Consultation as Science Communication: Local Air Quality Management

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Consultation as Science Communication Local Air
Quality Management
PSG 3 18 Oct 2006
Dr Paul Dorfman Faculty of Applied
Sciences University of the West of England,
Bristol, U.K.
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Whats the problem with quantitative risk
assessment?

• experimentation, falsification, verification,
  consistency, predictability
• empirical reductive-deductive testing of
  hypothesis
• indirect estimation through extrapolation from
  analogous circumstances

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• empirical observation supplemented by controlled
  experiments
• emphasises statistical probabilistic risk
  estimation
• ensemble analysis and probabilistic
  summariescharacterised by cautious empiricism

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however, precise determination can be difficult

• Sheer range of potential health effects
• Complexity of the processes under investigation
• Difficulties from information uncertainty
• Spatial and temporal diffusion of potential
  health effects
• Dynamic nature and variability of human and
  environmental systems
• Diagnostic variability of cause-effect
  relationships

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and there are policy problems

• Wide range of conflicting value judgements from
  many stakeholders
• Decision process should be transparent,
  inclusive, build public confidence
• Modelling and analytic methods which support
  decisions need to deal with inherent complexity
  and uncertainty AND have explanatory power for
  a wide audience

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the corollary to this is analysis is the
co-construction of risk knowledge

• broadens the environmental decision-making
  community to incorporate a wider range of
  expertise
• Reflexive modernity (Beck), citizen science
  (Irwin), civic discovery (Moore)

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the cultural critique of scientific risk
assessment

• despite congestion, provides greater
• democratic legitimacy (accountability,
  transparency)
• Public take-up
• Improved efficiency of environmental
  decision-making processes in the long-term

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backed by EU legislation

• EU Directive on Public Participation in
  Environmental Plans and Programmes, 2003
• Public Participation Provisions of the Aarhus
  Convention

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backed by UK government

• the more effectively communities are engaged in
  shaping services, the more likely it is that
  quality will be delivered. Indeed, reform and
  modernisation of public services will be not
  accepted as legitimate unless it is based on
  citizens support ODPM/ HO 2005

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LAQM consultation theory so far

• Better integration between different policy areas
• Better understanding of local needs, concerns and
  priorities
• Local ownership of decisions and proposed
  solutions
• Improved decisions and better use of resources
• Active Citizenship

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initial case study findings

• LAQM consultation seen as a good thing by LAs
• LAs perceive that LAQM information provision is
  trusted by communities not a trust problem
• LAs are trying their best to engage under
  difficult circumstances

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however

• LAs are concerned that non-experts have
  difficulties in engaging with complex science
  the public knowledge deficit model
• LAs struggling to elicit responses from
  consultation exercises response rates can be
  poor

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One explanation could be..

• LAs tend to feel more at ease with expert
  statutory consultees than non-statutory
  consultees.
• Outcomes based on interpretive stances can
  represent effects rather than causes
• Its possible that consultation mode is informed
  by the value LAs place on differing stakeholders
  LAQM knowledge

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epistemological chicken

• LA perception of the relative ability of
  differing stakeholders grasp of AQ science, the
  process that translates that science into policy,
  and their institutional and organisational status
  may transitively determine choice of consultation
  mode - and thus the integration of feedback into
  the LAQM decision-making process

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another explanation could be timing

• Does consultation take place at the time and
  point real decisions are made?
• upstream fundamental science-policy arena
• Rather than downstream simplified debates that
  are pre-conditioned by upstream decisions

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meanwhile, LAs have practical concerns about
their current situation

• The piggy in the middle effect sandwiched
  between central government and local communities.
• Perceived lack of training and guidance on how to
  improve consultation.
• Lack of time to effectively carry out
  consultation workload
• More bureaucracy

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• Difficulties in weighting reporting
  community responses and embedding them in the
  decision-making process
• LAs aware of the relative limits to LAQM can a
  systemic risk be effectively addressed at a local
  level?

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• does consultation unfairly lever community
  expectations?
• does consultation tend to demoralise LA AQM
  public managers?

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Wider concerns

• A major concern is how to integrate consultation
  in the decision-making process front-loaded
  or multi-stage process?
• Real deliberative engagement of a simple
  tick-box exercise?
• Why engage with consultation if it changes
  nothing? - for both community and LAs

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our initial inferential analysis suggests

• current modes of consultation are not working as
  well as they could they do not add sufficient
  value
• this implies a reasonably comprehensive
  re-conceptualisation of current thinking on the
  form and function of the LAQM consultation
  process
• This has implications for consultation processes
  in other environmental risk arenas

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because potentially over-simplified consultation
processes

• tend to occlude and excise deeper and wider
  contextual concerns held by both LAs and their
  stakeholders who owns a systemic problem?
• dont address the LAs consultation-implementatio
  n-review problem after consultation, then what?

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• doesnt address LAs policy-administration
  problem how can LAs retain legitimacy AND
  flexibility?
• doesnt address the structure and agency
  problem the role of LAs in the policy-public
  manager-community continuum.

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core themes

• How practicable is it to deal with a systemic
  problem at a local level?
• Has LAQM reached its limits?

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a change in approach

• a generalised presumption to lower concentrations
  (in the context of threshold debates) and all
  that implies for the structural embedding of
  joined-up policy making on health protection,
  transport planning, built environment development
  (is health an over-arching determinant?)
• This has implications for civic engagement that
  is supposed to underpin decision-making processes
  

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tentative suggestions for better resolution of
the LA policy-administration dichotomy

• A reflexive engagement with policy structures
  both top-down and bottom-up models of
  decision-making about shared environmental risks
• A more holistic approach
• Public managers (LAs) as civic intermediaries
  (public value theory)
• Participatory budgeting experiment, e.g. an
  exploratory engagement audit

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Indicative further work

• exploring the extent and applicability of
  deliberative processes in other arenas
• testing the boundaries between the scales (and
  time-scales) of policy intervention