Assessing the Technical Practice of Advocacy Coalitions
This research examines how environmental advocacy coalitions engage with the planning, construction, and operation of controversial transmission pipelines that carry petrochemical products from source points to markets, sometimes for hundreds of miles across several states. Petrochemical pipelines are increasingly at the center of debates over the importance of public participation in infrastructure-related decision making and risk assessments. However, communities often lack the ability to engage with broader governance processes that shape pipeline planning, construction, and operation. As a result of procedural and technical barriers, advocacy groups often resort to litigating with operators and regulators long after permits are issued and construction begins. However, advocacy coalitions are also proactively developing new technical tools and scientific expertise to make sense of petrochemical pipelines.
This study examines the technical practices of advocacy organizations working on petrochemical pipelines—such as the use of mapping platforms, mobile apps, monitoring equipment, remote sensing, and other data-producing tools. Two years of preliminary research includes a review of 287 transmission pipeline projects in the U.S., of which 60 were found to have resulted in significant advocacy coalition responses. Additional research identified 750 individual groups associated with these coalitions. GIS analysis of these findings determined the geographic distribution of groups relative to the location of pipelines, while additional social network analysis revealed the topologies of their coalitions. This preliminary research was funded through the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s JPB Environmental Health Fellowship.
Preliminary analysis suggest that applications of technical tools and scientific expertise appear to manifest in networks with access to professional institutions, social capital, and financial resources. We suggest that being disconnected from a larger network of practitioners is problematic, particularly for groups in marginalized environmental justice communities and those in rural geographies. We hypothesize that they are at a disadvantage when working to shape their entanglements with pipeline infrastructure at a time when the burdens of demonstrating impact are increasingly put on the public.
In order to refine our analysis through first-person accounts, we also conducted a survey of groups in our study in 2021/2022. Presentation slides with key findings from one of our public webinars can be downloaded below.
Our findings will help organizations, funders, capacity building organizations, and regulators to learn from the practices and projects used by different coalitions across the country. A later goal of the research will be to host skill-share workshops to facilitate networking, skill-sharing, and tool-building processes.
Throughout our research, we recognize that research must be done with care for the organizations, people, and environments in which advocacy coalitions do their work. For these reasons, we are highly sensitive to ensuring that the results of the study best serve this community without putting them at risk.