Analyze

Emerging technologies are increasingly being sought as interventions to intractable environmental and public health issues that promise to intensify on our warming planet. Genetically engineered mosquitoes could curb the impacts of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue. Solar geoengineering could use cloud thinning or aerosol scattering to reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet. Adequate regulatory and governance mechanisms do not yet exist for these technologies, the impacts of which span international boundaries, and have the power to irreversibly alter environments. There is wide recognition from national and international bodies that decision-making processes surrounding these technologies must engage local and Indigenous communities whose lands and resources would be impacted by their trial and deployment. In response, public, community, and stakeholder “engagement” has taken center stage in the discourse on emerging environmental technology governance. Scientists and technologists are now compelled to engage publics and communities, as they recognize that some form of engagement or authorization will be requisite to the application of their technologies outside the laboratory. The language of participatory engagement abounds in scientific and governance literature on environmental technologies. These texts espouse the importance of co-design, relationship-building, shared decision-making, and mutual learning, and recognize the uneven power relations in which environmental decisions have historically been made. Yet, emergent practices of engagement leave much to be desired in terms of realizing their stated aspirations. Deficit model approaches frame publics and communities primarily as “lay people” needing to be educated before weighing in on decisions. In my fieldwork on one Pacific island where genetically modified mosquitoes are being considered for endangered bird conservation, I observed a focus group in a market research firm in which local and Indigenous residents were tested on their knowledge of invasive species biology and asked to rank radio advertisements and slogans about the modified mosquitoes. The conflation of engagement with marketing strategies and public relations campaigns prioritize the management of public perception over genuine dialogue or mutual learning. In theory, all the interest in engagement promises to open up meaningful possibilities for local and Indigenous communities to realize their rights to self-determination. In practice, strategic and instrumental approaches instead subdue opposition and manufacture consent. Legal mechanisms are needed to codify Indigenous rights in decision-making processes. Alternative approaches are needed that widen the focus beyond a single technofix to let communities define environmental challenges and collectively imagine solutions. Opposition should be read not as a barrier but as a generative site for inquiry, as often it is not the technology itself being refused but the exclusionary processes that surround its use. The most just solutions are likely to emerge from those very refusals. 

Taitingfong, Riley. 2023. "It’s all talk: how community engagement is failing in environmental technology governance." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Ortmann (2023, p.8):

The Formosa protest one year later provides a contrasting case study [to protest against the Vinh Tan coal power plant] to understand when repression is a strategic choice by the regime. The protest occurred in response to massive pollution caused by the Taiwanese steel producer Formosa-Ha Tinh Steel. Perhaps the most important difference was the media coverage. While the Vinh Tan protest had garnered significant, relatively objective coverage in the Vietnamese press, the Formosa case was highly censored, and whatever can be found is highly biased against the protesters who were supposedly only interested in harming Viet Nam’s national interests. To understand what happened, it is necessary to draw on foreign media, which covered the protests over many months, as well as other academic sources.

In social science literature, the Formosa Vietnam disaster is considered a key example for the importance of transnational environmental advocacy networks (Fan et al. 2021). Catholic priests and the US-based organization Justice for Formosa Victims (JfFV) have called for the release of imprisoned activists and for adequate compensation of impacted fisheries. More recently, after several attempts to gain jurisdiction in Vietnam, a group of 7,800 plaintiffs launched a civil lawsuit against Formosa in Taiwan’s supreme court. Beyond the repression experienced by activists in Vietnam, lawyers involved in the case have cited limited recourse to international law in Taiwan, expensive court filing fees, and other bureaucratic measures as challenges to the lawsuit.

I bring visual and graphic expertise, good organization skills, focus on pedagogical issues;

We need social media skills, organizational skills, community organizing skills, expertise on environmental research; teaching;

• TS: From April 6, 2016 until the end of the month, hundreds of tons of wild and farmed fish died along about 250 kilometers of coastline around the periphery of Formosa Steel, and the pollution spread to the south, affecting a total of four provinces (Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien Hue). The fishermen of the northern province of Nghe An claimed they had also been impacted, but the government denied that the pollution spread to the north. (Jobin & Ying 2020)

• TS: In April 2016, a dive by fishermen also found a 1.5km long drainage pipe of one-meter diameter coming from Formosa Steel that was discharging yellow wastewater onto the seabed. (Jobin & Ying 2020)

• TS: The Vietnam Fisheries Association pointed out that red tide generally kills shallow-sea fish, but in this case there were many deep-sea fish involved, so the red tide seemed to have little to do with this case, and the cause was therefore most likely human pollution (Green Trees 2016; Maodun 2016). (Jobin & Ying 2020)

• TS: In July 2016, the Vietnam Environmental Protection Agency (VEPA) provided the Vietnamese National Assembly with a 20-page report detailing the results of a survey conducted in central Vietnam the previous May by over one hundred scientists (including several foreign scholars): 115 tons of wild fish, 140 tons of farmed fish, 67 tons of oysters, 10 tons of crabs and 7 tons of shrimp had been lost; 450 hectares of the ocean, 40% to 60% of the coral, and 40% to 60% of the seabed were destroyed (Jobin & Ying 2020)

• TS: According to the Vietnam Environmental Protection Agency (VEPA), the pollution prevented 17,682 fishing boats from going to sea, causing 40,966 people (176,285 people including fishermen’s families) to suffer a major economic loss.  (Jobin & Ying 2020)

• TS: According to an official statement made by the Vietnamese government in June 2016, followed the next month by a report from the Vietnam Environmental Protection Agency (VEPA), the main causes of the massive deaths of fish and shrimp were the high concentrations of benzene, cyanide and ferric hydroxide emitted by Formosa Steel. The two most serious violations of Formosa Steel’s 53 violations were its wastewater treatment system and the release of hydrogen cyanide, a colorless but extremely toxic substance. Zyklon B, a colorless but highly toxic hydrogen cyanide also known as prussic acid, was used by the German Nazis in their “Final Solution” during World War II to kill millions of Jews. Benzene corrodes the skin and can damage the lungs, liver, kidneys, the heart and the central nervous system, possibly causing coma. On April 24, 2016, divers employed by a contractor of Formosa Steel suffered health problems; one of them died on the way to hospital. Although the release of pollutants such as hydrogen cyanide could certainly have caused the sudden death of the divers, the divers were actually protected by oxygen masks and diving suits, so the causality between the pollution and the death remains mysterious. (Jobin & Ying 2020)