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much better placed than more-remote governmental levels to provide
opportunities for participation in practice and to encourage engagement
with decision-making and planning processes that may lead to public
support for action to reduce levels of ecological stress.
91
Iconsiderinthe
following sections why public participation would be of such importance
for a state
s ability to pursue ecological policies and why, in view of this,
the ability of local levels of government to establish linkages between
the public and higher governmental levels could make the difference
between an ecological transition which is limited to the state
'
sdiscour-
agement and promotion of certain activities and land uses and one in
which people are fully engaged with bringing change to economic and
social practices.
'
4.6.1 Legitimacy
There are three main respects in which public participation is needed
if state initiatives for ecologically desirable change are to reach fruition.
The
rst is to promote acceptance of actions required for implementing
policy by encouraging public perception of them as legitimate.
'
is used as a term to characterise the appropriateness or the impropriety of
governmental action in a number of different ways.
92
It can be employed
objectively to suggest that a government would lack legitimacy if it failed
to respond to particular circumstances including, for example, a material
threat of environmental harm.
93
It is also used to indicate that a policy or
decision is subjectively perceived to be legitimate by a suf
'
Legitimacy
cient proportion
of the public for its acceptance as an appropriate action for the government
to take.
94
This may be because there is public agreement with the substance
of the policy or because the process by which a decision was reached is
regarded as possessing the quality of legitimacy.
95
These different uses of
91
Meadowcroft,
'
Planning, Democracy and Sustainable Development
'
, 181.
92
F. Peter,
in E. N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (2013),
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy
.
93
Barry,
'
Political Legitimacy
'
, pp. 115, 213.
94
C. Hilson, Regulating Pollution: A UK and EC Perspective (Oxford: Hart Publishing,
2000), p. 49; Ross,
'
Rethinking Green Politics
'
'
Sustainable Development
'
,p.234;J.Freeman,
'
Private Parties, Public
Functions, and the New Administrative Law
'
(2000) 52 Administrative Law Review, 815
and 818
-
9.
95
Ibid
.; A. Kronsell,
Legitimacy for Climate Policies: Politics and Participation in the
Green City of Freiburg
'
'
(2013) 18 Local Environment,966
-
7. See also C. Gross,
'
Community Perspectives of Wind Energy in Australia: The Application of a Justice
and Community Fairness Framework to Increase Social Acceptance
'
(2007) 35 Energy
