Mikko Pohjola

Openness in participation, assessment, and policy making upon issues of environment and environmental health: a review of literature and recent project results

Issues of environment and environmental health involve multiple interests regarding e.g. political, societal, economical, and public concerns represented by different kinds of organizations and individuals. Not surprisingly, stakeholder and public participation has become a major issue in environmental and environmental health policy and assessment. The need for participation has been discussed and reasoned by many, including environmental legislators around the world. In principle, participation is generally considered as desirable and the focus of most scholars and practitioners is on carrying out participation, and making participation more effective. In practice also doubts regarding the effectiveness and importance of participation exist among policy makers, assessors, and public, leading even to undermining participatory practices in policy making and assessment.There are many possible purposes for participation, and different possible models of interaction between assessment and policy. A solid conceptual understanding of the interrelations between participation, assessment, and policy making is necessary in order to design and implement effective participatory practices. In this paper we ask, do current common conceptions of assessment, policy making and participation provide a sufficient framework for achieving effective participation? This question is addresses by reviewing the range of approaches to participation in assessment and policy making upon issues of environment and environmental health and some related insights from recent research projects, INTARESE and BENERIS.Openness, considered e.g. in terms of a) scope of participation, b) access to information, c) scope of contribution, d) timing of openness, and e) impact of contribution, provides a new perspective to the relationships between participation, assessment and policy making. Participation, assessment, and policy making form an inherently intertwined complex with interrelated objectives and outcomes. Based on experiences from implementing openness, we suggest complete openness as the new default, deviation from which should be explicitly argued, in assessment and policy making upon issues of environment and environmental health. Openness does not undermine the existing participatory models and techniques, but provides conceptual means for their more effective application, and opens up avenues for developing new kinds of effective participatory practices that aim for societal development through collaborative creation of knowledge.

Evaluating effectiveness of open assessments on alternative biofuel sources.

Abstract Biofuels have raised controversy regarding their environmental, social, and economic sustainability. The complexity of biofuel decisions and investments by both industry and society requires integration of scientific knowledge, public information, and values from a diversity of sources. Environmental assessments can identify multiple impacts of different options. Open and collaborative knowledge creation can support decisions in two ways: by building trust and credibility and by developing more robust understanding of key issues. Open assessment is a decision-support method that allows widespread participation in a transparent and freely accessible process. In this article, we evaluate two open assessment case studies concerning biodiesel production. The evaluation compiles the participants’ views regarding the potential of the assessment process to influence decisions in terms of quality of content, applicability, efficiency, and openness. According to the evaluation, openness can be feasibly implemented and is much appreciated by participants. More experience using broad and active participation is needed for further development of methods and tools. However, the currently common practices of closed and disengaged processes limit decision making. In addition, suitable tools and practices, as well as the inclusion of participants with appropriate skills, are needed to facilitate open collaboration.

Perspectives to performance of environment and health assessments and models--from outputs to outcomes?

The calls for knowledge-based policy and policy-relevant research invoke a need to evaluate and manage environment and health assessments and models according to their societal outcomes. This review explores how well the existing approaches to assessment and model performance serve this need. The perspectives to assessment and model performance in the scientific literature can be called: (1) quality assurance/control, (2) uncertainty analysis, (3) technical assessment of models, (4) effectiveness and (5) other perspectives, according to what is primarily seen to constitute the goodness of assessments and models. The categorization is not strict and methods, tools and frameworks in different perspectives may overlap. However, altogether it seems that most approaches to assessment and model performance are relatively narrow in their scope. The focus in most approaches is on the outputs and making of assessments and models. Practical application of the outputs and the consequential outcomes are often left unaddressed. It appears that more comprehensive approaches that combine the essential characteristics of different perspectives are needed. This necessitates a better account of the mechanisms of collective knowledge creation and the relations between knowledge and practical action. Some new approaches to assessment, modeling and their evaluation and management span the chain from knowledge creation to societal outcomes, but the complexity of evaluating societal outcomes remains a challenge.