Dedication
For all the people in resource agencies, regulatory agencies, tribes,
industries, and stakeholders who strive to solve our energy and environmental
problems.
May we leave them with a balanced and sustainable environment, and may we learn
to incorporate the concerns, views, and science of all people in making better
environmental decisions.
- Joanna Burger, 18 January 2011
Preface
The Nation and the World must move forward with development of
a range of energy sources, all with attendant environmental problems.
Solving these problems, and those remaining from past energy-related
activities, will require iteration, inclusion, and collaboration with a wide
range of stakeholders, including Tribes, U.S., State and local governmental
agencies, scientists, environmentalists, concerned citizen’s groups, public
policy makers, and the general public.
While this is not a book about energy and energy-development, many of the
chapters describe particular energy sources, as well as their advantages and
disadvantages in terms of how stakeholders view the issues.
This book will describe and examine the interactions and
integration of science and stakeholders to find solutions to some of the
Nation’s controversial environmental and energy-related issues.
The initial chapter describes stakeholders, and discusses ways that
stakeholders can be involved in decision-making for environmental and
energy-related problems. The second
chapter examined in more detail to plight of minorities with respect to
involvement in these issues, exploring some of the impediments to participation.
And the third chapter examines sources of energy, and possible
stakeholder involvement in decisions for these sources of energy.
These three chapters serve as a basis for the other chapters, which are
largely case studies either dealing with a single energy source, with many
sources or a comparison among types, or with general environmental problems.
The book uses case studies to explore the methods of
integration and collaboration among diverse communities, and to develop a
synthesis of true stakeholder involvement in energy-related issues that results
in acceptable solutions that protect both human and ecological health.
The focus of each chapter will be on problem definition, the process
leading to the solution, and the mechanisms and collaborations among
stakeholders that made the solutions (or lack thereof) possible.
Many of the chapters are about place-based environmental management, but
all of the chapters deal with how stakeholders have improved (or changed) the
process. Some chapters will discuss
failures, and how lack of stakeholder involvement contributed to these failures,
and others will describe the role of the media and communication in stakeholder
participation. This book is about stakeholder inclusion and its role in solving
problems, not about the energy problems themselves, although obviously, this
will be touched on in each chapter. Because it is about stakeholder
participation , many different people often collaborated to write each chapter.
The problems and issues discussed in the book range from contamination that
resulted from the development and production of nuclear bombs during the Cold
War, through public involvement in site selection and environmental management
of a variety of energy sources, to Native American involvement in
data-gathering, monitoring, and developing innovative solutions.
The case studies are meant to illustrate the full range of ways that
scientists and stakeholders can interact to find solutions to often contentious
situations, or simply to improve the science or solutions.
You, the reader, and a wide range of other stakeholders, are the intended
audience for the book. It will have
served its purpose if the public, managers, public policy makers and others can
see a wide range of possible approaches to the environmental problems we face as
a Nation and World. While the
problems addressed in this book differ from one another, the main theme is that
stakeholder involvement improved both the science and the solution, and that
consensus can lead to both better science and to a solution that is effective in
terms of alternatives, cost, effort, and time.
The case studies are meant to provide not one template, but a range of
templates for solutions that will be useful to a full range of stakeholders.
In cases where no solution was reached, a firmer understanding of the
alternatives and different viewpoints has led to a basis for further discussion
and collaboration.
The genesis for this book came from my research as part of the Consortium for
Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation, a consortium of University
scientists whose goal is to provide scientific expertise to the Department of
Energy, and with work with stakeholders in a number of different environmental
arenas. I am more convinced every
day that the inclusion of the widest possible group of stakeholders leads to
better, more cost-effective, and environmentally sound decisions.
In my work it became apparent that many different groups of
stakeholders, from agencies and regulators, to the public, did not always
appreciate the ways to interact effectively and openly to work toward solutions
to the problem of legacy wastes, waste from commercial nuclear power facilities,
and other contamination an environmental issues..
And it is increasingly clear that finding solutions to deal with legacy
wastes, whether those remaining from the Cold War, those remaining from
commercial nuclear power, or from other sources of energy, require the
cooperation and collaboration of a wide range of agencies, organizations, and
people. Space itself is a significant environmental problem faced by the siting
of energy facilities, such as wind and solar.
Although the examples in the book mainly concern
energy-related issues, the principles and frameworks provided apply equally to
all environmental problems. We need
to find solutions that are compromises between the views, concerns, and values
of a wide range of people, from Native tribes and First Nations to regulators,
governmental agencies, and commercial interests.
With increasing populations, it becomes even more important to conserve
and preserve both ecological and societal resources and values within a context
of human health and well-being. This
book will hopefully contribute to the dialogue of how to meld these different
views, as well as providing useful examples for the Tribal Nations, the general
public, and private and governmental agencies.
Table of Contents