Public Participation in Climate Policy Making: Toward Reconciling Public Preferences and Legal Frameworks

Abstract

Climate policies require public support. But if people feel excluded from decision making, this can fuel resistance to such policies. Legal frameworks, such as the Aarhus Convention, mandate extensive obligations to engage the public in decision making on local projects, such as renewable energy siting. But such frameworks often overlook the macro-level decisions that affect local projects. Public influence at a project level may be limited by such macro-level decisions. A solution could be to engage the public earlier in the decision-making chain. But is this what people want? In this Perspective, we present a survey in the Netherlands (n = 1,121) that revealed that people want to participate most in decision making on local projects-exactly where their influence is most limited due to legal constraints. We propose a cross-disciplinary research agenda for studying how to reconcile legal frameworks and public preferences for participation to reach socially acceptable climate policies. ll

A Research Agenda to Better Understand the Human Dimensions of Energy Transitions

“…In contrast, people tend to resist decisions when they feel that they have been involved too little and too late in the decision-making (Gross, 2007;Walker and Baxter, 2017;Liu et al, 2019). Yet, little is known about when and how people wish to be involved in the decision-making and under which conditions this will actually enhance public support (Perlaviciute and Squintani, 2020). We need to grasp factors influencing the effects of participative and interactive policy making, and under which conditions this leads to more democratic, substantively better (e.g., by integrating local knowledge), and more legitimate and acceptable policies and decisions (Pidgeon, 2021).…”

The Importance of Public Participation in Sustainable Solid Waste Management

“…The result shows that around 1999-2020, most research were conducted around 2012 to 2017 and mostly taken places in Asia. The analysis also shows, only few studies have discussed about the development of solid waste management (Acosta, Paul, Lao, Aguinaldo, & Valdez, 2012;Ako, 2017;Basu & Punjabi, 2019;Dhokhikah & Trihadiningrum, 2012;Fatimah et al, 2020;Permana, Towolioe, Aziz, & Ho, 2015), especially in describing the relationship between social capital and participation (Gera, 2016;Jones, Halvadakis, & Sophoulis, n.d.;Lindström, Merlo, & Östergren, 2002;Maryati et al, 2018;Pargal, Huq, & Gilligan, 1999;Raharjo et al, 2015;Tinio et al, 2019;Tsai, 2008;Wahab, 2015;Zarate, Slotnick, & Ramos, 2008), and in how they might affect the current status of Solid Waste Management in a country (Azam & Mansoor, 2006;Basu & Punjabi, 2019;Dhokhikah & Trihadiningrum, 2012;Perlaviciute & Squintani, 2020;Permana et al, 2015;Syam, 2014;Zhang et al, 2019).…”

Public Participation and Information Disclosure for Environmental Sustainability of 2022 Winter Olympics

“…Public participation plays a key role in the sense that it can foster social learning between stakeholders by identifying four components (public involvement, communications, mutual education, and negotiations) [25]. The commonly proposed benefits of public participation include its (1) normative function, namely democratizing the decision-making process, (2) substantive function, namely enabling the public to understand scientific facts and to advance decision making by bringing in their own knowledge, values, and concerns, and (3) instrumental function, namely increasing the legitimacy and social acceptability of the decision-making procedures and their outcomes [32][33][34].…”