Dokis Carly
Department of Anthropology, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, Canada.
Front Sociol. 2023 Jan 13;7:1056277. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2022.1056277. eCollection 2022.
Environmental assessment is an institutional apparatus through which proponents concede harm associated with extractive projects. Within these processes proponents define the nature and scope of harm, which is made visible through the production of indicators and measurements and made manageable through mitigation measures or economic compensation. That the activities of extractive industries may have effects on surrounding ecologies is rarely in question; proponents of extractive projects regularly concede that their activities will result in negative (but also positive) changes to environments and communities. What is often contested in the course of environmental assessment and regulatory processes is the "significance" of the impacts identified, the nature of the harm caused, and whether or not it is possible or acceptable to accommodate it. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Sahtu Settlement Area, NWT during the Mackenzie Gas Project environmental assessment, along with regulatory documents and transcripts, this paper examines how proponents and regulatory regimes work to make the impacts of extractive industries visible, and how these logics deviate discursively and materially from many Indigenous peoples' understandings of appropriate relationships between human beings and nature.
环境评估是一种制度机制，通过它，项目支持者承认与采掘项目相关的危害。在这些过程中，支持者界定危害的性质和范围，通过指标和测量的制定使其显现出来，并通过缓解措施或经济补偿使其得到控制。采掘业活动可能对周边生态产生影响这一点很少受到质疑；采掘项目的支持者通常承认，他们的活动将给环境和社区带来负面（但也有正面）变化。在环境评估和监管过程中，经常受到争议的是所确定影响的“重要性”、所造成危害的性质，以及是否有可能或可接受对其进行包容。本文借鉴在麦肯齐天然气项目环境评估期间于西北地区萨胡图定居点开展的民族志田野调查，以及监管文件和文字记录，探讨支持者和监管制度如何努力使采掘业的影响显现出来，以及这些逻辑在话语和实质层面上如何偏离许多原住民对人与自然恰当关系的理解。
