Stand Up, Speak Up
Can the “NIMBY” Speak?: Environmental Impact Assessment, Maldistribution and Misrecognition Producing Quietism at a Municipal Public Hearing in Calgary, Alberta View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jane McQuitty
This study delves into the challenges of preserving secondary growth urban wilds on developable greenfield and examines how environmental impact assessment (EIA) practices marginalize popular resistance to their use post commons. Wilderness cherishing informs the valuation vocabulary to hand for speakers for retention of developable greenfield, yet long ago urban forces transformed them to ecosystems quite distinct from historic lands or rural counterparts. The research begins by modeling the influence of wilderness-cherishing EIA on the rhetoric of advocates for environmental preservation. After developing a model of procedural power in which airing of EIA results at public hearings plays a central role, a transcript of a 2015 public hearing is evaluated by qualitative and quantitative content analysis methods. The central finding is that environmental impact assessments reposition commons-like affinities to greenfield as the discourse of “NIMBYs.” The power effect is to silence momentum for preservation of commons relationships to greenfield so that land use planning and decision making remains out of sync with a newly emerging landscape of environmental perceptions and values. The new “model of procedural power” has potential to instigate reform in the EIA process and in environmental advocacy.
Sustainable Tourism Development in Territories with Social Tensions: The Yuragachi Project in Cajamarca, Peru
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mario Marcello Pasco-Dalla-Porta
In many emerging countries, tourism has become an important source of economic development and dissemination of the cultural heritage of local populations. However, to be sustainable, tourism projects must consider potential sources of tension in the contexts involved. Several studies have examined the convergent relationships between local attachment, perceptions about tourism, and support for tourism development. However, research on how pre-existing social tensions may affect these relationships and hinder the conditions for sustainable tourism development is limited. This research examines these issues in the town of Cajamarca (Peru). The city is internationally known for being the place where the Spanish conquest of the Incas occurred, but also for the social conflicts that led to the cancellation of several mega-mining projects in recent times. Despite its great cultural heritage, tourism to the city is limited. In this context, a new tourism project is being promoted, consisting of a light installation that will be projected onto the façade of the city's main colonial church. While the Yuragachi project has received broad support from private and public organizations, and from the community, it also has several detractors. Based on a survey of a sample of 341 local residents, this research examines, using a structural equation model, the aforementioned convergent relationships and the extent to which they are affected by levels of tolerance, interpersonal trust and social inequality. This study is valuable as it helps to identify social risk factors and contribute to the sustainability of the project.
Whose Participatory Process is It Anyway? How Main Stream Media Continue to Trample the Public Interest
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session J.R. "Jones" Estes
Scheduled for adoption in March 2001, the National Forest Roadless Area Conservation Rule (Roadless Rule), was the most significant U.S. conservation policy since the 1905 creation of the United States Forest System (NRDC, 2004). The Roadless Rule protected 58.5 million acres of national forest from new road building and strictly limited resource extraction. As public policy, the Roadless Rule was a shining example of the democratic policy process. Years in the making, it drew heavily on environmental science and public participation. At its adoption, the Roadless Rule stood “as the single most commented on federal rulemaking in our nation’s history with over 600 public meetings and 1.6 million comments submitted” (Earthjustice, 2001) yet it was never implemented. The high level of (pre-social media) public input into the Roadless Rule’s formation, makes analyzing its unraveling and ongoing contestation essential to understanding the key role media play in advancing neoliberal economic interests over those of the public interest. Employing both a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative discourse analysis of the Roadless Rule news coverage, this research finds a news media that consistently privileges the voices of industrial interests over those of the public in a variety of ways, such as conflating the public’s interest with industry interests and misrepresenting the policy. Examination of this soon to be 25-year-old policy failure provides insights into a dynamic that began long ago and continues to undermine the public’s environmental interest today.
