Legitimate planning processes or informed decisions? Exploring public officials' rationales for participation in regional green infrastructure planning in Estonia

Abstract

Participation can be grounded in democratic ideals (normative rationale), reasons for producing new knowledge (substantive rationale), and arguments for increasing the legitimacy of decision making (instrumental rationale). In practice, rationales for participation often determine the goal of involvement ("why?"), the subjects ("who?") and objects of inclusion ("what?"), and whole design of decision making ("how?"). This study explores rationales prevalent within the planning of the Estonian ecological network concept-green network. This research relies on a qualitative synthesis of 10 cases of participatory processes at the regional level. A struggle for balance between the substantive and instrumental rationales is documented. This study finds that participatory processes often stalled due to a mismatch between the rationale endorsed by public officials and the expectation towards participation held by the stakeholders.Such contradictions could be addressed if ecological network planning practices would have considered not only "whom" to invite and involve but also "what" to include.

Environmental governance in an increasingly complex world: Reflections on transdisciplinary collaborations for knowledge coproduction and learning

“…How participatory processes are understood and implemented across different contexts, and their potential to foster learning and facilitate coproduction, are still open questions. Suškevičs, (), recounts the challenges associated with applying participatory approaches in relation to ecological network planning practices, where she finds a mismatch between the rationale endorsed by public officials and the stakeholders' expectations regarding participation. In a study of green infrastructure planning in Estonia, Suškevičs observes that substantial learning space was left unused, as more attention was paid to who should be invited to participate than to what topics the process should cover.…”

Monitoring Green Infrastructure for Natural Water Retention Using Copernicus Global Land Products

“…Nowadays, supporting the development of nature-based measures, such as GIs or, more specifically, NWRMs, is very appreciated by policy makers since it contributes simultaneously to the achievement of several policy goals from water-related EU directives and climate change policies [10,12,13]. However, the lack of a well-grounded framework that allows the assessment of the multiple benefits of green infrastructures, including the improvement of the resilience of ecosystems, the achievement of policy goals, and cost-effectiveness, makes its implementation not yet truly operational [25,26].…”

¿Ciencia de resistencia? Monitoreos ambientales participativos en contextos de conflicto ambiental. Reflexiones desde una mirada decolonial.

“…A su vez, los monitoreos ambientales comunitarios pueden promover la producción de conocimiento como un proceso dinámico y dialéctico, que circula y es producto de relaciones y redes de interacción. A u n q u e h a y d i f e r e n t e s e j e m p l o s d e experiencias de monitoreos ambientales participativos en contextos regionales diversos (Staddon 2014, Staddon et al 2015, Danielsen et al 2009, éstas se centran principalmente en cuestiones relativas a la conservación de la naturaleza y los recursos naturales, y los planes de desarrollo local participativo. En contextos de conflicto ambiental extractivo, y en concreto en la región de América Latina, no hay una tradición extensa de desarrollo de este tipo de iniciativas como forma de resistencia.…”

“…Ahondando en esos dilemas, además de la propia validez en instancias oficiales, también deberíamos preguntarnos ¿cómo se incorporan y reconocen las prácticas locales de m o n i t o r e o y l o s c o n o c i m i e n t o s y epistemologías locales? (Staddon et al, 2014;Santos y Meneses, 2014). Estas preguntas se enmarcan a nivel teórico en el campo de la ecología política y los estudios decoloniales, y se relacionan con cuestiones como el poder, la legitimidad o la construcción del conocimiento.…”