Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making (2008) / Chapter Skim
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4 Public Participation Practice: Management Practices
4 Public Participation Practice: Management Practices
Pages 95-110
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From page 95... ...
The evidence discussed in this chapter supports generic principles of program management that apply to a broad range of programs managed by government agencies and other organizations and specifically to public participation programs. Many of the principles stated in these three chapters strongly echo those offered in other studies (e.g., Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management, 1997a; Office of Management and Budget and President's Council on Environmental Quality, 2005)
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From page 96... ...
Basic principles of program management apply to environmental public participation. When government agencies engage in public participation processes with clarity of purpose, commitment, adequate resources, appropriate timing, an implementation focus, and a commitment to learning, they increase the likelihood of good results.
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From page 97... ...
Forest Service decisions beginning in 1960 found strong evidence supporting the importance of focused scope and realistic objectives. Some of these studies highlighted the importance of clear purpose, goals, and objectives (Schuett, Selin, and Carr, 2001)
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From page 98... ...
. Public participation processes can be caught in the middle, reducing the usefulness of and trust in them.
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From page 99... ...
In our judgment, clarity about such real constraints is preferable in the long run to a lack of clarity that allows participants to become engaged in a process they may later conclude was organized under false pretenses. AGENCY COMMITMENT 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.
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From page 100... ...
Changes may be interpreted as signals from the agency that the process is not important in its decision making: this may lead participants to opt out and seek alternative mechanisms for being heard in the political process, which results in less careful and thorough consideration of the issues. A series of research studies suggests that the DOD advisory boards were less successful than similar ones convened by DOE because DOD failed to convey the importance of public participation (Branch and Bradbury, 2006)
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From page 101... ...
The difficulty of conducting a process without adequate resources is obvious, and perhaps for this reason it has not been the subject of much empirical research. However, the need for adequate funding and other resources for achieving goals of a participatory process is among the most frequently mentioned lessons from practitioners' experience (e.g., Creighton, 1999; Leach and Pelkey, 2001; U.S.
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From page 102... ...
. A policy in the Forest Service to prevent conflicts of interest among agency personnel by rotating them between forests had the unexpected consequence of placing stress on long-range participation processes (Clarke and McCool, 1985)
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From page 103... ...
TIMELINESS 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. That is, participatory processes need to be designed so that closure is achievable and outcomes are available to decision makers in a timely manner.
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From page 104... ...
Ashford and Rest (1999) , who studied a series of relatively successful public participation processes, reported that this success occurred even though the public became involved fairly late in the process.
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From page 105... ...
Especially for public participation processes intended to inform decisions, it is important for implementation to be part of the purview. Many case studies have noted the importance of considering implementation issues in defining the scope of a participatory process.
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From page 106... ...
For example, before the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection conducted a trial release of a genetically modified rabies vaccine, it interviewed key opinion leaders to develop participatory processes that met local needs, and it modified its
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From page 107... ...
Several useful efforts have been made to develop evaluation measures for environmental public participation processes (e.g., Lauber and Knuth, 1999; Rowe and Frewer, 2000, 2004)
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From page 108... ...
. In sum, accumulated experience and research on program management support the conclusion that successful practice is more likely to be found in agencies that develop a culture and set of procedures that allow them to learn not only from past experience as organized in the research literature and practitioners' knowledge, but also from recent and ongoing experience in their own agencies and in other organizations convening public participation in similar contexts.
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From page 109... ...
Difficulties can arise from a variety of factors, including internal differences of purpose within the responsible agency, shortages of money or skilled personnel, timing of participation, and various other contestable factors outside the agency. When such difficulties exist, success depends on how well the process is organized to avoid or overcome the problems they present.
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