scholarly journals Stakeholder participation in environmental knowledge production

Futures ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Hage ◽  
Pieter Leroy ◽  
Arthur C. Petersen
2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Williams ◽  
Mark Riley

Oral history has much to offer environmental history, yet the possibilities and promises of oral history remain underutilised in environmental history and environmental studies more broadly. Through a reflection on work in environmental history and associated disciplines, this paper presents a case for the strength and versatility of oral history as a key source for environmental history, while reflecting on questions of its reliability and scope. We identify three major insights provided by environmental oral history: into environmental knowledge, practices and power. We argue that, rather than being a weakness, the (inter)subjective and experiential dimensions of oral accounts provide a rich source for situating and interrogating environmental practices, meanings, and power relations. Oral history, moreover, provides a counterweight to a reliance on colonial archives and top-down environmental accounts, and can facilitate a renewal - and deepening - of the radical roots of environmental history. Furthermore, as a research practice, oral history is a promising means of expanding the participatory and grassroots engagement of environmental history. By decentring environmental expertise and eroding the boundaries (both fictive and real) of environmental knowledge production, oral environmental histories can provide key interventions in pursuit of a more just, sustainable world.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Said ◽  
Brice Trouillet

Abstract In marine spatial planning (MSP), the production of knowledge about marine-based activities is fundamental because it informs the process through which policies delineating the use of space are created and maintained. This paper revises our view of knowledge—developed during the mapping and planning processes—as the undisputed factual basis on which policy is developed. Rather, it argues that the construction, management, validation, and marginalisation of different types of knowledge stemming from different stakeholders or disciplinary approaches is at the heart of policy and planning processes. Using the case of fisheries-generated knowledge in the implementation of MSP, we contend that the fisheries data informing the MSP process are still very much streamlined to classical bio-economic metrics. Such metrics fall short of describing the plural and complex knowledges that comprise fisheries, such as localised social and cultural typologies, as well as the scale and dynamics, hence, providing incomplete information for the decision-making process of MSP. In this paper, we provide a way to move towards what we conceptualize as ‘Deep Knowledge’ and propose a model that brings together of the existing datasets and integrates socio-cultural data as well as complex spatiotemporal elements, to create dynamic rather than static datasets for MSP. We furthermore argue that the process of knowledge production and the building of the parameters of such datasets, should be based on effective stakeholder participation, whose futures depend on the plans that eventually result from MSP. Finally, we recommend that the ‘Deep Knowledge’ model is adopted to inform the process of knowledge production currently being undertaken in the diverse countries engaging in the MSP process. This will result in policies that truly reflect and address the complexities that characterise fisheries, and which are legitimized through a process of knowledge co-production.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Lord

This chapter starts from the premise that technologies of knowing the environment are molded by broader political and societal contexts. Just as “science” is never singular, but rather an ever-changing product of personal commitments, institutional struggles, and historical legacies, environmental research, data, and methods that are never dryly environmental. It focuses on the production of environmental knowledge as an explicitly political process, one that is in constant conversation with institutional, ideological, and economic forces. Examining environmental knowledge production is important because China's green dream reaches the population unevenly and builds on inequalities to realize itself. The chapter identifies key parameters that regulate rural-environmental research. These include pressures to prioritize economic growth over environmental protection, the commercialization of academia, governmental controls of what is considered acceptable or unacceptable research, as well as limitations on fieldwork access. The chapter also details how economic and political parameters bound environmental research in specific ways.


2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Briggs ◽  
Joanne Sharp ◽  
Hoda Yacoub ◽  
Nabila Hamed ◽  
Alan Roe

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1166-1188
Author(s):  
Jonathan Tollefson ◽  
Bindu Panikkar

For large extractive mineral projects, Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) processes function in part as a procedural tool to adjudicate the legitimacy of divergent environmental truth claims. Successful anti-extraction movements work to litigate divergent knowledge claims in the public arena, but few anti-extraction communities have access to a broad public audience. This article examines the proposed Donlin Gold mine in southwestern Alaska, a locally divisive yet publicly invisible extraction controversy, to understand how communities contest the boundaries of knowledge production and legitimacy set out by EIS procedures without the benefit of broad public awareness. Through a multi-method analysis of the public engagement segment of Donlin's Draft EIS, we find that anti-Donlin activists worked to construct environmental knowledge that drew jointly on claims to local knowledge and scientific expertise through a temporary assemblage of local activists and external consultants. The contested epistemic understandings of residents, expert consultants, and state and federal regulators further reveal the role of regulatory processes in constructing and maintaining boundaries of epistemic legitimacy, while also pointing to emergent possibilities for social action based in locally-situated environmental truth claims.Key Words: Environmental Impact Statement, mining, truth claims, Donlin Gold mine, Alaska


2021 ◽  

Situating Sustainability reframes our understanding of sustainability through related concepts, practices, and case studies. The point of departure is the continual need to be conscious of how environmental knowledge and sustainability are issues constituted by long-standing inequalities. This book addresses the necessity in sustainability science to recognize how diverse cultural histories define environmental politics today. The differing geographic scope of this volume is joined by the disciplinary diversity of the contributors and their wide-ranging areas of specialization, bringing together researchers from cultural studies, anthropology, literature, law, behavioral science, urban studies, design, and development. As a truly transdisciplinary work, Situating Sustainability calls for research guided by the humanities and social sciences in collaboration with local actors informed by histories of place. The authors of this volume believe that situating sustainability cannot limit itself to the geographic borders of nations, epistemic standpoints, or to unmasking perspectives that falsely present themselves as objective or universal. The approach includes not only material practices like extraction or disaster recovery, but extends into the domains of human rights, education, and academic interdisciplinarity. Researchers are joined by artists whose work provides a platform to conduct research at the edges of performance, knowledge production, and critical commentary on socio-ecological infrastructures. All this will enable readers to better understand what sustainability means (or might yet mean) in their own locations, and how work in one place might support the efforts of others in other places. Designed for students, scholars, and interested readers, Situating Sustainability introduces the conceptual practices that inform the leading edge of engaged research in sustainability.


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