Affected-party standing is the standing you acquire not by agreeing to a relationship but by being materially reached by one. A project can create relationships with people who never signed up for them — through pollution, noise, traffic, algorithmic consequences, displacement, or environmental risk — and the model’s rule is direct:
If a consequence reaches you substantially, a relationship has been created whether the powerful participant intended one or not — and that relationship carries legitimate standing.
This matters because conventional systems recognize contractual standing far more readily than involuntary standing, which is exactly how externalities escape accountability. Affected-party standing does not confer veto power; it confers a claim that cannot simply be ignored. It is the standing that ownership cannot erase and the reason signal and disclosure obligations follow consequence rather than title. See What Standing Governs.
For scarce goods, such claims run with the land: whoever holds the land holds the obligation (who holds what is scarce).