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- Convenors:
-
Paula Schiefer
(Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science)
Tara Joly (University of Northern British Columbia)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The term "land reclamation" covers various approaches to landscape modification which are said to improve landscapes and make them more suitable for a certain need. This panel reflects on changing human values in land by analysing different land reclamation projects and their social aspects.
Long Abstract:
The term "land reclamation" encapsulates a myriad of approaches to landscape modification. Distinct from restoration's attempt to recreate past ecosystems, reclamation's methods of recreating land or ecosystems disturbed by human and/or natural processes aim to engineer and even "improve" current conditions and relationships between people and the land. Examples of reclamation include the reclamation of land from the sea, riverbeds, or lakes and the change of coastal areas, the draining of marshlands for agricultural purposes, or, usually in a North American context, the recreating of disturbed ecosystems in a post-mining landscape. Land reclamation can be used to counteract erosion and as a coastal defence, to create more land suitable for infrastructural projects like airports and harbours, or to build artificial islands for luxurious hotels. Farmers reclaim land to harvest more crops, and environmental scientists use post-mining landscapes to establish new or lost ecological assemblages.
With shifting definitions of "productive" land - political, economic, ecological, or somewhere in-between - reclamation practices often reflect changing human values in the environment and local landscapes. This panel aims to highlight social aspects of land reclamation and invites papers from all research areas. We understand the diverse social characteristics of land reclamation projects as a possibility to connect conservation with questions of Indigenous sovereignty and inequality, and ask for whom landscapes are reclaimed. Together we analyse the changing values in land- and seascapes held by locals, oil companies, bureaucrats, scientists, and/or Indigenous communities.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses changes in the Dutch use of land reclamation to cultivate coastal environments and make them more suitable for changing human needs. It reflects on changing perceptions of the land-water boundaries within Dutch narratives of floods, safety, and challenges of climate change.
Paper long abstract:
Civil engineering projects formed the Dutch landscape over the centuries, predominantly to keep sea water out. Continued land reclamation schemes are necessary to maintain and protect a country in which one-third of the land lies below sea level. The Dutch endeavours of recreating land lost to or threatened by the sea aim to engineer current living conditions and shape and reflect relationships between people and the land and sea. This paper analyses the narratives around shifting land-sea boundaries used in Dutch land reclamation processes and related technologies. With reference to the history of Dutch water management, I discuss how transformations in Dutch coastal civil engineering and land reclamation can offer us insights on social changes and the shifting assessment of local ‘productive’ landscapes. Previous approaches to flood management were formed around ideas of risks reduction and to control the impacts of (temporary) marine and riverine floods. Lately, the perception of boundaries between land and water has been reconfigured and re-evaluated. Rather than a rigorous separation of land and water, land reclamation now offers new adaptation strategies and novel approaches towards cultivating coastal environments with more fluid barriers between land and water.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the global phenomenon that is land reclamation through an ethnographic study in Cambodia that sits at the interface of environmental and urban anthropology, cultural geography, and science and technology studies.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the global phenomenon that is land reclamation through an ethnographic study in Cambodia that sits at the interface of environmental and urban anthropology, cultural geography, and science and technology studies. While countries like Malaysia and Nigeria have engaged in land reclamation in order to develop desirable property that will attract speculative foreign direct investment, land-scarce Singapore has been importing sand from neighbouring countries such as Cambodia in an effort to “reclaim” land. Yet as Singapore expands its city-state with an influx of sand, for whom are landscapes reclaimed and what are the social consequences for the communities who live in the source countries? Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a fishing village in Cambodia's Koh Kong province, this paper traces the way large-scale sand dredging of seabeds has altered local ecologies, transformed social relations, and dispossessed villagers. Not only has sand extraction and reclamation eroded rivers and livelihoods due to dwindling crab catches, the removal of sand from riverbeds does not make its impact known immediately. A form of "slow violence" (Nixon 2011), I contend that land reclamation reveals what I call a spatiotemporal distancing effect, as villagers anticipate and wait for the collapse of their houses that sit on the riverbank when the ground eventually gives way due to the removal of sediment.
Paper short abstract:
Mine reclamation and closure in the traditional territories of Indigenous rights holders in Alberta, Canada raises issues of environmental, social and cultural significance.
Paper long abstract:
We highlight insights developed collaboratively with members of a First Nation about their lived experience with the persistence of oil sands mine activities and reclaimed lands, and apply a participatory and inclusive planning approach with the potential to empower host communities with an equitable role in the planning and decision making for sustainable socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental post-closure outcomes. Two different cultural activities were evaluated for their effectiveness in empowering intercultural dialogue and guiding creation of a shared post-closure vision between a First Nation and an oil sands company. We share perspectives, barriers, and opportunities for intercultural understanding and participation in mine reclamation and closure decision-making to ameliorate cultural land use impacts. We demonstrate that application of inclusive cultural practices and protocols in mine reclamation and closure planning empowered intercultural dialogue; enhanced understanding across cultural paradigms; supported shared project decision-making; produced moments of overlapping reclamation stories; and resulted in a parallel project vision for guiding cultural and landscape reclamation.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation reviews the current state of knowledge on Indigenous led monitoring gathered through a systematic literature review & key informant interviews. Trends & best practices are highlighted to describe a monitoring program which evaluates the success of oil sands reclaimed sites.
Paper long abstract:
The responsibility for monitoring the impacts of extractive industry in Canada is often delegated to the corporate sector who utilize almost exclusively western scientific monitoring methods, despite calls for a more diverse and inclusive approach to monitoring, including those of local stakeholders and Indigenous communities. Over the past 30 years, Indigenous-led monitoring programs, also known as Guardian, Stewardship or Watchman programs, have emerged as a tool for Indigenous communities to reestablish their rights and responsibilities in their traditional territories and beyond. Guardian programs offer a holistic approach that, when compared to western methods of monitoring, are better positioned to meet the needs, and affirm the values of Indigenous communities. The growing availability of funding opportunities, political support and interest, and recognition of Indigenous governance has resulted in increased interest and uptake of Indigenous led monitoring. Despite the growing interest of these programs, Indigenous led monitoring efforts in the oil sands, located in the Traditional Territory of Fort McKay First Nation in Alberta, Canada remain scarce while calls to develop these programs have increased, notably in reclamation and closure contexts. In support of this movement, this presentation reviews the current state of knowledge on Indigenous led monitoring gathered through a systematic literature review and key informant interviews. Interviewees included program leaders, guardians, rangers and watchmen from 7 ongoing Indigenous led monitoring programs in Canada. Identified trends and best practices are highlighted to develop a monitoring program which evaluates the success of oil sands reclaimed sites from a Cree and Dene perspective.
Paper short abstract:
Oil sands companies in Canada are required to reclaim disturbed land by rebuilding the productivity of a landscape. This paper traces settler narratives of reclamation to demonstrate how localized characteristics of settler colonialism are enacted through construction of post-extraction landscapes.
Paper long abstract:
In the Athabasca region of subarctic Canada, oil companies are required by the Alberta government to reclaim land disturbed by their extractive activities. By policy definition, reclamation is achieved by establishing “equivalent capability” of land use, or rebuilding the productivity of a landscape. With shifting definitions of “productive” land, either economic, ecological, or somewhere in-between, reclamation practices in Alberta evolved from creating cattle ranches and agricultural lands to constructing muskeg, reflecting changing human values in the environment. Often, rifts erupt between those values in the land held by oil companies, bureaucrats, scientists, and Indigenous communities. For whom is the landscape being reclaimed? In this paper, based on ethnographic and archival fieldwork, I trace settler narratives of mine reclamation from the 1960s to demonstrate the localized characteristics of settler colonialism that are enacted through the construction of post-mining or post-extraction landscapes. Here, land reclamation becomes another activity entangled in settler attempts to justify resource extraction, undermine and erase Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and create settler/extractive space.