The role of ecosystem services in conflicts over potential dam removal - the case of the Mactaquac Dam, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dams across North America are coming to the end of their planned lifespans and are increasingly being considered for removal, which would significantly change river ecology and hydrology and the provision of ecosystem services. Such changes affect stakeholders differently, according to their uses, values and perceptions of ecosystem services. Understanding these impacts is necessary for effective and equitable decision making concerning dam removal, and for conflict resolution. The aims of this thesis were to analyse social demand for ecosystem services and its contribution to stakeholder conflict, and explore options for conflict resolution.A conceptual framework was developed to link ecosystem services and conflict from a wider range of angles than has been studied to date. The focus was on social demand for ecosystem services, rather than their biophysical provision or economic valuation, as the aspect most relevant to stakeholders and the least studied. Frame theory was used to analyse stakeholders' perceptions of dam removal and how differences between them contributed to conflict. The strategic implications of how the decision-making process was framed using scale were explored. Place meanings were used to explore the emotional dimensions of the conflict. Such theories on stakeholder conflict have not been applied to the context of dam removal. The framework was applied to a decision-making process around the Mactaquac Dam on the Saint John River, New Brunswick, Canada, which was being considered for removal at the time of study. Study of dam removals has been limited to small dams to date – as a large dam, this was an important test case for other similar dams. A qualitative approach was used to explore the full range of ecosystem services used and how they related to conflict. Fifty stakeholders participated, who represented a range of interests and were located both up and downstream of the dam. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore how they used the river and their opinions on the future of the dam. Participatory mapping was then used to reveal the spatial distribution of ecosystem service demand and place meanings.Stakeholders used a range of ecosystem services. Although there were few differences in the services used by those who preferred to retain the dam and those who preferred to remove it, there were clear differences in how they used the same services and in their spatial distribution. Participatory mapping was used for the first time to test whether stakeholders could map ecosystem services under future scenarios. Although few could map ecosystem services if the dam were removed, the process was useful to uncover perceptions of change and its causes.Stakeholders' use of ecosystem services informed their frames of the dam, river and decision-making process. Their frames showed loss aversion, being less willing to experience a loss than give up a potential gain. Those in favour of removal framed the decision using spatial and temporal scales differently to those against, in ways that deemed certain arguments and stakeholders as being relevant to the decision and others irrelevant. The temporal scale was newly revealed as important in scale framing in this context. Stakeholders held numerous intangible place meanings, suggesting a strong connection to specific locations in the area, many of which were shared between the two groups.The study found that a range of ecosystem services were locally important and would be affected if the dam were removed. Theories of stakeholder conflict revealed that differing demand for services contributed to conflict, but also offered opportunities for its resolution. There was widespread agreement about the importance of ecosystem protection and many shared place meanings. Participatory approaches centred around ecological protection and shared place meanings have the potential to allow stakeholders to build trust and to manage conflict.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".