Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Politics of State and Indigenous Environmental Monitoring

这个博士论文研究项目将分析土著群体和国家环境机构之间基于资源的冲突。该项目将制定一个框架，以增进对资源冲突根源的了解，并促进有意义地参与解决这类冲突的努力。该项目将扩大在环境监测领域采用跨学科和跨文化方法的能力。该项目将促进加强土著人民与环境机构之间的联系，从而有可能推进承认土著社区环境知识的创新水、空气、土壤和野生动物监测技术。它将有助于促进土著参与科学的公平模式，从而创造新的途径来缓解基于资源的冲突，减少环境风险，并对环境条件和影响进行更相关和更容易获得的监测。更广泛地说，该项目将构成一项综合性活动，可能有助于调和美国和加拿大等国政府单位与其土著社区之间的关系。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。国家主导的将土著和传统监测技术结合起来的项目已成为解决冲突的一种流行模式，许多项目表明，将土著知识与传统监测有意义地结合起来，有可能使人们对环境变化有更可信和与文化相关的理解。与此同时，这些项目可能被视为掩盖了更广泛的社会不平等和不平等的决策权。例如，在艾伯塔省北部，对油砂的环境监测一直被批评者视为推动主导文化和经济议程的政治进程。这个研究项目将审查新的参与性战略，以期将传统监测与社区对环境的理解联系起来。进行该项目的博士生将研究监测油砂生产的环境机构，作为调查第一民族社区和国家之间转移权力关系的案例研究。他将采用访谈、Q方法和档案文件分析来探索以下问题的答案：(1)如何在第一民族社区和艾伯塔省监测机构中概念化环境退化？(2)随着时间的推移，艾伯塔省环境机构的监测实践在哪些方面发生了变化？(3)社区参与监测项目如何影响机构的调查结果和建议？国家机构对油砂监测演变的考察将为不同群体构建环境变化概念的竞争性文化和经济议程提供新的见解。

This doctoral dissertation research project will analyze resource-based conflicts between indigenous groups and state environmental agencies. The project will develop a framework to enhance understanding of the roots of resource conflict and facilitate meaningful participation in efforts to resolve these types of conflicts. The project will expand capabilities for transdisciplinary and intercultural methods in the field of environmental monitoring. The project will facilitate enhanced contact between indigenous people and environmental agencies, which holds potential to advance innovative water, air, soil, and wildlife monitoring techniques that recognize the environmental knowledge of indigenous communities. It will help to advance equitable modes for indigenous participation in science, thereby creating new avenues to alleviate resource-based conflict, reduce environmental risks, and produce more relevant and accessible monitoring of environmental conditions and implications. More broadly, the project will constitute an integrative activity that may help reconcile relationships between governmental units in nations like the U.S. and Canada and their indigenous communities. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.State-led projects to integrate both indigenous and conventional monitoring techniques have become a popular mode to resolve conflict, and many have demonstrated that meaningful integration of indigenous knowledge with conventional monitoring offers possibilities for more credible and culturally relevant understandings of environment change. At the same time, such projects may be seen to conceal broader societal inequalities and unequal decision-making power. In northern Alberta, for example, environmental monitoring of the tar sands has been viewed by critics as a political process that advances dominant cultural and economic agendas. This research project will examine new participatory strategies that seek to bridge conventional monitoring with community-based understandings of the environment. The doctoral student conducting this project will study environmental agencies that monitor tar sands production as a case study to investigate the shifting power relations between First Nation communities and the state. He will employ interviews, Q methodology, and archival document analysis to explore answers to the following sets of questions: (1) How has environmental degradation been conceptualized among First Nation communities and Alberta monitoring agencies? (2) In what ways have the monitoring practices of Alberta's environmental agencies changed over time? (3) How has community participation with monitoring programs shaped agency findings and recommendations? Examination of the evolution of tar sands monitoring by state agencies will provide new insights into the competing cultural and economic agendas that structure conceptions of environmental change by different groups.