Site the Mine in Our Backyard! Discursive Strategies of Community Stakeholders in an Environmental Conflict in New Zealand

Abstract

This article is centered around a decision to site a mining operation in a conservation area near a small community on the South Island of New Zealand. Two key groups emerged in the dispute over the decision: One was in favor of the mining operation and one was opposed. This intense conflict provided the opportunity to examine the notion of community as stakeholder-a stakeholder group not often considered by researchers. Through interviews and a media analysis, the discursive strategies employed by the various parties to actively support or oppose the decision are identified. In constituting these positions, both groups engage with broader discourses of place and identity and with classic rhetorical themes in business-environmental conflict. However, the identification of an activist community group willing and eager to have the mining operation sited in their local environment is the most unexpected finding in the research.

Leaking legitimacies: the Finnish forest sector's entanglement in the land conflicts of Atlantic coastal Brazil

“…The community is not often considered a stakeholder group by researchers in business economics (cf. Walton, 2007). Despite emerging new, Southern contexts in CSR discourses, little research has been done to connect business ethics with development studies -and its subdiscipline, development ethics -from a stakeholder perspective.…”

“…This new discourse also indicates that it is no longer socially acceptable to consider only shareholders when making decisions, since others also have 'stakes' in business decisions (ibid.). Kapelus (2002) reminds us that identifying a community is a complex and contested task, and any definition of a community is always a construct (see also Walton, 2007). History, territory, kinship, religion, and culture are important determinants of Indigenous Peoples' communities -who actually define themselves.…”

Legitimising activism in democracy: A place for antagonism in environmental governance

“…The argument the mine proponents put forth was that it would create an estimated ‘additional 424 jobs and $138 million per year of added value, including $41 million per year of wages and salaries’ (Butcher, 2011: 11–12) over the 5-year cycle of the mine. Such arguments already buy into the dominant discourses and histories of the regional economy of the West Coast which has been reliant on extraction of natural resources, from gold mining in the mid-19th century, turning to coal in the early 20th, along with forestry and fishing (Conradson and Pawson, 2009; Walton, 2007). The hegemony of economic growth is reflected further in the commissioner’s final decision: We have decided to grant this application, but not without some considerable reservations and anguish.…”

Camping, climbing trees and marching to Parliament: spatial dimensions of environmental protest in New Zealand

“…The figure considers the combined actions at the local, national and international scales, as there was no significant difference between them. locals and 'greenies' (see Walton 2007). To effectively understand the ways in which protest campaigns manage issues of scale the paper now turns to consider opposition to the introduction of GE (primarily field trials) and mineral extraction.…”