Resource extraction and intersectoral research: Engaging accountable relations in the Environment Community Health Observatory Network

Vanessa Sloan Morgan, Dawn Hoogeveen, May Farrales, Maya K Gislason, Margot W Parkes and Henry G Harder
Additional contact information
May Farrales: 6727University of Northern British Columbia, Canada
Maya K Gislason: 1763Simon Fraser University, Canada
Margot W Parkes: 6727University of Northern British Columbia, Canada

Environment and Planning C, 2021, vol. 39, issue 5, 972-992

Abstract: The inaugural gathering of The Environment Community Health Observatory (ECHO) Network is a network of academic, non-profit, and health authority scholars and practitioners committed to understanding and responding to the cumulative impacts of resource extraction. The Network is embedded within multiple jurisdictions and institutional contexts, reflecting the Network’s efforts to work across sectors to address questions arising in communities and regions experiencing the overlapping influences of rurality, remoteness, and resource extraction. In this paper, we draw from entrance interviews and a group exercise with Network members to explore the complexity of accountability as an unfolding challenge for research that addresses resource extraction in Canada. We locate these findings within the current settler colonial context in which the Network is embroiled, arguing that a condition of settler colonialism is erasing not only Indigenous legal orders but also accountability mechanisms outside of state-based discourses. In making this argument, we understand settler colonialism as a failed yet persistent project. We contend that collectively engaging through situated and relational accountabilities beyond simply accounting for “accountability†, ECHO Network members—and others looking to social and environmental change—are critically challenged to approach settler-state apparatuses for transformative engagement beyond merely recognizing that accountability is relational.

Keywords: Accountability; settler colonialism; environment/health observatory; Canada; intersectoral action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399654420951805 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:39:y:2021:i:5:p:972-992

DOI: 10.1177/2399654420951805

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().