Participatory processes

What is public participation?

Public participation means that citizens are involved in the environmental or natural resource decision-making that has an effect on them. Public participation is also seen as part of sustainable development, and it may enhance social learning. It can be assumed that the final decisions are made with more competence, when local knowledge is included and expert knowledge is scrutinized by the public (Webler et al. 1995). Furthermore, the legitimacy of the final decision may be better, when the different stakeholders are involved in the decision making.

The phases of public participation

Each public participation case may include slightly different phases, and each phase may include one or more tasks. The general phases are

1. Defining the problem

2. Exploring options

3. Evaluating options

4. Monitoring & evaluation of the process

5. Monitoring and evaluation of the outcome

The tasks involved in the first phase are

• Identification of stakeholders
• Knowledge gathering and sharing (meaning e.g. that the DSS includes some participative GIS/KM tools for gathering local or expert knowledge and sharing it with other stakeholders)
• Formulating criteria (meaning e.g. cognitive mapping tools that can be used to clarify the goals the stakeholders have)

4. Definition of criteria (meaning e.g. that the DSS includes other than timber production related criteria or that such criteria can be included by the user) 5. Eliciting preferences (meaning e.g. that the DSS includes MCA tools)

Participatory planning case template.

The methods, models and tools

In each phase, different kinds of tools are available.

Organization

The tools used for organizing the process include, for instance,

• citizen jurys
• IT based tools
• public meetings
• working groups

Intelligence

The tools used for collecting the intelligence concerning public preferences include, for instance,

• surveys
• interviews
• cognitive mapping

Design

The tools used for designing the alternatives include, for instance,

• brainstorming
• group work
• problem structuring methods
• forest simulator and optimization tools

Choice

The tools used for selecting the best option include, for instance,

• optimization tools
• multi-criteria decision support tools
• voting methods
• bargaining methods

Monitoring

The success of public participation process

The success of the participation process may depend both on the outcome of the process and the process itself.

In several studies, lists of success criteria have been defined

List of Cases of participatory planning in forestry

References

Webler, T., Kastenholz, H. & Renn, O. 1995. Public participation in impact assessment: a social learning perspective. Environmental Impact assessment Review 15:443-463.