Should public managers and environmental planners engage the public when their knowledge is limited?

We were asked to consider whether public managers and environmental planners should engage the public when their knowledge is limited about science of an environmental issue. Should we? We were ask, if the answer is yes, how would we do this. And if the answer is not, what would the consequences be of not including them.

My response is stated below:

The Council for Environmental Quality (CEQ) in October 2007 developed a “Collaboration in NEPA: A handbook for NEPA practitioners”, guide for environmental planners and all those involved in actively performing NEPA, that states they should emphasize having meaningful public input and involvement in the process of evaluating the environmental impacts of proposed federal actions (CEQ, 2007). Federal agencies can benefit by working collaboratively with others in the NEPA process, such as the state and local long range transportation and land use planning processes, for they can provide additional opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration requires hard work, commitment, agency leadership, different kinds of skills and resources, and a new way of approaching environmental review processes. Collaboration must be strengthened by educating the public, and through this dissemination of information, arrive to consensus building and support for the project.

Collaboration, and its internal process of educating the public and other stakeholders, must involve the following steps:

Education should develop mechanisms for dissemination of relevant information. Some mechanisms proven successful are presentations, seminars, and publication of expertise, including scientific and technical expertise, and knowledge of a local resource. These may create “a collaborative body that can reach a more informed agreement and advise decision-makers accordingly. Similarly, the diversity of perspectives, transparency and openness of collaborative processes tend to encourage creative thinking, which can also lead to more informed decisions (A Handbook for NEPA Practitioners, pg. 5)”. Holding a public “state of the science” workshop(s) where experts discuss available information — what is known, not known, what can be studied easily or not, what assumptions rest within certain analysis, and what uncertainties exist (A Handbook for NEPA Practitioners, pg. 22) will certainly educate and create collaboration.

Education should also define and distribute, through all agency participants in the pre-scoping, a plan of work to be performed, and it must be achieved through a fairer process. This implies inviting those of particular or important interests, particularly those from traditionally disadvantaged or under-represented communities. All will (if the plan is implemented fully) be invited to participate in a process (A Handbook for NEPA Practitioners, pg. 6).

The education process results in a document that records the sharing of ideas, opinions, and sometimes resources; it can also enhance integration and coordination among jurisdictions and the public. The process must allow for the integration, coordination, and streamlining of multiple agency and public reviews and analyses associated with different legal and permitting requirements and serve to reduce delays and make time lines more predictable. This documentation must be public, and must include experts from cooperating agencies, including tribes and local municipalities, to jointly undertake the analysis, thus bringing in additional expertise as well as increasing opportunities for agreement on the project (A Handbook for NEPA Practitioners, pg. 22).

Education should be for all that are working within the NEPA, and it should be stated to them in the early beginning, that in the analysis there are going to be times were conflicts are going to arise; however by educating all, public and agency stakeholders, these will surface and will be resolve thus preventing conflict that stone-wall the process.

Education must also define the methodology to be used for the creation of alternatives to consider, their evaluation criteria, and how input is to be heard. These must be comments received by the decision makers before the analysis of whether or not to proceed in the implementation of a decision. If stakeholders feel vested in a decision, they will have a stake in its implementation. They can also bring the knowledge they gained during the collaborative process to bear on decisions relating to monitoring, enforcement, and other issues (A Handbook for NEPA Practitioners, pg. 6). Collaborating with other agencies or parties to determine the appropriate methodologies for scientific analysis should also be a step within the education process. For example, all parties could agree on the geographic and temporal boundaries to be used in a cumulative impact analysis (A Handbook for NEPA Practitioners, pg. 22).

All these education or collaboration steps are how I would include public that might not be as knowledgeable as the experts in a subject matter. However if this public is not included, litigation cost will occur (time and capital costs), and there exclusion may result in a project that develops with areas of uncertainty, a project with non-inclusive and deliberative find fact finding, as well as foster less formation of informal and formal partnerships, thus incrementing less public confidence in government. Finally, the implementation might not find support, thus delaying any action, or not the action not be constructed at all.


References:

http://ceq.hss.doe.gov/ntf/Collaboration_in_NEPA_Oct_2007.pdf

week 4 lecture.pdf