Abstract:
Environmental remediation problems present some of the most challenging and divisive dilemmas faced by modern society. Major impediments to successful resolution include the intense technical demands of complex clean-up sites, different attitudes to risk, tradeoffs between clean-up and development costs, and the associated political will required to bring about action. The vast majority of the literature on contaminated site clean-up has focused on the technical aspects of the clean-up problem and while these aspects are undoubtedly important in generating efficient and effective clean-up programmes, they tend to underrepresent the complexity of large contaminated site decision making. In particular, in large complex remediation projects, the perception and influence of local citizens, indigenous groups, environmental lobby groups and other members of the broad ‘Community’ become critical to clean-up success. Only a small amount of research has been dedicated to the investigation of effective Community participation during complex environmental clean-ups. The present research seeks to fill the gap through a development of a new psychosocial framework to assist project managers and a detailed case investigation of a complex environmental clean-up in Mapua, New Zealand. The core facets of the framework emerge from in-depth literature investigation and a collaborative inquiry with experienced facilitators. These include development of Presence; self-Empathy and empathy with community participants; Rational and systematic understanding of the contamination problem from multiple perspectives; and Empowerment of community perspectives as well as those of the environmental manager – The PERE framework. The Mapua site is an example of a clean-up that proceeded in a typical way, yet was not wholly successful. Previous Government-sanctioned reports have highlighted issues in the project management, however, the impact of these on the public, and correspondingly how public perception and action affected project management, has not been investigated. The PERE framework is used to explore the project and investigate how participation may have been performed more effectively. This thesis therefore provides both a detailed investigation of a complex environmental cleanup and a new framework to assist environmental managers in enhancing Community participation for the amenable resolution of complex remediation projects.
