A Community Capitals Framework Approach to Sustainable Site Remediation

Over the past decades, the concept of 'sustainable remediation' has received growing recognition, resulting in numerous initiatives aimed at integrating sustainability principles into contaminated sites management. Despite this progress, there remains a lack of systematic approaches and theoretical frameworks capable of supporting holistic, context-sensitive decision-making for the remediation of sites contaminated with radioactive material, particularly in addressing social dimensions and ensuring meaningful stakeholder involvement. This PhD thesis explores the applicability of the Community Capitals Framework (CCF), an asset-based community development framework, to the environmental management of radioactively or mixed (heavy metals and radionuclides) contaminated sites, with a particular focus on Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) and Technologically Enhanced NORM (TENORM) sites. Community-based approaches, as opposed to needs-based approaches, have demonstrated significant potential for incorporating social dimensions into environmental management. This research evaluates CCF as a theoretical framework for developing a more comprehensive strategy for managing contaminated sites, promoting community empowerment, and fostering sustainable development. Using a multi-scalar approach, this study bridges theoretical development and empirical application to assess the utility of CCF in addressing complex environmental challenges. The research examines how the concept of community capitals can be applied to environmental management, exploring correlations between community capitals, social dimensions, and sustainability. Through empirical application in two case studies — one in Belgium and one in Italy—it investigates the framework's practical relevance using a mixed-methods approach. The findings from these case studies are further analysed through a cross-case analysis to identify challenges and opportunities in applying CCF for site remediation. This includes a cross-case analysis that evaluates the framework's reliability for achieving long-term sustainability and examines community-asset mapping (CAM) methods in relation to decision-support and sustainability assessment tools commonly used in sustainable environmental remediation (SER). The study underscores the benefits of leveraging community capitals to integrate social dimensions into environmental management. However, it also highlights the need for further research to refine the empirical application of CCF and to develop data analysis methods capable of capturing the dynamic nature of community capitals, in support of adaptive management practices.