The role of critical education in an environmental assessment that includes hearings

Abstract

How does education and learning occur through an environmental assessment that includes panel review? This was my central research question for a recent study of the Sable Gas Panel Review that applied the philosophy of critical education and the theory of transformative learning to activities and participants involved in the panel review. The Sable Gas Panel Review was an environmental assessment of a natural gas project situated in the Maritimes. This project, a joint venture among Mobil Oil Canada, Shell Canada Limited and three partners, was designed to extract six offshore reserves, and transport natural gas to a processing plant, to be built near Goldboro, Nova Scotia. Gas would then be transported to markets in the United States through a pipeline constructed through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick by the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline Company. Findings of this study contribute to a larger body of literature related to the role of transformative learning in environmental assessment. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)