Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 24.1
A typology of deliberative and analytic-deliberative approaches in environmen-
tal participation
Representation
Deliberative
Analytic-deliberative
Publics
Focus groups
In-depth groups
Participatory monitoring
Participatory research
Public participation GIS
Stakeholders
Community advisory committees
Confl ict resolution
Consensus building
Mediation
Joint fact-fi nding
Stakeholder decision analysis
Public participation GIS
Specialists
Expert advisory committees
Expert workshops
Delphi exercise
Collaborative GIS
Interactive
Citizens' juries / panels
Consensus conferences
Cooperative discourse
Deliberative mapping
Integrated assessment focus groups
Collaborative and PPGIS
Waterton, 2005). Participatory research (PR), now a core method in geography
(Kesby et al., 2005), has been applied to many environmental issues, especially
under the banner of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) in the global south
(Chambers, 1997; see, e.g., Mosse, 2001). Taking its methodological foundations
from the work of Freire (1972) and Whyte (1991), the origins of PR can also be
traced to North America through classic examples of 'lay epidemiology' and the
mobilisation of civic science (see Fischer, 2000). One of the major areas of analytic-
deliberative methods development in geography is GIS. Originating in North America
in the mid-1990s, public participation GIS (PPGIS) has been used variously to
broaden public involvement in policymaking (Craig et al., 2002), to promote envi-
ronmental justice (Sieber, 2006), and to engage stakeholders and specialists in forms
of 'collaborative GIS' (Jankowski and Nyerges, 2001).
Stakeholder
processes (see table 24.1) seek to involve actors who are interested in
or affected by an issue, with an overall emphasis on consensual deliberation and
reaching agreement. Spreading out from North American origins, confl ict resolu-
tion, mediation, consensus building and community advisory committees are now a
common way of attempting to resolve environmental disputes and agree on conten-
tious environmental solutions, often through employing joint fact-fi nding techniques
that seek to develop a shared and trustworthy knowledge-base (Renn et al., 1995;
Susskind et al., 1999). Other approaches place more emphasis on opening things up,
such as Stakeholder Decision Analysis (SDA), which integrates multi-criteria options
appraisal with interactive deliberation (Burgess, 2000).
Specialists
, including geo-
graphers and other scientifi c experts, are often called upon to act as 'independent'
expert witnesses to support other deliberative process participants, although it is
important to recognise them as possible participants in their own right (Pellizzoni,
2003). Specialist deliberative processes (see table 24.1) can facilitate negotiations
within and between interdisciplinary teams, the consideration of analytical uncer-
tainties, and the exploration of social and ethical implications of scientifi c practice.
