Environmental Policy & the Public

It has grown commonplace to assert that the public should be engaged in discussions concerning environmental policy. It is usually taken for granted that `the public' in this case includes everyone apart from policymakers, or everyone except experts (Owens, 2005). However, as delineating the public into `expert' and ‘lay’ populations can be deceptive, Blake (1999) advocates that ‘the `public' is best defined in terms of alienation from dominant political or knowledge regimes in a particular context’. Dewey, on the other hand, has noted that the existence of a public is by no means self-evident. Publics only form themselves around particular problems if the conditions are beneficial (Marres, 2007).

The governance of environmental problems has evolved to include a wider range of publics and given way to more open and deliberative policy making forums (Bulkeley and Mol, 2003) over the past two decades. We must move beyond conventional political processes to deal with the unique nature of emerging environmental problems and include more deliberative and inclusive forms of democracy. However, there is no guarantee that more democratic processes lead to sustainable, green policies. While public deliberation is an important tool, it must be wielded carefully and in the correct context.

It is important to note that participation includes not just representing people, but also the ideas and values they carry. Critically, as Owens (2001) points out, we must shift our focus from the degree of participation to the crucial issues of ‘what kind of participation, by whom, and to which purposes’ (Owens 2005). The current discourse on environmental politics is plagued by the fact that it has been alienated from the cultural dimension of environmental politics. Given that environmental discourse emerged in large part as a cultural critique of modern society, this is more than a little ironic(Guha et al., 1997). How we comprehend and frame environmental problems is inextricably connected to the methods by which we choose to tackle them (Jasanoff, 1998). Hence, it is important to note the particularity of the way societies relate to the natural environment in environmental politics and to study particular approaches to environmental policy (Jasanoff and Martello, 2004).

Young ( 2000) points out that exclusions produced by the current model for critical deliberation fails to recognize cultural specificity and other hegemonic baggage in the assumption of disengaged reason as the basis of the deliberative process’ in the public domain. Different voices and styles of communication must be recognized, as an increasingly diverse set of actors is being engaged in debate, with new coalitions and alliances being built, which transcend conventional boundaries.