CONTENTS

PUPLIC PARTICIPATION
Page 1

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND PARTICIPATORY PROCESSES
Page 2

WHAT IS PUBLIC PARTICIPATION?
Page 6

DIFFERENT WAYS
TO INVOLVE THE PUBLIC
Page 7

ROUND TABLES IN CANADA
Page 9

USING ROUND TABLES IN THE TRANSPORTATION SECTOR IN POLAND
Page 10

URBAN GREENING. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN BANGKOK
Page 13

ENLISTING THE PUBLIC TO CLEAN UP CITIES
Page 15

EMPOWERMENT AND PUPLIC PARTICIPATION
Page17

ICSC'S ROLE AS A BROKER
Page 20

ICSC'S CANADIAN TEAM-
PUPLIC PARTICIPATION AND MULTI-PARTY PROCESSES
Page 21

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Relationship to Decision-Making
In 1969 Shari Arnstein published a ladder of citizen participation in the Journal of the American Institute of Planners (July: 216 - 224). Arnstein's ladder, as it has become known, illustrates the degrees of empowerment that citizens may obtain. Keeping in mind that Arnstein was arguing for direct public involvement in decisions, specifically at the local neighborhood level, she was very critical of public agency efforts to manipulate or educate the public towards the agency's view of the "right" decision. She saw the distribution of information as an important step towards participation, but did not see the offering of comments through "consultation" at public meetings as being anything more than tokenism. Arnstein believed that public participation only truly began when citizens became partners in the decision-making process, and that it improved with public authorities actually delegating decision-making power to citizens, and culminated with citizens taking complete control of the decision-making process.
Most governments have yet to embrace Arnstein's views on shared decision-making or delegated authority, retaining decision-making for elected officials. Yet, public participation has become a requirement in virtually every country or political jurisdiction that has established laws or administrative requirements for environmental impact assessment. This is particularly the case in Canada and the United States.

For both public agencies and private corporations, determining the appropriate level of public participation remains a challenge. John Clayton Thomas has called this the “puzzle of public participation”; when it has been determined that the public should be involved, "how should that involvement be invited and engaged?" As a professor of public administration and a seasoned bureaucrat, Thomas knows well that there is no simple guide to this complicated puzzle. Determining the appropriate mix of involvement techniques from the practitioner's tool kit, selecting the participants and determining how much weight to give each person's comments, can be among the most challenging and critical decisions an agency can make.

Thomas proposes a contingency model for solving the puzzle. He argues that knowing when to do more, or less, public involvement is the key to success. Simply put, Thomas's model has multiple options for making a decision, moving from the autocratic, without public involvement, to sharing the problem with the public and finding a solution. The optimal choice is determined by the degree to which public acceptance is necessary for implementation and unlikely without involvement.

In Canada, the federal government has used a model developed at the Niagara Institute for much of its public involvement in the environmental and resource sectors for almost two decades. In 1984, a process of public involvement was developed by facilitators at the Niagara Institute to address multi-stakeholder involvement for Environment Canada.

In this model, public involvement can be initiated by either the government or the public, but the key factor is that, "the decision to consult must be motivated by a genuine desire to obtain input and a sincere commitment to objectively consider the views received." Leslie Whitby, who led the public involvement process in 1990 when the Canadian government developed its national environmental strategy The Green Plan, believes that public participation, and the Niagara process in particular, has played a fundamental role in changing the nature of environmental decision-making in Canada.

Canadian sociologist Desmond Connor argues that in the 1960s public participation was typified by confrontations between resource companies and environmentalists. Pinpointing his own start in the practice with a 1972 article in Community Planning Review that set out to define public participation, he says that "early reliance on formal hearings and public meetings at the end of a planning process led to a wider range of interactive techniques used earlier in the planning and decision-making sequence. “In addition to the common techniques of public participation such as public meetings and advisory committees, "consensus-building, mediation and conflict resolution approaches are now used in public participation processes.”

Canada's National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) believes that it is only through consensus-based processes that the cooperative relationships and innovative solutions could be developed which will lead to the achievement of sustainability. With regard to sustainability, NRTEE defines a consensus process as "one in which all those who have a stake in the outcome aim to reach agreement on actions and outcomes that resolve or advance issues related to environmental, social and economic sustainability." Consensus processes share many characteristics with other citizen and public participation processes. "The essential difference is that these [other] processes are intended to advise decision makers providing them with a diversity of opinions and advice. In contrast, consensus processes are designed to find the common ground and a mutually acceptable decision that can be implemented or recommended for implementation."<sup>2


2</sup> R. Cormick, A. Dale, P. Emond, G. Sigurdson, B Stuart, Building Consensus for a Sustainable Future: Putting Principles into Practise 1996