Public Participation: The Art of Balancing Rights

and Responsibilities

Caspian Richards, Senior Policy Officer

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’

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

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’

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…

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

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…

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

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.”

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?

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

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

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?