Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making (2008) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
9 Overall Conclusions and Recommendations
9 Overall Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 223-244
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From page 223... ...
Because public participation in environmental assessments and decision making is a new area for systematic research and much is yet to be learned, we also offer suggestions for advancing knowledge in the field.
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From page 224... ...
5. Are there significant problems of trust among the agency, the scientists, and the interested and affected parties?
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From page 225... ...
Our conclusions and recommendations are based on the convergence of multiple lines of evidence, including studies with one or a few cases; statistical analyses of many cases; systematic case comparisons, including several conducted for this study; our review of basic social science research relevant to public participation; analysis of the legal framework for participation; an assessment of practitioner experience embedded in handbooks and agency guidance; and the expertise of the panel members. Systematic research on public participation is still relatively new, and although the literature is growing rapidly, we had to use our judgment to evaluate different forms of evidence.
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From page 226... ...
These results apply across a wide range of well-documented public participation processes for making many kinds of assessments and decisions and across the United States.2 Thus, multiple sources of evidence give strong confidence that public participation, done well, can be effective in achieving multiple desired benefits in a wide variety of settings and that it can be effective even within the resource limitations that commonly exist in federal, state, and local governments. It is also true that public participation, if not done well, may not provide any of these benefits -- in some circumstances, participation has done
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From page 227... ...
We caution that although public participation often provides multiple benefits, the available evidence also shows that it is possible to conduct public participation processes that are counterproductive and that may be worse than not including the public at all. Participatory processes convened as a superficial formality or without adequate support by decision makers increase the public's distrust of government when, almost inevitably, the results have little impact.
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From page 228... ...
A Commitment to Use the Process to Inform Actions Public participation processes are more likely to be successful when the agency responsible for the relevant environmental decisions is committed to supporting the process and taking seriously the results. This is in part because the more committed a decision-making agency is to act on the results of a public participation process, the more likely the parties are to engage seriously.
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From page 229... ...
Appropriate Timing in Relation to Decisions Public participation processes are more likely to have good results when planned so that they can be informed by emerging analysis and so that their outputs are timely with regard to the decision process. In designing the participatory process, it is critical to conform to agency decision-making timetables so that closure is achievable and outcomes are available to decision makers in a timely manner.
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From page 230... ...
Al though contextual factors can create difficulties for achieving principles of good practice, choices about key aspects of effective participatory process can do much to overcome these difficulties. RECOMMENDATION 3: Agencies undertaking a public participation process should, considering the purposes of the process, design it to ad dress the challenges that arise from particular contexts.
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From page 231... ...
Of particular importance in achieving quality and legitimacy is engaging the spectrum of interested and affected parties in formulating the problem for assessment or decision to the extent the agency's context allows. This principle requires developing the process by collaboration among all who will be engaged in it, with a particular emphasis on engaging members of the public in problem formulation, including defining the scope of the assessment process or policy and diagnosing the obstacles to effective participation.
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From page 232... ...
This literature provides a rich toolkit for those designing participatory processes (including members of the public involved in codesign of the process)
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From page 233... ...
We suggest that the biggest advantages of electronic participation at present may be found when an environmental issue has broad geographic impact, and the biggest disadvantage may be the difficulty of engaging groups who do not regularly use the Internet. With regard to the intensity of the public participation process, the evidence suggests that the proper level of intensity is context dependent.
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From page 234... ...
This formulation from Understanding Risk applies to environmental assessments and decisions more generally. Special care is needed to integrate science into public participation processes because of three kinds of potential obstacles to effective use of science in assessment and decision-making processes that involve interested and affected parties.
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From page 235... ...
Processes to ensure that decision-relevant information is accessible and interpretible to all participants and that analyses are available in open sources and presented in enough detail to allow for independent review not only build public trust in the science, they also ensure the open discussion of assumptions and uncertainty that is central to improving scientific analyses. Paying Explicit Attention to Both Facts and Values An effective analyticdeliberative process must deal with both facts and values and in particular with how anticipated changes in the world will affect the things people value.
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From page 236... ...
Experimentation with using these tools to enhance participation processes is warranted. Promoting Explicitness About Assumptions and Uncertainties Uncertainties about facts and values will always be present, and all analyses must rely on assumptions.
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From page 237... ...
As discussed in Chapter 8, it would be a mistake to name certain techniques as "best practices" for several reasons: the evidence is very weak for such a recommendation; the research evidence and practical experience strongly suggest that the best technique is likely to be situation dependent; practices need to be sensitive to changes that occur during the process; and recommended "best practices" too easily turn into standard operating procedures that are implemented formulaically, without sensitivity to their effectiveness, which may be less than hoped and may vary over time. Selecting "best practice" techniques and implementing them without involving the participants can also undermine the legitimacy of public participation processes.
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From page 238... ...
The monitoring procedure may be informal or may involve formal evaluation, integrated by agreement of the participants into the public participation process design.
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From page 239... ...
Arrows indicate lines of influence: principles and contextual factors contribute to diagnosis; principles, diagnosis, and collaborative choice influence the selection of tools and techniques; the tools and collaborative choice determine what is monitored and how; monitoring leads to iteration; and iteration, via collaborative choice, feeds back to the selection of tools and techniques.
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From page 240... ...
Because public participation makes a useful test bed for examining basic social science theory and methods, the National Science Foundation should partner with mission agencies in funding such research, following the model of the successful Partner ship for Environmental Research of the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. Our conclusions and recommendations for the practice of environmental public participation flow from the available empirical evidence and are consistent with the judgments of experienced practitioners and basic social science knowledge.
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From page 241... ...
• How can decision processes be organized to ensure that all sources of relevant information, including the local knowledge of nonscientists, are gathered and appropriately considered? • How can analytic-deliberative decision processes be organized to reach closure effectively and with broad acceptance, especially when the processes involve a diversity of perspectives and interests?
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From page 242... ...
We note that two important social science methodologies, formal experiments and modeling, are notable by their near absence from the public participation literature. It will be useful to explore the utility of formal controlled experiments to contribute to understanding of public participation processes.
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From page 243... ...
We sometimes use the term agency to refer broadly to any entity or group of entities that may convene a public participation process, provide the resources for it to proceed, or take action based on its results. 2Our reading of the literature indicates that this conclusion also applies outside the United States.
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