by Jessica Rich, CIRES/CSTPR Postdoctoral Research Associate
Photo above: Strip mining site in the Ohio Valley, USA. Credit: Jessica Rich.
Over the past five years, I studied the narratives that emerged from conflicts over oil and gas drilling across the Midwestern United States. As a communication researcher, I am interested in how humans give meaning to changing environments but also how environments give meaning to human action. Speaking with residents living atop the Marcellus and Utica shale basins, I learned how place plays an active role in their lives at work and at home. While visiting a small Ohio Valley town, once known for its coal mines, I met a retired couple who grew up, settled down, and made their livelihood within a few square miles of their current home. As the region’s policymakers discovered the lucrative potential of unconventional drilling in the last decade, local communities saw their environment change dramatically but had little to no say in the environmental decision-making process. I toured the area with the couple I met, as they pointed out the drill sites, which had been built on top of old mining sites, which had been dug into a once agricultural landscape. The environment, whether mined, drilled, or farmed, actively participated in the couple’s narrative and their identity. Personal stories of the changing landscapes uncovered relations between community, the natural environment, and between individual and industrial histories.
Since arriving as a CIRES/CSTPR postdoctoral researcher in September and participating in ongoing conversations about environmental and climate policy, questions have begun to emerge for me about how nature is defined in policy and the narratives that these policies make possible. What meanings are given to human-nature relations in the policies that govern environmental decision-making? What assumptions underlie the socio-ecological relations that policy legitimizes? Too often, environmental policy is anthropocentric, sliding between conceptualizations of nature as a resource from which to profit and nature as an entity to be preserved for human enjoyment. Rarely, do policies encourage the right of nature to exist beyond its economic utility, bringing about consequences that are local and global.
As I begin my research of drilling discourses in the West, I am learning of the actions taken by some Coloradoans to fight for local control over oil and gas siting and development. The Colorado Community Rights Network’s efforts, in particular, highlight how human-nature relations intersect in the struggle for local self-government. In their official declaration, the CCRN “[joins] together with other statewide movements to amend the federal Constitution to elevate the rights of people and communities above the claimed rights of corporations, create legal rights for natural ecosystems, eliminate the commerce clause, and other impediments to local community self-governance.” Taking cue from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and the UN Rights of Nature Law and Policy, not to mention a history of indigenous knowledge and action, CCRN’s proposal moves conceptualizations of human-nature relations from one based in ownership toward “recognizing that ecosystems and natural communities are not merely property that can be owned, but are entities that have an independent right to exist and flourish” and an awareness of the “inherent rights of Nature to exist, thrive and evolve.” While CCRN’s recent efforts to include their proposed measures in the November ballot were stalled, local proposals have been enacted elsewhere in the U.S. in response to unconventional drilling. The city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania passed a similar local self-government ordinance in 2010 in response to the growth of drilling in the Marcellus.
Communicating policy is a political act, and the meanings given to nature constitute the possibilities for its governance and have the power to reimagine cooperative narratives between humans and non-human nature. How nature is defined in policy, as seen with CCRN’s recent proposals, can encourage communities to reflect not only on nature’s meaning but also a shared purpose and fate. As I develop my post-doctoral research over the next two years, I look forward to connecting with researchers and local communities to develop more just ecological and political futures through policy and action.
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Drilling Narratives, Self-Government, and the Rights of Nature
by Jessica Rich, CIRES/CSTPR Postdoctoral Research Associate
Photo above: Strip mining site in the Ohio Valley, USA. Credit: Jessica Rich.
Over the past five years, I studied the narratives that emerged from conflicts over oil and gas drilling across the Midwestern United States. As a communication researcher, I am interested in how humans give meaning to changing environments but also how environments give meaning to human action. Speaking with residents living atop the Marcellus and Utica shale basins, I learned how place plays an active role in their lives at work and at home. While visiting a small Ohio Valley town, once known for its coal mines, I met a retired couple who grew up, settled down, and made their livelihood within a few square miles of their current home. As the region’s policymakers discovered the lucrative potential of unconventional drilling in the last decade, local communities saw their environment change dramatically but had little to no say in the environmental decision-making process. I toured the area with the couple I met, as they pointed out the drill sites, which had been built on top of old mining sites, which had been dug into a once agricultural landscape. The environment, whether mined, drilled, or farmed, actively participated in the couple’s narrative and their identity. Personal stories of the changing landscapes uncovered relations between community, the natural environment, and between individual and industrial histories.
Since arriving as a CIRES/CSTPR postdoctoral researcher in September and participating in ongoing conversations about environmental and climate policy, questions have begun to emerge for me about how nature is defined in policy and the narratives that these policies make possible. What meanings are given to human-nature relations in the policies that govern environmental decision-making? What assumptions underlie the socio-ecological relations that policy legitimizes? Too often, environmental policy is anthropocentric, sliding between conceptualizations of nature as a resource from which to profit and nature as an entity to be preserved for human enjoyment. Rarely, do policies encourage the right of nature to exist beyond its economic utility, bringing about consequences that are local and global.
As I begin my research of drilling discourses in the West, I am learning of the actions taken by some Coloradoans to fight for local control over oil and gas siting and development. The Colorado Community Rights Network’s efforts, in particular, highlight how human-nature relations intersect in the struggle for local self-government. In their official declaration, the CCRN “[joins] together with other statewide movements to amend the federal Constitution to elevate the rights of people and communities above the claimed rights of corporations, create legal rights for natural ecosystems, eliminate the commerce clause, and other impediments to local community self-governance.” Taking cue from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and the UN Rights of Nature Law and Policy, not to mention a history of indigenous knowledge and action, CCRN’s proposal moves conceptualizations of human-nature relations from one based in ownership toward “recognizing that ecosystems and natural communities are not merely property that can be owned, but are entities that have an independent right to exist and flourish” and an awareness of the “inherent rights of Nature to exist, thrive and evolve.” While CCRN’s recent efforts to include their proposed measures in the November ballot were stalled, local proposals have been enacted elsewhere in the U.S. in response to unconventional drilling. The city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania passed a similar local self-government ordinance in 2010 in response to the growth of drilling in the Marcellus.
Communicating policy is a political act, and the meanings given to nature constitute the possibilities for its governance and have the power to reimagine cooperative narratives between humans and non-human nature. How nature is defined in policy, as seen with CCRN’s recent proposals, can encourage communities to reflect not only on nature’s meaning but also a shared purpose and fate. As I develop my post-doctoral research over the next two years, I look forward to connecting with researchers and local communities to develop more just ecological and political futures through policy and action.