![Page 1: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights
and Responsibilities
Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer
![Page 2: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Plot Outline
• Participation within constraints:
• regulatory approaches and public consultation
• Models of Communication:
• reflections from research on communicating climate change
• Implications for public involvement in biodiversity conservation:
• balancing ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’
![Page 3: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
A Tale of Two ParadigmsIn public participation, emphasis on rights:
• Involvement should start at the earliest possible stage in the decision-making process
• Participants should have the opportunity to shape the remit and options on the table
• The decision-making process should:
• be open to multiple perspectives• take on board the issues considered
important by participants• allow time for meaningful engagement
![Page 4: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
A Tale of Two ParadigmsIn environmental regulation:
• Regulatory decisions follow on from a series of previous decisions (EU legislation, national transposition, technical standards, policies, procedures, plans…)
• Later decisions cannot overturn earlier ones
• Regulatory decision-making should be transparent, consistent and proportionate, and respect statutory timescales
• Consultation responses must be related to ‘material considerations’
![Page 5: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Where Two Worlds Collide?
• Increasing expectation of ‘public participation’ in environmental decision-making at all levels
• Aarhus-driven modifications to Directives to provide statutory opportunities for public input, e.g. Public Participation Directive
• Resulting need to take into account views of public, while simultaneously respecting results of previous decisions, statutory timescales, technical standards, environmental protection…
![Page 6: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Research findings• Project commissioned to look at:• Legal requirements for public involvement• Best practice in reconciling involvement with
regulatory requirements
• Findings include:
• Public unfamiliar with bureaucratic procedures; this a major source of frustration
• Many comments related to issues not considered relevant to regulatory remit
• Development of information on process can help to alleviate this
![Page 7: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Working group activities
Internal working group is aiming to develop:
• Corporate principles for public involvement
• Resources to support staff running licence consultations
• Information for consultation respondents on the remit of different regimes, relationships with other processes, indications as to what responses can influence decisions…
![Page 8: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Communicating Climate Change• Aim to achieve ‘behaviour change’ by
emphasising responsibilities
• Focus on communicating actions for members of the public to undertake (‘do a little, change a lot’, etc.)
• Result is “a very messy and noisy language landscape” (ippr, 2006)
• Finding that mix of alarmism, lists of different actions, climate change denial etc. leaves people confused as to what, if anything, to do
![Page 9: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Changing BehaviourConclusions from ippr report:
“We need to work in different and more sophisticated ways, harnessing tools and concepts used by brand advertisers, to make it not dutiful or obedient to be climate-friendly, but desirable.”
“…we have to approach positive climate behaviours in the same way as marketeers approach acts of buying and selling.”
This “…amounts to treating climate-friendly everyday activity as a brand that can be sold.”
![Page 10: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Questions for the Marketing Model
• How much does it cost to win a marketing campaign?
• How long do ‘brand awareness’ and ‘brand loyalty’ last?
• How do people decide when not being told what to do?
![Page 11: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Towards an Education Model?
• Approaches in (environmental) education are based on developing capacities and understanding
• Science communicators have a fundamental role to play in achieving this
• Hypothesis 1: the best way to get people to a particular decision is to guide them through the same active decision-making process we have gone through
• Hypothesis 2: decisions reached in this way are more durable and replicable
![Page 12: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Conclusions (1)
• Both examples (regulation, climate change) show the difficulty of balancing rights and responsibilities (the aim of the Aarhus Convention)
• An emphasis on either one or the other reduces individual agency, and may ultimately prove counter-productive
• The best way to reconcile rights and responsibilities is to help people to do so for themselves
![Page 13: Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights and Responsibilities Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer](https://reader036.vdocument.in/reader036/viewer/2022083119/5a4d1ad37f8b9ab059972094/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
Conclusions (2)
• Biodiversity conservation has elements in common with both examples: regulatory approaches (e.g. designations) and the need for wider public action
• Environmental education is especially well-suited to biodiversity issues, given existing enthusiasm
• Is communicating science also best viewed as both a right and a responsibility?