Public Participation in Watershed Management Planning: Views on Process from People in the Field

Watershed planning is an important focus of environmental protection efforts in many states. Still, how to involve the public in watershed planning remains controversial. This paper reports on research that used Q methodology to study how experienced watershed management planners and activists perceive the proper way to involve the public in decision-making. Four perspectives about how best to involve the public in watershed planning emerged. One emphasizes that a good process is credible and legitimate and that it maintains popular acceptance for outcomes. A second sees a good process as one that produces technically competent outcomes. A third focuses on the fairness of the process. A fourth perspective pays attention to educating people and promoting constructive discourse. Differences among these views suggest an important challenge for those responsible for designing and carrying out public participation processes. Conflicts may emerge about process designs because people disagree about what is appropriate in specific contexts.

[1]  T. Lauber,et al.  FAIRNESS IN MOOSE MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING : THE CITIZENS' PERSPECTIVE , 1997 .

[2]  Robin Gregory,et al.  Democratizing Risk Management: Successful Public Involvement in Local Water Management Decisions , 1999 .

[3]  Martin Schweitzer,et al.  Measuring the success of public participation on environmental restoration and waste management activities in the U.S. Department of Energy , 1998 .

[4]  J. Dryzek.  Democracy In Capitalist Times , 1996 .

[5]  Michael S. Lewis-Beck,et al.  New Tools for Social Scientists. , 1987 .

[6]  Daniel J. Fiorino.  Citizen Participation and Environmental Risk: A Survey of Institutional Mechanisms , 1990 .

[7]  M. Aldenderfer,et al.  Cluster Analysis. Sage University Paper Series On Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences 07-044 , 1984 .

[8]  Doris Zumpe,et al.  The Study of Behavior , 2001 .

[9]  Peter M. Chapman.  New Strategies for America's Watersheds. National Research Council (1999). National Academy Press, Washington, DC. , 2000 .

[10]  Linda Kalof.  Understanding the Social Construction of Environmental Concern , 2003 .

[11]  J. Thibaut,et al.  Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis , 1976 .

[12]  H. Fineberg,et al.  Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society , 1996 .

[13]  John T. Woolley,et al.  Survey Methodologies for the Study of Ecosystem Restoration and Management: The Importance of Q- Methodology , 1999 .

[14]  John Forester,et al.  Critical theory, public policy, and planning practice , 1993 .

[15]  J. Creighton,et al.  Public Involvement Techniques: A Reader of Ten Years Experience at the Institute for Water Resource , 1983 .

[16]  C. Raffensperger.  Guess Who's Coming For Dinner: The Scientist and the Public Making Good Environmental Decisions , 1998 .

[17]  Robert Rich,et al.  The shaping of collective values through deliberative democracy: An empirical study from New York's North Country , 1999 .

[18]  T. Webler,et al.  Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation , 2000 .

[19]  Seth Tuler,et al.  Voices from the Forest: What Participants Expect of a Public Participation Process , 1999 .

[20]  Walter M. Shaub.  Perspectives on biodiversity: Christopher S. Potter, Joel I. Cohen and Dianne Janczewski (Editors). American Association for the Advancement of Science Press, Washington, DC, 1993 , 1994 .

[21]  Thomas Dietz,et al.  Who Should Deliberate When , 1998 .

[22]  Frank N. Laird,et al.  Participatory Analysis, Democracy, and Technological Decision Making , 1993 .

[23]  T. Webler,et al.  Fairness and competence in citizen participation : evaluating models for environmental discourse , 1995 .

[24]  J. Habermas.  Theory of Communicative Action , 1981 .

[25]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  Risk communication: Towards a rational discourse with the public , 1992 .

[26]  Seth Tuler,et al.  Integrating Technical Analysis With Deliberation in Regional Watershed Management Planning: Applying the National Research Council Approach , 1999 .

[27]  R. Kramer,et al.  Trust in Organizations: Frontiers of Theory and Research , 1995 .

[28]  Dennis F. Thompson,et al.  Democracy and Disagreement , 1996 .

[29]  H. Addams,et al.  Social Discourse and Environmental Policy , 2000 .

[30]  J. A. Bradbury,et al.  An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Local Site-Specific Advisory Boards for US Department of Energy Environmental Restoration Programs , 1999 .

[31]  George H. Stankey,et al.  Monitoring and evaluating citizen-agency interactions: a framework developed for adaptive management. , 1999 .

[32]  J. Dryzek.  The Politics of the Earth , 2021 .

[33]  Thomas Dietz,et al.  Policy Forum Science, values, and biodiversity , 1998 .

[34]  H. Zeisel,et al.  Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis , 1978 .

[35]  Maureen H. McDonough,et al.  Beyond public participation: Fairness in natural resource decision making , 2001 .

[36]  T. Satterfield.  Pawns, Victims, or Heroes: The Negotiation of Stigma and the Plight of Oregon's Loggers , 1996 .

[37]  Thomas Dietz.  Theory and Method in Social Impact Assessment , 1987 .

[38]  G. Rowe,et al.  Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation , 2000 .

[39]  R. Kasperson.  Six propositions on public participation and their relevance for risk communication. , 1986, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[40]  Thomas Webler,et al.  “Right” Discourse in Citizen Participation: An Evaluative Yardstick , 1995 .

[41]  Division on Earth.  Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process , 1983 .

[42]  D. Roush.  Making collaboration work : lessons from innovation in natural resource management , 2002 .

[43]  L. Cordingley,et al.  Q methodology. , 1997, Nurse Researcher.

[44]  Judith E. Innes,et al.  Information in Communicative Planning , 1998 .

[45]  S. Daniels,et al.  Collaborative learning: Improving public deliberation in ecosystem-based management , 1996 .

[46]  Kristen Purcell,et al.  Public Participation and the Environment: Do We Know What Works? , 1999 .

[47]  Thomas Webler.  Organizing Public Participation: A Critical Review of Three Handbooks , 1997 .

[48]  J. Brockner.  Understanding the interaction between procedural and distributive justice: The role of trust. , 1996 .

[49]  George E. Apostolakis,et al.  Deliberation: Integrating Analytical Results into Environmental Decisions Involving Multiple Stakeholders , 1998 .

[50]  W. Gamson,et al.  Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach , 1989, American Journal of Sociology.

[51]  P. Stern.  Understanding Understanding Risk and Moving Forward , 1998 .

[52]  T. Tyler,et al.  The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice , 1988 .

[53]  T. Webler,et al.  What Is a Good Public Participation Process? Five Perspectives from the Public , 2001, Environmental management.

[54]  Ortwin Renn,et al.  Procedural and Substantive Fairness in Landfill Siting: A Swiss Case Study , 1996 .