Reinvention through regreening: Examining environmental change in Sudbury, Ontario

With over a century of active nickel mining, Sudbury had, by the 1970s, suffered from extensive environmental degradation. At this time the community implemented a series of environmental initiatives thattransformed the formerly denuded landscape. First world political ecology, with an emphasis on environmental justice, and the key actors involved in remediation guided research. Using mixed-methods, this study investigates the factors that made the program successful. Data collection drew from reports, direct observation, semi-structured interviews, and remote sensing (RS) imagery. Qualitative analysis used coding informed by political ecology. The quantitative analysis of the RS data consisted of normalized difference vegetation indices. Findings demonstrate Sudbury's transformation was motivated by four intersecting factors: aesthetics, economic development, scientific-technical innovation, and the broader environmental movement. RS analysis found regreening along prominent sightlines and vegetation loss on company land. Critically, local leadership led to the creation of a multistakeholder committee, which moved academic research into reality and shifted the power dynamics away from government- and corporate dominance. Findings highlight the importance of micropolitical research through the lens of political ecology to understand environmental transformation in the first world. The research underscores the position that government and corporate regreening initiatives alone are not sufficient for engendering change.