Every attempt by the NSW State Government to site waste treatment and disposal facilities has been met by opposition from local communities. Increasing interest is being shown in community consultation and public participation in the decision-making processes concerning the siting of waste management technologies. This thesis examines the rationale behind, and potential of, community consultation through an examination of two case studies. The thesis concludes that the reasons and remedies for local opposition typically given by experts and regulatory authorities are flawed. The engineering concerns which have dominated approaches to choosing and siting waste management technologies are of little consequence to the way in which communities judge whether the facilities pose an acceptable societal risk. The issues of concern to communities include the legitimacy of the decision-making process, the relative fairness of the decision to site, and whether the institutions responsible for managing and operating the technologies are trustworthy. If waste management technologies rely on local acceptability for their siting, the approach taken to resolve the waste problem must include societal as well as engineering concerns in the design of courses of action to manage the risk. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The importance and benefits of involving community members in health policy making-­-from the first step of needs assessment through to actual policy development--are increasingly being recognized. This thesis describes the evaluation of a community consultation process which was part of a needs assessment conducted by Saskatoon District Health, in Saskatchewan, Canada. In September 1995, a Children and Youth Working Group was formed, made up of volunteers representing service providers, users, and families. Their mandate was to develop and priorize recommendations on ways to improve the health status of children and youth in the District, which has a total population of approximately 300,000. In addition to a comprehensive epidemiological assessment, the Working Group engaged in a community consultation process which solicited input from the general community, with a specific emphasis on key groups such as youth, Aboriginal, immigrant/refugees, and service providers in health, education, social services, and justice. In this process, information on perceived needs of children and youth was collected through 20 focus groups (n=213) and a questionnaire (n=1,985). Based on a synthesis of the quantitative and qualitative data, the Working Group drafted a set of recommendations, which were then discussed at a community meeting for input and feedback. <p> This research evaluates the effectiveness of the consultation process in facilitating community participation using three sources of data: the entire consultation process was observed (from January 1996 until February 1997), including the focus groups, Working Group meetings, and the final community meeting; interviews (2) were held with the Working Group (n=9), with selected individuals who had participated in the consultation (n=7), and with non-participants (n=2); and documentation produced by the Working Group (i.e., minutes, notes, background material) was reviewed. These data were analyzed thematically according to criteria established jointly by the representatives of the member groups of the Population Health Project (Working Group, Coordinating Group, Research Advisory Group) and the researcher. The effectiveness was gauged by comparing the findings with the criteria and with the components of meaningful community consultation as defined by the Working Group (appropriateness, timeliness, completeness, accuracy, representativeness, relevance). The themes which emerged from the analysis deal with the participants' feelings about their participation or non­participation, the success of the consultation process, the nature of the data collected; by-­products of the process, and the consultation's influence on the outcome of the needs assessment. The results of this analysis are presented and conclusions drawn regarding factors that contribute to or impede effective public participation in health needs assessment.

The importance and benefits of involving community members in health policy making-­-from the first step of needs assessment through to actual policy development--are increasingly being recognized. This thesis describes the evaluation of a community consultation process which was part of a needs assessment conducted by Saskatoon District Health, in Saskatchewan, Canada. In September 1995, a Children and Youth Working Group was formed, made up of volunteers representing service providers, users, and families. Their mandate was to develop and priorize recommendations on ways to improve the health status of children and youth in the District, which has a total population of approximately 300,000. In addition to a comprehensive epidemiological assessment, the Working Group engaged in a community consultation process which solicited input from the general community, with a specific emphasis on key groups such as youth, Aboriginal, immigrant/refugees, and service providers in health, education, social services, and justice. In this process, information on perceived needs of children and youth was collected through 20 focus groups (n=213) and a questionnaire (n=1,985). Based on a synthesis of the quantitative and qualitative data, the Working Group drafted a set of recommendations, which were then discussed at a community meeting for input and feedback. <p> This research evaluates the effectiveness of the consultation process in facilitating community participation using three sources of data: the entire consultation process was observed (from January 1996 until February 1997), including the focus groups, Working Group meetings, and the final community meeting; interviews (2) were held with the Working Group (n=9), with selected individuals who had participated in the consultation (n=7), and with non-participants (n=2); and documentation produced by the Working Group (i.e., minutes, notes, background material) was reviewed. These data were analyzed thematically according to criteria established jointly by the representatives of the member groups of the Population Health Project (Working Group, Coordinating Group, Research Advisory Group) and the researcher. The effectiveness was gauged by comparing the findings with the criteria and with the components of meaningful community consultation as defined by the Working Group (appropriateness, timeliness, completeness, accuracy, representativeness, relevance). The themes which emerged from the analysis deal with the participants' feelings about their participation or non­participation, the success of the consultation process, the nature of the data collected; by-­products of the process, and the consultation's influence on the outcome of the needs assessment. The results of this analysis are presented and conclusions drawn regarding factors that contribute to or impede effective public participation in health needs assessment.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / MAGISTER SCIENTlAE IN THE FACULTY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE. This thesis focuses on Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA's) as prepared in the Western Cape Province. The thesis attempts to summarise the legal requirements for EIA's and then to analyse two recent assessmentsin the light of the concern raised by Alex Weaver, at the South African chapter of the International Association for Impact Assessment National Conference in 1999, that EIA's~l§_cLI>listoricaily _gisadvantag~and do not give sufficient attention to social impacts. The thesis also attempts to analyse the EIA's and to critically assess whether they comply with the intention of the legal requirements. The applicable legislation and regulations are analysed to determine whether there are sufficient guidelines for practitioners to assessthe socio-economic impacts of development in an equitable manner to the assessmentof the biophysical impacts. It was found that the legislation and the regulations do not provide clear guidance for the consideration of the socia-economic aspects of the environment or impacts in the preparation of EIA's. The EIA's regarding the Relocation Of The Informal Settlement At Stanford and for the Koringberg-Platvlei-MiddelburgWater Supply Pipeline required to provide potable water to rural communities are analysed, as both have socio-economicgoals. In the Stanford case, an informal settlement located on the town's water source has to be relocated to the town, where there is a shortage of land available for development and site-specific impacts on a major employer, with the threat of a potential loss in employment opportunities. In the Koringberg-Platvlei-Middelburg case, the rural community has insufficient potable water and a supply scheme is proposed in a potentially sensitive environment. In order to analyse the two assessments,the ideal EIA and recent trends are first established from literature. Criteria for the assessment of the EIA's are determined and then used to ascertain whether the concern raised by Weaver is correct. In the analysis of the subject EIA's it was found that both address the social issues of concern, albeit without clear guidance from the applicable legislation and regulations. Following on the critical assessmentof the recent EIA's, the thesis provides proposals and stepby-step guidelines for the drafting of EIA's for use by students and inexperienced practitioners in the field of environmental management. Weaver's concern is found to be correct and recommendations are made to adjust the relevant regulations, to give clear guidance for the consideration of seclo-economic concerns in the preparation of EIA's.

Over the past twenty years, the idea that planning and development practices should be ‘sustainable’ has become a key tenet of discourses characterising the field of planning and development. As part of the agenda to balance and integrate economic, environmental and social interests, democratic participatory governance arrangements are frequently purported to be necessary to achieve ‘sustainable development’ at both local and global levels. Despite the theoretical disjuncture between ideas of democratic civic participation, on the one hand, and civic participation as a means to achieve pre-determined sustainability goals on the other, notions of civic participation for sustainability have become integral features of sustainable development discourses. Underpinned by a conceptual and methodological intent to perform an epistemological ‘break’ with notions of civic participation for sustainability, this thesis explicates how citizens are enrolled in the sustainable development agenda in the discourse of policy. More specifically, it examines how assumptions about civic participation in sustainable development policy discourses operate, and unpacks some discursive strategies through which policy language ‘enrols’ citizens in the same set of assumptions around their normative requirement for participation in sustainable development. Focussing in on a case study sustainable development policy document – a draft regional plan representing a case of ‘enrolling the citizen in sustainability’ - it employs three sociological perspectives/methods that progressively highlight some of the ways that the policy language enjoins citizens as active participants in ‘sustainable’ regional planning. As a thesis-by-publication, the application of each perspective/method is reported in the form of an article prepared for publication in an academic journal. In a departure from common-sense understandings of civic participation for sustainability, the first article examines the governmentality of sustainable development policy. Specifically, this article explores how civic community – particularly community rights and responsibilities – are deployed in the policy discourse as techniques of government that shape and regulate the conduct of subjects. In this respect, rather than seeing civic community as a specific ‘thing’ and participation as corresponding to particular types of ‘activities’, this paper demonstrates how notions of civic participation are constructed and mobilised in the language of sustainable development policy in ways that facilitate government ‘at a distance’. The second article begs another kind of question of the policy – one concerned more specifically with how the everyday practices of subjects become aligned with the principles of sustainable development. This paper, therefore, investigates the role of pedagogy in establishing governance relations in which citizens are called to participate as part of the problematic of sustainability. The analysis suggests that viewing the case study policy in terms of relationships of informal pedagogy provided insights into the positioning of the citizen as an ‘acquirer’ of sustainability principles. In this instance, the pedagogic values of the text provide for low levels of discretion in how citizens could position themselves in the moral order of the discourse. This results in a strong injunction for citizens to subscribe to sustainability principles in a participatory spirit coupled with the requirement for citizens to delegate to the experts to carry out these principles. The third article represents a further breakdown of the ways in which citizens become enrolled in ‘sustainable’ regional planning within the language of the case study policy. Applying an ethnomethodological perspective, specifically Membership Categorization Analysis, this article examines the way ‘the citizen’ and ‘civic values and obligations’ are produced in the interactional context of the text. This study shows how the generation of a substantive moral order that ties the citizen to sustainable values and obligations with respect to the region, is underpinned by a normative morality associated with the production of orderliness in ‘text-in-interaction’. As such, it demonstrates how the production and positioning of ‘the citizen’ in relation to the institutional authors of the policy, and the region more generally, are practical accomplishments that orient the reader to identify him/herself as a ‘citizen’ and embrace the ‘civic values and obligations’ to which he/she is bound. Together, the different conceptual and methodological approaches applied in the thesis provide a more holistic picture of the different ways in which citizens are discursively enrolled in the sustainability agenda. At the substantive level, each analysis reveals a different dimension of how the active citizen is mobilised as a responsible agent for sustainable development. In this respect, civic participation for sustainability is actualised and reproduced through the realms of language, not necessarily through applied occasions of civic participation in the ‘taken-for-granted’ sense. Furthermore, at the conceptual and methodological level, the thesis makes a significant contribution to sociological inquiry into relationships of governance. Rather than residing within the boundaries of a specific sociological perspective, it shows how different approaches that would traditionally be applied in a mutually exclusive manner, can complement each other to advance understanding of how governance discourses operate. In this respect, it provides a rigorous conceptual and methodological platform for further investigations into how citizens become enrolled in programmes of government.

The objective of this study was to develop an understanding of the effects of the construction of hydro dams on nearby communities. The construction of the 400 megawatt Bui dam (8o16I 42II N, 2o143I 9 I I W) in Ghana has inundated seven communities and nearly a quarter of Bui National Park, including the destruction of community resources that provide for the livelihood needs of the people living near the dam. The dam led to the resettlement of seven communities, coordinated by the Bui Power Authority. Concerns expressed about the resettlement process indicate some weakness in stakeholder consultations relating to the resettlement, as well as weakness in the development of opportunities to address the anticipated effects of the Bui dam, including effects on community assets. These issues were examined through a study of how the construction of Bui Dam was perceived by local communities representing several ethnic-linguistic groups, including the Ewe, Mo, and Nafana. A mixed methods approach was used in the research, including document analysis, quantitative interviews of 329 households, key informant interviews with 22 households, and case studies of four families, including two families each from resettled and non-resettled communities. Data was obtained from 13 nearby communities, 7 of which had been relocated because of the dam. The study considered examined how the Bui Dam was perceived to influence seven capital assets: cultural; natural; social; human; political; physical; and financial. Overall, people perceive these capital assets to be decreasing in most aspects as a result of the Bui Dam, with some variability among households. This variability was explored through analysis of a number of predictor variables: relocation, ethnicity, livelihood type, age, and gender. Villages not relocated tended to perceive effects less negatively, as did people of Nafana ethnicity, and those who rely mainly on a farming livelihood. Gender and age had little effect: gender mediated effects on some aspects of social and political capital, while age affected only some aspects of cultural capital. Further analysis through the use of multiple regression analysis was undertaken to determine the relative influence of each of these predictor variables. Overall, each multiple regression analysis was significant, with high R squared values ranging from 0.761 to 0.260. The most powerful predictor was whether communities had been relocated or not (“relocate”), which was significantly related to each capital asset, with beta values ranging from 0.826 to 0.418. “Livelihood” was the next most important predictor variable, significantly related to all capital assets and with beta values varying from 0.520 to 0.231. “Ethnicity” was a significant predictor for four of seven capital assets, with beta values ranging from 0.133 to 0.055. “Gender” was a significant predictor variable for two of seven capital assets (social capital, with a beta value of 0.084, and political capital, with a beta value of 0.119). “Age” was a significant variable for just one capital asset (cultural), with a beta value of 0.038. In summary, this study is consistent with other studies that have examined the effect of dams on the livelihoods of nearby communities in that for most households the consequences have been negative, although not as severe for those households that were not forced to relocate, people of Nafana ancestry, or people who rely mainly on farming. The presence of Bui National Park may have moderated these negative effects somewhat, through employment provided in the park; and through ecosystem services such as vegetative cover in the park supporting cloud formation and rain occurrence / Graduate / 0366 / 0534 / 0628 / jonesarthur2002@yahoo.co.uk

The title of the research is Sustainability Performance Evaluation Management Systems Model for Individual Organizations and Supply Chains. This research has achieved its aim to develop and demonstrate the practical implementation of a simple and objective sustainability performance evaluation management system model for individual organizations and supply chains. It has resulted in the recognition that a new concept – Network of Interested Partners – underpins the achievement of sustainability. The term acknowledges the interdependence and reflects the essential cooperation that must be achieved between business organisations, their commercially related entities and the local community if progress towards sustainability is to be achieved. It therefore encompasses and extends the concept of a supply chain as currently used. Sustainable Development is defined by the World Commission on Environment and Development as development, which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future societies to meet their own needs. Organizations, as part of human activities, also have to be sustainable. The sustainability of organizations is directly linked to the continual improvement of business performance. Many organizations have found a way to improve performance through the establishment of management systems. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards are recognized worldwide as reliable and efficient tools for the implementation of management systems. However, they do not always result in the desired improvement in outcomes. Therefore, if the required improvement of business performance is to be achieved, improved methodologies for development and implementation of performance evaluation (PE) processes are necessary. These methodologies must take into consideration sustainability principles. They also have to be applicable to individual entities and supply chains, with or without management systems in place. Supply chains are important because it is being increasingly recognized that overall supply chain performance is a means of adding value and competitive advantage to all businesses. In the first part of the research a performance evaluation model or PE (version 1 model) was developed. This was used as criteria to compare and evaluate existing performance evaluation processes and outcomes of individual organisations and their respective supply chain within the Gladstone region, Australia. Questionnaires have also been used to identify and evaluate the needs of the interested parties in relation to the organizations’ and supply chains’ business performance and processes of performance evaluation. All the information provided in the first part of the research was used by the researcher to develop the Sustainability Performance Evaluation Management Systems model or SPEMS (version 2 model). This incorporates the concepts of Network of Interested Parties/Partners. In particular, one of the outcomes is recognition that organizations need to establish partnerships if effective supply chain performance improvement is to be achieved. Therefore the establishment of partnerships has become a key requirement for the implementation of SPEMS. The establishment of partnership among participants of a supply chain of Gladstone and implementation of the eight first steps of the SPEMS (version 2 model) in this supply chain was commenced successfully through workshops. The supply chain was formed by commercial organizations, government entities and interested parties from the community. SPEMS requires that partners all have the same level of ownership and authority in the decisions of the supply chain. Some new terms and their definitions have been created within the research to support the new SPEMS model. They include: Network of Interested Partners, sustainability for organizations, sustainability KPI and sustainability friendly organizations. All of the above are encompassed within the final SPEMS (version 3 model).