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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.

Facing a pivotal federal investigation into Louisiana’s relationship with petro-chemical companies, the state’s attorney general hired lawyers who were simultaneously representing one of the main corporations at the center of the investigation, documents reveal.

The revelations, contained in documents released under public records requests, have led to allegations of a major conflict of interest and come just weeks after the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] dropped its civil rights investigation.

Internal emails, contracts and payments, show that the office of the attorney general, Jeff Landry, hired two lawyers to enter closed-door negotiations with the EPA during the 14-month civil rights investigation. But John King and Tim Hardy were also representing the Taiwanese chemicals firm Formosa in separate litigation, challenging a decision to revoke the company’s state air permits. (Moran and Sneath 2023).

In the 1980s, Formosa Plastics Corporation purchased financially struggling petrochemical plants in Delaware, Texas, and Louisiana. The company subsequently shifted its operations to Texas and Louisiana, where a competitive bidding process ensued between the two states, both of which were known for industry-friendly policies (Tubilewicz 2021). As political scientist Tubilewicz (2021, 16) has argued, the politics surrounding Formosa's investments in these states were not purely motivated by profit but were also shaped by the ongoing struggles of sub-state actors such as politicians and NGOs over issues of internationalization and representation in global affairs.

An example of this can be seen in Formosa's attempt to build a rayon fiber plant in Louisiana's St. John Parish in the late 1990s, an area also known as "Cancer Alley." Protests broke out due to concerns about massive tax exemptions, displacement of Black residents, and the plant's location on the historic Whitney Plantation (Tubilewicz 2021, 11). However, the project was eventually abandoned due to declining market demand and delays. In addition, the local St. John Governor was indicted for illegal industrial rezoning of land around the plantation and receiving $200,000 in real estate commission (Tubilewicz 2021, 11).