Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Allain Barnett
(University of New Brunswick)
Melanie Wiber (University of New Brunswick)
- Stream:
- Living landscapes: Anthropocene/Paysages vivants: Anthropocène
- Location:
- DMS 1110
- Start time:
- 2 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Marine environments are composed of multiple human-environment interactions. We examine case studies from Atlantic Canada to discuss how various actors struggle to influence knowledge of risks to the marine environment, and authority over managing marine resources
Long Abstract:
Ocean environments are often composed of multiple human-environment interactions, and conflicts over resource use. In the Atlantic Canada, representatives from commercial fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, and the oil industry often compete over how the oceans should be governed. These struggles have important consequences for our ability to understand the risks of anthropogenic activity to the marine environment. In this panel, we will discuss how risk is managed and understand by examining various cases in Atlantic Canada. Topics will include:
1. The Marine Advisory Committee as an integrated management system to deal with risk
2. The joint production of knowledge through scientist-fishermen collaborations
3. The performative politics of mapping marine debris in Southwest New Brunswick
4. Tidal power development and stakeholder participation in tidal-power projects
5. The struggle for alternatives to neoliberal property arrangements in commercial fisheries
6. The impacts of government(s) on marine risk research
Through these presentations, we will demonstrate the ocean environment as a space to study the relationships among authority, knowledge, and subjectivities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
ORPC gained near unanimous stakeholder support for their tidal project due to a new engagement framework centered on community investment; transparency; accepting local knowledge; and a vow to mitigate risk to the fisheries and the environment. This method could improve development project outcomes.
Paper long abstract:
One of the first topics to be addressed when proposing sustainable development projects is location. The site selection process can either make or break potential developments based primarily on how proponents engage with stakeholders. The introduction of tidal power generators into the ocean landscape creates debates about how to protect other stakeholders and their values. Given the success that the Ocean Renewable Power Company's (ORPC) TidGen® Power System project had in securing positive stakeholder engagement during the site selection process, I conducted an extensive examination how ORPC was able to garner such support. ORPC developed a new and unique engagement framework to the site selection process that has not been replicated by other tidal power development companies in the Bay of Fundy Region. ORPC's framework centered around long term community courting and investment strategies; high local employment rates; transparent and frequent stakeholder meetings; the desire for and acceptance of local or traditional knowledge; and a clearly stated commitment to reducing and mitigating environmental risk as well as risk pertaining to the fisheries. By engaging with stakeholders in these ways ORPC was able to select a site that had virtually unanimous stakeholder support. This is significant when compared to the less favourable results of Halcyon Tidal Power's stakeholder engagement during the Pennamaquan Project or the Cape Sharp Tidal project in Nova Scotia. The ORPC stakeholder engagement framework represents a new model that if adopted by other sustainable development companies could radically improve future project outcomes.
Paper short abstract:
Joint knowledge production (JKP) has gained popularity as a tool for the management of risk in marine environments. But what is actually meant by knowledge? Using early boundary work, this paper examines how an understanding of knowledge can lead to an improved understanding of JKP
Paper long abstract:
Joint knowledge production (JKP) has gained popularity as a means to understand and identify mitigating measures for management of risk in marine environments. While there is general agreement on the value of JKP as seen through its adoption in numerous joint stakeholder collaborations, there is still much to learn about how joint knowledge production occurs and what factors contribute to its success. The early boundary work of Star and Griesemer's (1989) laid the foundation for examining the relations between stakeholders and the exchange of knowledge sets. However, the subsequent literature has yet to speak to what is meant by the knowledge that is being jointly produced. We propose an action oriented definition of knowledge that includes: theorizing relationships, agreeing on key concepts, specifying and interpreting required data, identifying principles and making evaluations. This paper relies on a case study of a joint scientist-fishermen developed research protocol for examining the impact of the Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) aquaculture industry on the in-shore American Lobster (Homarus americanus) fishery of South West New Brunswick. The paper examines how the actions of knowledge approach highlights important boundary objects that are crucial to JPK. This approach can improve our understanding of JKP and can lead to more informed risk assessment.
Paper short abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that an absence of articulated and agreed institutional values for management can have significant consequences for the engagement of innovative institutions.
Paper long abstract:
In 2004 the Southwest New Brunswick Bay of Fundy Marine Advisory Committee (MAC) was established to address management challenges associated with conflict between marine resource users. They envisioned that part of the resolution process would entail working together to develop a management plan. An integral part of the exercise was to determine what surrounding communities valued about the marine environment. Through community consultations, the MAC developed a 'Community Values Criteria' (CVC) which contains four categories (ecological, cultural, social and economic) and sixteen individual values. The CVC was designed to help the MAC assess proposals for development so that they could advise government decisions, and to help project proponents gain information as to how their proposal would be evaluated by communities in the area. The literature on risk management states that an explicit focus on values helps explain varied perceptions of risk. From this perspective, the CVC was supposed to help the MAC, governments and proponents decide which developments were too risky and which were worth pursuing. Thus, risks and values were supposed to be the centre of political discussions. However, missing from the CVC is institutional values and thus a discussion about potential institutional risks. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that an absence of articulated and agreed institutional values for management can have significant consequences for the engagement of innovative institutions such as the MAC in governance processes such as dealing with conflict, stakeholder representation, and the role of government at the table.
Paper short abstract:
Examines the destabilization of Lobster Fishing Areas (LFAs) in Atlantic Canada, resulting from changes in the material practices of fishing and of access to fishing rights that challenge the adjacency principle, where people living next to a resource have the strongest claim to it.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, we draw on Actor Network Theory to examine the destabilization of Lobster Fishing Areas (LFAs) in Atlantic Canada. This destabilization is the result of changes in the material practices of fishing and of access to fishing rights, which in turn challenge accepted morality within fishing communities of the adjacency principle, where people living next to a resource have the strongest claim to it. This moral claim has underpinned longstanding federal policy in Atlantic Canada, which has been designed to spread the benefits of fishing as widely as possible within fishing communities, and to protect the inshore, independent fishing sector from corporate take-over. Actor Network Theory allows us to view these invisible lines in the water as powerful actants. They divide geographical fishing spaces and organize the temporal and spatial scale of fishing activity in ways that protect moral objectives. Destabilizing these lines, then, challenges temporal, spatial and moral understandings within fishing communities.
Paper short abstract:
We interviewed scientists to evaluate the impact of the Harper government on marine risk research in Atlantic Canada.
Paper long abstract:
Recent research in the anthropology of science have expanded our understanding of the political influences on science. Natural science research on environmental risk in Canada now involves multiple parties, including provincial and federal government agencies, communities, environmental NGOs and market certification organizations. Little is known about if and how these approaches to natural science are changing scientific information about anthropogenic risk. In this paper, we focus on a significant "black box" controversy, the impact of aquaculture on commercial fishing, in order to examine the networks that steer decision-making about research into risk, and ultimately about resource use. Based on interviews of a variety of scientists and non-scientists involved in marine research, this paper explores the impact of government on recognizing, assessing and mitigating the diverse threats that result from human actions on the environment. Many barriers relate to epistemological or methodological issues, others relate to power, control and legal mandates.