Spatialising procedural justice: fairness and local knowledge mobilisation in nuclear waste siting

ABSTRACT

Recent shifts in energy infrastructure siting have seen movement toward more procedurally just participatory decision-making processes. The energy justice literature emphasises both the normative need for fairness and justice in energy decision-making, while recognising the instrumental value of procedural justice for more favourable siting outcomes. Against a global nuclear backdrop of historically closed decision-making and public controversy, Canada’s high-level nuclear waste siting process has sought to offer a more participatory and community-driven process. Drawing from ethnographic observation and interviews in Ontario, Canada, this paper seeks to evaluate the NWMO’s siting process according to principles of energy justice, focusing on how local context and nuclear landscape may problematise normative applications of procedural justice. Through this analysis, I address a perceived deficit in studies of the spatial implications of procedural justice, examining how local geography can shape how procedurally just a process is, at times translating well-intended policy into unintended outcomes. Ultimately, I argue that effective mobilisation of local knowledge for more localised practices is key to informing fairer and more just siting processes and eventual outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Procedural justice
• energy justice
• localisation
• nuclear waste siting

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the interviewees in this study, without their generous time and genuine reflections this research would not be possible. I would also like to note deepest gratitude to the Society of Woman Geographers, the American Association of University Women, the Energy and Environment Specialty Group of the AAG, and the Mark Diamond Research Fund, for generously funding this research. Thanks are also due to Dr Trina Hamilton for comments on earlier drafts. Finally, I appreciate the generous and constructive feedback given by the anonymous reviewers for their generous and constructive feedback. Any omissions or errors, are of course, my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by American Association of Geographers [Energy and Environment Fieldwork Award]; American Association of University Women [Olga Lindberg Scholarship 2018]; Society for Women Geographers Evelyn Pruitt National Dissertation Fellowship [grant number 19-7]; Mark Diamond Research Fund, University at Buffalo [grant number SU-18-02].