Rationality and the Environment

Decision-making in Environmental Politics and Assessment

Bo Elling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136559167
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Environmental assessment and management involve the production of scientific knowledge and its use in decision-making processes. The result is that within these essentially rational, political assessment frameworks, experts are creating and applying scientific knowledge for decision and management purposes that actually have strong ethical and aesthetic dimensions. Yet these rational political frameworks lack the tools to provide guidance on ethical and aesthetic issues that affect the wider public.

This revolutionary work argues that ethical and aesthetic dimensions can only be brought into environmental politics and policies by citizens actively taking a stand on the specific matters in question. The author draws on Habermas trisection of rationality as cognitive-instrumental, moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive, to suggest that truly effective environmental policy needs to activate all three approaches and not favour only the rational. To achieve this objective, the author argues that public participation in environmental policy and assessment is necessary to counteract the dictatorship of technical and economic instrumentality in environmental policy - the failure to take ethical and aesthetic rationalities into account - and, more importantly, how such policy is applied on the ground to shape our natural and material world.

Chapter 1

Introduction

The problematic

Between 1995 and 1998 I produced two research projects that aimed to clarify the possibility of using environmental assessments during the process of political decision-making. One project¹ was to carry out a strategic environmental assessment when a spatial development plan was to be revised at county level. The new or revised regional planning guidelines were to be assessed for their environmental impact, and this assessment could be used as a basis for its implementation. The other project² was about the initiation of a strategic environmental assessment in connection with the preparation of a bill by the ministry for its presentation to the Danish Parliament and its final adoption. For both these projects my task was to participate as a concept developer and counsellor to the implementing authorities. Despite my proposals and input, the ultimate responsibility for the production of the environmental assessments remained at the county and ministerial levels.

My tasks in relation to the project on strategic environmental assessment in county planning were also to collect, analyse and evaluate the experiences gained from similar international projects. Based on these results, and on the experience from this project, I had to then produce a model of how environmental assessments could be integrated into the regional plan making process. When this model was ready, and the environmental assessment implemented, and the regional plan adopted by the county council, the project was further enlarged to incorporate interviews with all the people concerned – that is, the county planning officers, interested citizens, organizations and politicians. The aim was to collect both the experience gained in the total research period and the different perspectives of the participants with the aim of formulating proposals for improvements to the model, as the previous results of the original environmental assessment seemed unsatisfactory.

In the project concerning the use of environmental assessments in legislation, my task was to report on and evaluate the whole scheme up to the final proposals in parliament. The project was later enlarged to encompass the study of a number of ministries and their implementation of environmental assessments, a qualitative evaluation of a number of chosen examples of how the quality of the environmental assessments presented to parliament influenced the debate.

The understanding of environmental assessment that I have tried to put into practice in these two projects can be described briefly as follows:

An environmental assessment is a political process based upon accessible technical and scientific knowledge. Moreover, an important amount of knowledge and insight is to be found among the general public, in the form of values and priorities. An environmental assessment cannot, therefore, meaningfully be realized without the participation of the public in a more precisely defined form. The purpose of environmental assessment is not to weigh probable effects against each other to enable the decision-makers to arrive at a decision, but rather to bring about an open dialogue among the implementers, the affected groups and ultimate decision-makers about the propositions and results of these assessments.

This aim was formulated in such a way as to give the politico-democratic elements in the process considerable weight in the decision-making process. If an environmental assessment is not the process that leads to knowledge about the best solution, but is a process that presents different scenarios of the impact on the environment, including the premise for assessment, basic values, and so on, of those evaluations, and in so doing draws a picture of the conflicts and contradictions that exist in the protection and exploitation of the environment, then it becomes a political process in itself. A number of the more fundamental problems on which both projects were based were the following:

How can such an action be implemented in the existing political decisionmaking process – can it exist parallel to, or rather as a prototype for, the proper political decision-making process? Is there not a risk that the proper political decision-making process is drawn into the assessment process and hence renders itself superfluous? Alternatively, does the assessment process itself get involved in real political decision-making to the extent that the assessment becomes unclear or even redundant? In other words, is it possible for the two processes, environmental assessment and the political decision-making process, to exist alongside each other – the former with a number of technical evaluations based on special interests with a politically determined content, and the latter as a political process of decision-making using the former as the knowledge base? And, if so, will the total process eventually result in better protection of the environment than if there was no such process?

The proposed form of understanding is, in reality, not so different from what is already happening in a planning process or in the work of preparing a bill in the ministry. A combination of technical and scientific knowledge with political intentions is, after all, what results in political decisions. The small, but fundamental difference is the fact that in the proposed form of understanding, the knowledge interests of all the participants are incorporated into the process, and not just those who are engaged in controlling the process. Clearly this requires that the different premises, priorities and so on, used as the basis of assessment and the presentation of findings, are made visible and accessible to everybody: the planners, politicians and the public alike. Thus the decision is acknowledged as a political priority on the basis of the assessment presented, instead of being interpreted as an example of ‘the technically most efficient’ or ‘the only correct scientific solution’. It is therefore recognized as being a political and not a technocratic solution.

Taking into account these problems, the results of the projects in question were very encouraging, as an integration of environmental assessments had turned out to be fully possible and meaningful within the framework described. Yet, at the same time, they could also be described as being disappointing, as there was very limited understanding by the planners and politicians of the differences between assessment and political decision. Pushed to the limit, neither the planners nor the politicians were capable of distinguishing between a process of assessment of the environmental impact and a political process of decision-making.

An extensive description of the content and results of the projects can be found in the published research reports,³ and in shorter scientific publications.⁴ Those interested in a more detailed description are referred to this material. In the following I will restrict myself to presenting the major, crucial results.

In the integration of environmental assessment into regional land-use planning, the regional planners tried, without much success, to feed the process with information from other planners and technicians, though they forgot or failed to involve the public. However, during the inquiry into the views of the public, county planning officers and politicians revealed many relevant public viewpoints, values, priorities and so on. Furthermore, although not plainly formulated, this inquiry clearly indicated that the planners’ attempt to balance or weigh up different environmental issues was not wanted by the politicians, as they could not see how they could make use of this information. Instead, they would prefer to receive material – on environmental or public conflicts – about the various priorities.

Concerning the environmental assessment of the legislation, the ministry’s reaction revealed a number of strategic dilemmas relating to the knowledge on environmental impact and other interests in the preparation of the Bill. I define these separately as the system, the planning and the political dilemma. ‘System’ refers to the internal workings of the ministry, ‘planning’ to other long-term planning interests that have to be taken into account, and finally ‘the political dilemma’ to the many different ministerial political considerations and interests.

The strategic dilemmas exposed two important considerations:

1 The political character of environmental assessment, as opposed to its technical and scientific content, should be revealed and not concealed, as is the case in actual practice.

2 The necessity of enlarging environmental assessment so that not only the techno-scientific content, but also both the ethical and aesthetical insights and appreciation may be included.

Further examination of the ministries’ practices in development of environmental assessments showed a very low level of communication between colleagues in the various ministries, and little noticeable communication between the ministries themselves. The work of ministries is characterized by customary work patterns and existing or random knowledge about environmental conditions. The possibilities for the inclusion of other disciplines are not developed.

However, the evaluation of the quality of the selected examples showed that information about environmental impact did not render the related debate among politicians superfluous. On the contrary, it was found to improve considerations insofar as, rather than relying on platitudes, a more serious level of considerations could be adopted, in the case of a good, or at least honest, environmental assessment.

Combined with the findings from the application of environmental assessment on projects – the so-called EIA-process – these general conclusions highlighted the problems of environmental assessment by showing that their real aim had not been achieved. The data on the environmental impact reach the decision-makers only to a limited extent. This limitation concerns not only the quantitative dimension and the technical-scientific insight, but also the fact that aesthetic and ethical problems are not included, although they play a constantly growing role in relation to environmental issues. Furthermore, the inclusion of the public in assessments, which is the basic aim of environmental assessment, has only succeeded to a very limited extent. In short, this planning procedure has coalesced into a familiar pattern, which is the very thing the technique was supposed to break out of.

The situation might also be described by saying that the existing practice reflects a power struggle between production, distribution and the implementation of knowledge in environmental politics, and that the winners in this struggle have until now been the planners or administrators. They are the ones who do not provide the pertinent knowledge and furthermore do not pass on the knowledge they do possess to the political decision-makers.

The existing practice also reflects a widespread illusion in the governmental administration about environmental solutions, as something that can be technoscientifically controlled, instead of conceiving environmental issues as something that should be increasingly included in a dialogue with the public. It can rightly be postulated that no noticeable effort is being made to overcome such an illusion.

It is, of course, important to realize that a power struggle over the production, distribution and implementation of knowledge will always – and should – take place in a democracy. But it is equally important to understand that if the administration always turns out to be the winner in this struggle, techno-instrumental aspects will cause a stagnation of progress. It would probably not be too much to say that this does not lead us towards a more environmentally favourable process of development. The situation is in no way unique for Denmark: variations on the same pattern can be found all over the Western world.

It might seem paradoxical to maintain that environmental assessment as a tool is applied to a growing number of cases, for example in relation to several different types of projects and to the so-called strategic environmental assessment. This tool is still considered to be one of the most important contributions to renewal and enhancement of environmental politics since its inception in the beginning of the 1970s. It is considered a key tool for the environmental politics for the future.

Developments within the European Union (EU) confirm this. It is obvious that environmental assessment should play the leading role in the environmental politics of the future; with the adoption of the directive about assessment of the effects of certain plans and programmes on the environment from 2001,⁵ and the 1997 extended directive about environmental assessment of projects.⁶

This development is furthermore confirmed by the adoption of the so-called Aarhus Convention of 1998, where the processes of environmental assessment are used in all decisions and the planning of environmental policies in the participating countries.⁷

There are indications that the politicians, even after several years of work with EIA and strategic environmental assessment, still feel a strong need for knowledge and information about environmental conditions and consequences to keep up with the situation. A situation where environmental problems are less tangible but are of increasing importance, as they are complicated insofar as they have increasingly become more involved with society’s other problems – for example, ethical aspects can often become of greater importance than what can be technically and scientifically measured. But the situational deadlock, as I will characterize it, also indicates that these same politicians do not fully understand the inherent possibilities and potential of using environmental assessment as a tool to solve these problems.

In the Danish conference on the implementation of the Aarhus Convention in 1999,⁸ I had the honour of delivering the initial lecture. I took advantage of the opportunity to underline the following:

If politicians and not least administrators and planners fail to understand that the Convention should be used to give the public a de facto influence on the decisions taken, and thus change the intended decision-making process at all levels, then the aims of the Convention will have been negated. The process will have become manipulative and create the impression of influence rather than actually being a more democratic decision-making process.

Elling, 1999b, pp9, 18

The same warning must be given about environmental assessments. What is the use of them if the public has the clear impression that everything has been settled or decided beforehand? What purpose does it serve when the planners and administrators conspicuously consider this tool to be a means to solving their problems by giving themselves more information, but taking no account of the societal needs revealed by the use and development of the tool? How does it help that the politicians feel strongly about the increasing need for information if they are not aware that all the existing possibilities are actually being ignored? There can be no doubt that those three groups must learn to communicate with each other, besides communicating internally. The decision-making processes must be opened up to become more visible, and space must be given for participation. Three questions arise:

• Can such communication lead to more rational decisions about the environment?

• Can openness and participation counter the abuse of power?

• Can communication and information influence a situation with more complicated environmental problems and growing risks?

These are some of the more burning questions characterizing the modern debate in the social sciences. They are my points of departure for an analysis of the reasons for the obvious standstill in environmental politics. I hope to be able to create understanding and k...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Prologue
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 The Environment as a Goal
• Chapter 3 Modernity and Reflexivity
• Chapter 4 Ecological Modernization
• Chapter 5 The Environmental Politics of Modernity
• Bibliography
• Index