5th Global Conference
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Monday 3rd July - Thursday 6th
July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 3: Citizens, Communities and Participation
Chair: Sarah Wilks
Environmental Justice: Bridging the Gap Between Experts
and Laymen
Kim
Loyens
Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Belgium
Sustainable Development deals with highly technological
issues (genetic manipulation, brain science, environmental protection).
The decision making process therefore tends to be very complex. Especially
the involvement of different stakeholders, such as experts, public organizations
and unorganized citizens, makes the task for policy makers extremely
difficult.
The importance of lay knowledge in technological and
complex policy domains is often underestimated.
Opponents of citizen participation use arguments related to NIMBY (Not
In My Backyard), lack of interest and knowledge deficiencies. Nevertheless,
obtaining public support for policy decisions in the domain of Sustainable
Development is essential.
In this paper we examine if and how integration
of expert and lay knowledge is possible in complex policy issues
and how we can reduce the gap between experts, policy makers and citizens.
The main focus will be on the integration of expert and lay knowledge
in design and policy making processes. We first analyse the conditions
for successful citizen involvement in policy-making, distinguishing
between participants in lay and in professional roles.
We will discuss some specific techniques and
international initiatives for citizen participation in the domain of
Sustainable Development. We then focus on three best practices of citizen
(lay), expert, and organisational participation in highly technological
or complex issues. In Belgium the King Baudouin Foundation is specialised
in dialogue with citizens and experts about Brain Science (p.e. ‘Meeting
of Minds’) and Food Safety.
In the Netherlands we examine the policy programme ‘Policy with
Citizens’ of the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning
and the Environment.
The third case is the Danish Board of Technology that is specialised
in active citizenship in technological issues.
Knowledge Production and Citizen's Participation
in the Implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive in Finland.
Timo
Peuhkuri
Department of Sociology, University of Turku, Finland
Since the 1970s
water protection in Finland has been based on national programmes setting
targets for the hydrological and chemical condition of waters. Lately
the policies have also increasingly emphasized the protection of whole
ecosystems. However, the recent EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) entails
a concrete step towards an ecological approach. The central concept of
the WFD is ‘ecological status’, the
reference value being the natural, untouched state of water bodies. The
core of the WFD is a classification system of waters based on biological
indicators. However, information of human impacts on waters and effectiveness
and costs of protection measures is also needed in support of action
plans. Further, the directive emphasises participation as a prerequisite
for successful implementation. The WFD obviously illustrates the contradictory
tendencies of environmental policies: the top-down model, including universal
goals based on science, versus the emphasis on local empowerment by means
of citizen participation.
Policy
contradictions and knowledge related uncertainties result in challenges
for the implementation of the directive. First, the use of knowledge
implies choices that cannot be grounded solely on biological knowledge.
Moreover, the weighing between socio-economic and environmental values
inevitably results in social negotiation processes.
This discourse analytic
case study addresses the role of different types of knowledge in the
implementation of the WFD in Finland. The main questions are:
1) How is
the significance of knowledge negotiated when the natural scientific
and economic evaluations imply conflicting policy recommendations?
2)
How are the concepts and goals of the WFD discursively framed at the
national, regional and local contexts? What is the role of differing
views (scientific, administrative, and civic) in this framing?
3) How,
and under what conditions, can lay knowledge become integrated and balanced
with expert knowledge in policy processes?
Promoting Environmental Citizenship? A Critique of
the Moral Persuasiveness of Direct Action Environmental Protest
Bindi
Daly
Imperial College, London
During the 1990s Britain witnessed a rapid growth
in what has been termed ‘direct
action’ environmental protest. This paper focuses on direct
action campaigns against both housing developments and road building
where ‘protest
camps’ have been set up at the site of the proposed development,
and is based on ethnographic data and interviews with activists and local
campaigners from four camps in south east England undertaken in 1999
and 2000. At each site, members from the local community had initiated
campaigns by forming action groups and engaging with local decision-making
processes. When these efforts appeared unsuccessful, activists
(from both within and outside the community) set up a protest camp to
defend physically the site of the proposed development.
While the local
campaigning groups were largely focused on halting the particular development
in question, protest camp activists were found to have a more complex
set of aims. The majority of activists interviewed
were also attempting to influence the local community by demonstrating
and promoting alternative relationships between both other human beings
and with nature. In particular, activists argued that they could
strengthen civil society by encouraging individuals to come together and
take direct responsibility for their local environment. The paper
examines their attempts to do this both in terms of their moral arguments
and discourses and, importantly, their actions.
In so doing, this paper
engages with current debate between environmental ethics scholars as to
why the majority of their ideas and arguments appear to lack purchase with
environmentalists and policy-makers. Several
contributors to the debate have suggested that if environmental ethicists
were to reflect more on the issues and problems that environmental campaigners
actually face, and use activists’ ideas and philosophies as a starting
point for study, environmentalists may find environmental ethics more relevant. By
considering and critiquing the development of the activists’ moral
frameworks and arguments within particular socio-environmental contexts,
the study also contributes to calls from environmental sociologists to
consider nature’s active participation in the construction of our
ideas about the world.