After Mobuoy: co-designing environmental governance in Northern Ireland?

Abstract

ABSTRACT After the discovery of the Mobuoy illegal dump in Derry, known to the public as one of the largest illegal dumpsites in Europe, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency adopted a so-called ‘co-design’ approach to the remediation of the contaminated site. As part of it, the Mobuoy Stakeholder Group was established so that local communities could represent their concerns and give feedback to the government’s remediation project. Based on semi-structured interviews and policy analysis, this article examined the level of inclusiveness and representativeness of the Mobuoy Stakeholder Group by looking into the decision-making processes over two divisive agendas on the remediation project. This article concluded that a so-called ‘co-design’ approach to remediating the Mobuoy site was significantly misleading. The Mobuoy illegal dumpsite is an alarming case of environmental unsustainability in Northern Ireland, not only because of its massive scale, but also because of the government’s closed and siloed approach to environmental governance. Through a lens of agonistic participation, this article argued that for co-design approaches to environmental governance to function as intended, power inequalities among participants, particularly the government and ordinary citizens, in environmental governance should be taken into consideration seriously.