Title: Oiling the gears of public participation: the value of organisations in establishing Trinity of Voice for communities impacted by the oil and gas industry
Abstract:Abstract With energy crises looming, conflicts over resource extraction and production are on the rise. For communities lacking voice to participate in these conflicts, community-based organisations a...Abstract With energy crises looming, conflicts over resource extraction and production are on the rise. For communities lacking voice to participate in these conflicts, community-based organisations and local non-governmental organisations help to unite, communicate, and negotiate with other stakeholders. In this paper we compare two cases that demonstrate the roles of organisations in providing voice to citizenry impacted by environmental justice issues. We use Senecah's concept of Trinity of Voice for the purposes of evaluation. These cases provide contrasting examples of how local/regional organisations chose to either expand their organisation's mission to intervene or stick to a strict reading of their mission thus excluding involvement. In both examples we found that organisational involvement, or lack thereof, influenced how citizens were involved in decision-making with one case leading to legislation protecting property owners from industrial activities, and the other leading to a lack of effective involvement and negatively impacted citizens. Keywords: communityindustryorganisationspublic participationTrinity of Voice Acknowledgements We are grateful for financial support of this research from the National Science Foundation's Science and Society Program (NSF-SES-0724257). We would also like to thank local stakeholders for their time and participation, as well as T.R. Peterson, M.J. Peterson, and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on previous drafts of this paper. Notes This paper is a compilation of two papers presented at the 2009 Conference on Communication and Environment. Though formulated independently, the subject matter and methodologies of these two case studies are complimentary, thus making a post hoc comparison of the studies possible.Read More
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 16
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