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.
Building Community Resilience - Participatory Community Engagement: Resilience to Climate-Related Natural Hazards
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session James Kevin Summers
Under-served and impoverished communities can be exposed to the worst climate and environmental hazards. Community managers must identify these potential hazards and build resilience to withstand them. Enhancing community resilience requires three major steps: (1) Examining available information, (2) Conducting community engagement and assessing local knowledge, and (3) Developing and implementing reasonable strategies to enhance resilience. Previously available information was examined for St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. This study examines the second component of this three-step approach by engaging the St. Helena Parish community to assess issues that might be improved to enhance community resilience. First, information concerning existing county-level resilience to climate hazards, including well-being and climate/social equity, was presented to the community (local government and knowledgeable community members) and the group assessed their agreement with the identified issues. Secondly, community knowledge was examined to identify any additional issues that might be of importance. Finally, the five issues of greatest importance to community relating to climate-related natural hazards were determined by community members and a plan to develop strategies to address and, potentially, fund them were ascertained. These climate hazards included inland flooding, variations in temperature, landslides, tropical storms, and other potential natural climatic hazards in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.
