Download or read book Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-11-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions. Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved. This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.
Download or read book Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-12-07 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions. Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved. This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.
Download or read book Public Participation and Better Environmental Decisions written by Frans H. J. M. Coenen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-12-12 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Participation and Better Environmental Decisions is about a specific ‘promise’ that participation holds for environmental decision-making. Many of the arguments for public participation in (inter)national environmental policy documents are functional, that is to say they see public participation as a means to an end. Sound solutions to environmental problems require participation beyond experts and political elites. Neglecting information from the public leads to legitimacy questions and potential conflicts. There is a discourse in the literature and in policy practice as to whether decision-making improves in quality as additional relevant information by the public is considered. The promise that public participation holds has to be weighed against the limitations of public participation in terms of costs and interest conflicts. The question that Public Participation and Better Environmental Decisions seeks to answer for academics, planners and civil servants in all environmental relevant policy fields is: What restricts and what enables information to hold the ‘promise’ that public participation lead to better environmental decision-making and better outcomes?
Download or read book Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advocates of public participation believe it improves environmental assessment and decision making; detractors criticize it as ineffective and inefficient. The term public participation, as used in this book, includes organized processes adopted by elected officials, government agencies, or other public- or private-sector organizations to engage the public in environmental assessment, planning, decision making, management, monitoring, and evaluation. These processes supplement traditional forms of public participation (voting, forming interest groups, demonstrating, lobbying) by directly involving the public in executive functions that, when they are conducted in government, are traditionally delegated to administrative agencies. The goal of participation is to improve the quality, legitimacy, and capacity of environmental assessments and decisions.. This book ... assesses whether, and under what conditions, public participation achieves the outcomes desired. Claims from all sides are considered and evaluated as a central point of the study, in order to provide an overall assessment of the merits and failings of participation. It also offers guidance to practitioners and identifies directions for further research.
Download or read book Rationality and the Environment written by Bo Elling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental assessment and management involve the production of scientific knowledge and its use in decision-making processes. The result is that within these essentially rational, political assessment frameworks, experts are creating and applying scientific knowledge for decision and management purposes that actually have strong ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Yet these rational political frameworks lack the tools to provide guidance on ethical and aesthetic issues that affect the wider public. This revolutionary work argues that ethical and aesthetic dimensions can only be brought into environmental politics and policies by citizens actively taking a stand on the specific matters in question. The author draws on Habermas trisection of rationality as cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive, to suggest that truly effective environmental policy needs to activate all three approaches and not favour only the rational. To achieve this objective, the author argues that public participation in environmental policy and assessment is necessary to counteract the dictatorship of technical and economic instrumentality in environmental policy - the failure to take ethical and aesthetic rationalities into account - and, more importantly, how such policy is applied on the ground to shape our natural and material world.
Download or read book Failed Promises written by David M. Konisky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-03-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic evaluation of the implementation of the federal government's environmental justice policies. In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. Congress passed a series of laws that were milestones in environmental protection, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. But by the 1990s, it was clear that environmental benefits were not evenly distributed and that poor and minority communities bore disproportionate environmental burdens. The Clinton administration put these concerns on the environmental policy agenda, most notably with a 1994 executive order that called on federal agencies to consider environmental justice issues whenever appropriate. This volume offers the first systematic, empirically based evaluation of the effectiveness of the federal government's environmental justice policies. The contributors consider three overlapping aspects of environmental justice: distributive justice, or the equitable distribution of environmental burdens and benefits; procedural justice, or the fairness of the decision-making process itself; and corrective justice, or the fairness of punishment and compensation. Focusing on the central role of the Environmental Protection Agency, they discuss such topics as facility permitting, rulemaking, participatory processes, bias in enforcement, and the role of the courts in redressing environmental injustices. Taken together, the contributions suggest that—despite recent environmental justice initiatives from the Obama administration—the federal government has largely failed to deliver on its promises of environmental justice. Contributors Dorothy M. Daley, Eileen Gauna, Elizabeth Gross, David M. Konisky, Douglas S. Noonan, Tony G. Reames, Christopher Reenock, Ronald J. Shadbegian, Paul Stretesky, Ann Wolverton
Download or read book Democracy in Practice written by Thomas C. Beierle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of the expanding role of public participation in environmental decisionmaking, there has been little systematic examination of whether it has, to date, contributed toward better environmental management. Neither have there been extensive empirical studies to examine how participation processes can be made more effective. Democracy in Practice brings together, for the first time, the collected experience of 30 years of public involvement in environmental decisionmaking. Using data from 239 cases, the authors evaluate the success of public participation and the contextual and procedural factors that lead to it. Thomas Beierle and Jerry Cayford demonstrate that public participation has not only improved environmental policy, but it has also played an important educational role and has helped resolve the conflict and mistrust that often plague environmental issues. Among the authors' findings are that intensive 'problem-solving' processes are most effective for achieving a broad set of social goals, and participant motivation and agency responsiveness are key factors for success. Democracy in Practice will be useful for a broad range of interests. For researchers, it assembles the most comprehensive data set on the practice of public participation, and presents a systematic typology and evaluation framework. For policymakers, political leaders, and citizens, it provides concrete advice about what to expect from public participation, and how it can be made more effective. Democracy in Practice concludes with a systematic guide for use by government agencies in their efforts to design successful public participation efforts.
Download or read book Decision Making for the Environment written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the growing number, complexity, and importance of environmental problems come demands to include a full range of intellectual disciplines and scholarly traditions to help define and eventually manage such problems more effectively. Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities is the result of a 2-year effort by 12 social and behavioral scientists, scholars, and practitioners. The report sets research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences as they relate to several different kinds of environmental problems.
Download or read book Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making written by Stephen P. Depoe and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2004-02-03 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the critical role of community members and other interested parties in environmental policy decision making.
Download or read book Public Participation handbook written by and published by IUCN. This book was released on 1985 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Maastricht Recommendations on Promoting Effective Public Participation in Decision making in Environmental Matters prepared under the Aarhus Convention written by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and published by United Nations. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These recommendations are based on existing good practice and are intended as a practical tool to provide helpful guidance and to improve the implementation of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention in decision-making to: a) assist Parties when designing their legal framework on public participation in environmental decision-making; b) assist public officials when designing and carrying out public participation procedures on environmental decision-making under the Convention, and c) provide an invaluable tool through which to share expertise and good practice so as to promote participation. The Recommendations may also be of value to public, NGOs and the private sector involved in environmental matters.
Download or read book Public participation in environmental decision making written by R. Parenteau and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Participation in the Governance of International Freshwater Resources written by Carl E. Bruch and published by United Nations University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bruch, a senior attorney of the Environmental Law Institute, presents work from an April 2003 symposium co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute, the United Nations University, and other institutions. Papers from the symposium identify innovative approaches in watershed management and look at political, linguistic, legal, cultural, and geogr
Download or read book Good Practice Recommendations on Public Participation in Strategic Environmental Assessment written by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and published by United Nations. This book was released on 2015-12-31 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recommendations are based on existing good practice and are intended as a practical tool to provide helpful guidance and to improve the implementation of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention in decision-making to: a) to assist Parties when designing their legal framework on public participation in environmental decision-making; b) to assist public officials on a day-to-day basis when designing and carrying out public participation procedures on environmental decision-making under the Convention, and c) to provide an invaluable tool through which to share expertise and good practice so as to promote early, timely and effective opportunities for such participation. They may also be of value to members of the public, including NGOs and the private sector.
Download or read book Town and Country Planning in the UK written by Barry Cullingworth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-16 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revised fourteenth edition reinforces this title's reputation as the bible of British planning. It provides a through explanation of planning processes including the institutions involved, tools, systems, policies and changes to land use.
Download or read book Managing the Environmental Crisis written by William Russell Mangun and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Second edition With a new foreword by Lynton Keith Caldwell In Managing the Environmental Crisis William R. Mangun and Daniel H. Henning provide a balanced and comprehensive guide to the management of complex environmental and natural resource policy issues. Taking into account new developments, trends, and issues that have arisen in recent years, the authors begin with the recognition, often overlooked, that it is not the environment that needs to be managed but human action relating to the environment. The authors review issues associated with a range of environmental policy concerns, including energy considerations, renewable and non renewable resource management, pollution control, wilderness management, and urban and regional policy. The history of these issues, recent actions pertaining to their management, difficulties associated with their continued presence, and the consequences of a failure to address these concerns are explored. Though focused on specific political issues, Mangun and Henning direct their attention to two large-scale trends--globalization and the political polarization of the environmental movement. At the level of the decision-making process, the incorporation of values--specifically addressed from multicultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives--is also discussed. International in scope, the book provides descriptions of the roles of both governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the formulations and implementation of national and global environmental policy. This thoroughly revised second edition discusses various successes in the arenas of environmental cooperation and management strategy while pointing to the new challenges that have emerged in the last decade.
Download or read book Maastricht Recommendations on Promoting Effective Public Participation in Decision making in Environmental Matters Prepared Under the Aarhus Convention written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These recommendations are based on existing good practice and are intended as a practical tool to provide helpful guidance and to improve the implementation of the provisions of the Aarhus Convention in decision-making to: a) assist Parties when designing their legal framework on public participation in environmental decision-making; b) assist public officials when designing and carrying out public participation procedures on environmental decision-making under the Convention, and c) provide an invaluable tool through which to share expertise and good practice so as to promote participation. The Recommendations may also be of value to public, NGOs and the private sector involved in environmental matters.
