After the dust settles: Community resilience legacies of unconventional gas development

Abstract

This paper explores the socio-economic legacy created by an extractive industry as it developed, or sought to develop, in nine different communities or regions across Australia, Canada, the United States, and Wales – drawing on mixed-method research collected between 2011 and 2018. By the early 2010s, a number of unconventional fossil fuel companies were securing land access agreements for seismic and drilling exploration in the Western Downs region of South-East Queensland, the Northern Rivers region of North-Eastern New South Wales, the states of New York and Pennsylvania, the Province of New Brunswick, and southern Wales. Stark cultural, social and environmental contrasts between communities within each nation shaped community responses to potential industry development – levels of social license for developments, community responses and subsequent unconventional fossil fuel development varied widely. This article explores the impact of the industry on community resilience. A resilient community is likely to have high social capital, including strong social networks, feelings of safety and trust, sense of belonging, diversity, citizen power and participation. These social responses to the industry, combined with the existing local contexts and the differing regulatory frameworks of each community/region, can be argued to have led to divergent effects on overall community social and economic resilience across our case studies. Power, industrial impacts, relationships, resources, social action, timing of the debates, equity concerns, and strategic decision making (or lack thereof) shaped the degree of resilience with which each community/region responded. In four of our cases, resilience declined (e.g., due to increased economic homogenisation, decreasing social connectivity and citizen power); in five cases resilience increased (e.g., the legacy created by the emergence of social movements substantially increased social connectivity, sense of belonging and citizen power).