Introduction, background, perspecitive

[John V. Stone <jvstone@glerl.noaa.gov;jvstone@umd.umich.edu;;;;;;;>]

Hi everyone. My name is John Stone, and I, too, hope to learn much from and perhaps add a little to this discussion. My background in public participation is a bit varied, so please bear with me.. I'm currently a visiting scientist at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (NOAA) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I work as the survey/outreach director on the Great Lakes Science/Policy Initiative, funded by the Joyce Foundation and conducted by the International Association for Great Lakes Research (see, e.g., http://www.iaglr.org/scipolicy/report070201.php). Not surprisingly, my focus has been and continues to be on Great Lakes environmental management. To that end, and of considerable relevance to this discussion, I recently completed an 18-month EPA-sponsored fellowship at the Great Lakes Commission, where I demonstrated an ethnographic approach to public participation, called "Risk Perception Mapping." The purpose of that research was to explore/demonstrate culturally-sensitive and locally appropriate participatory methods for Great Lakes environmental management. The final report of that project may be found at the following websites: http://www.glc.org/about/scholarships/jvstone-report.html; and http://www.sfaa.net/eap/eappapers.html, and in the summer 2001 edition of the journal "Environmental Science and Policy," special edition titled "Environmental Knowledge, Rights, and Ethics: Co-managing with Communities." All of this work builds upon my doctoral research and dissertation in applied anthropology ("Public Participation in Environmental Management: Seeking 'Participatory Equity' through Ethnographic Inquiry"), and reflects a predominantly Egalitarian philosophical orientation to public participation (as opposed, for instance, to the predominantly Libertarian orientation that guides many participatory processes in the U.S. today). In that regard, most of my input to this on-line discussion applies to tomorrow's topic (defining affected populations, identifying constituent populations, and accessing their local environmental knowledge in social contexts). Suffice it to say here, though, that ethnographic public participation can tell us much about the social distribution of envirionmental risk and impact, as well as provide a population-specific mode of information/education exchange through which more culturally sensitive indicators of ecosystem integrity may emerge. Thus, I see many of the on-line discussion topics as highly interrelated (e.g., as noted above, population identification/access is related to risk communication is related to environmental justice is related indicators of ecosystem health, etc.). One of my concerns in this on-line dialogue is that the daily separation of these and other related topics may detract from their highly integrated nature in the public participation process. Better to take that chance, though, than to not have the dialogue at all... My sincere thanks to the organizers!

Looking forward to learning from your insights as the process continues...

Cheers,

jvs