The invisible hand's green thumb : Green thumb : market-based instruments for environmental protection in Alberta

Alberta has a long history of land use planning and is one of the few provinces in Canada to experiment - and make legislative room for - market-based instruments. This raises two questions of interest to the policy community: 1) to what extent have these policy developments influenced the use of market-based solutions in Alberta; and 2) what can be learned from these efforts to introduce market-based instruments in the province? In order to answer these questions, three case studies of market-based instruments in Alberta were examined: a Transfer of Development Credits (TDC) program in the Beaver Hills area, located just east of Edmonton; an emissions trading program that operates province-wide; and a program that pays farmers in the County of Vermilion River to restore and/or preserve ecologically important areas on their farmland. Each of these case studies provides critical lessons about implementing MBIs and the role of supportive public policy.