Justice and Recognition in Impact Assessment

From conflicts over shale gas development (so-called “fracking”) to the laying of oil pipelines, high-profile conflicts over large-scale technological development are situated within social and historical injustices such as unsettled land claims and undemocratic policy-making and lack of trust in governance.

My research projects on the topic of impact assessment focus on injustice, recognizing that it is at the center of environmental governance disputes and the societal disruptions raised by development. Moreover, my research is premised on a justice framework that has three dimensions—procedural, distributional, and cultural—and it addresses a gap in environmental governance scholarship and practice around the third dimension of justice. My ultimate objective is practical: to outline what a justice-oriented approach to meaningful participation in large industrial development would entail for impact review processes in Canada and around the world.