Environmental Decision-Making and Community Involvement: The Case of Sandy Island, South Carolina

Environmental decision-making and mediation research has examined a range of approaches and has increasingly focused on the actors involved with this process. A central part of environmental decision-making is the incorporation of community participation within the decision-making process. The manner in which such participation occurs and its impact on the process is the focus of this paper. We examine the following research question: what type and extent of community participation in the environmental decision-making process led to the conservation of Sandy Island, South Carolina? Analysis of resident surveys and stakeholder interviews, complemented by examinations of minutes from agency meetings, government documents, and newspaper accounts suggest that federal and state partners successfully incorporated local resident opinion into the environmental decision-making process through resident proxies. This successful environmental decision-making process has raised community awareness and increased public agency ability to address community concerns. Such community involvement, if maintained, begins to fulfill a central principle of successful environmental decision-making.