological networks; and contesting political jurisdiction. Our findings show that the ecological and social value of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is used to justify opposition to oil development in the region. However, the project‐specific nature of this opposition neglects larger questions of social–environmental sustainability in an oil‐dependent political ecology.