Abstract

Public engagement is a recognized principle of governance for sustainability. Yet, the relationships between public engagement and sustainability outcomes are poorly understood. An important step towards understanding sustainability outcomes is to get a sense of whether the legal and policy provisions enable the public (citizens and organized groups) to effectively defend sustainability values and objectives in relation to the design and operation of governance arrangements. This paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation approach to public engagement, based on a two-tier theoretical construct: an analytical framework, enabling qualitative assessments across various governance features; and a conceptual governance model, to help evaluate engagement opportunities holistically, for the (socio-)economic domain or natural resources of interest. A governance model is conceptualized for Protected Areas. The two-tier approach is illustrated to assess whether the engagement options available in New Zealand offer the public sufficient opportunities to safeguard environmental sustainability.

Keywords: public engagement; governance; sustainability; protected areas; assessment.

Despite increasing research on effective public policy on climate change adaptation, there has been little attention paid to the implications for governance and sustainability outcomes of diverse cultural perspectives that shape citizen engagement on climate adaptation action plans. This paper constructs a novel culture-centred framework of public engagement in New Zealand that has the potential to enhance governance for sustainability with specific reference to climate adaptation.

The paper begins with a review of the literature on climate change adaptation policy interventions, followed by an analysis of interviews with key stakeholders. The analysis aims to map the competing perspectives on appropriate policy responses amongst the diverse stakeholders which may help or hinder policy implementation. Identifying the different worldviews, values, and interests – constituting distinct cultural perspectives – on the problem of climate change, provides a platform for exploring a specific culture-centred approach to public engagement on climate adaptation.  Such an approach holds significant implications for climate change governance.

Using interviews with representatives of diverse publics, including elected members and bureaucrats of local councils, members of Māori business, community, and social action bodies, and young entrepreneurs, activists, and students between the ages of 18 and 25, the paper explores what forms of knowledge on climate change and action look like through a cultural lens and how an understanding of cultural values can lead to sustainability-based policy outcomes.  The analysis of the different values of the target groups may help or hinder agreement on the development of climate adaptation strategies.

The paper is particularly aligned with the objectives of the panel on ‘Public Engagement, Governance and Sustainability’ (T16P14) as it seeks to address one of the panel’s key research questions: “What public engagement features or methods are more likely to enable/obstruct individual governance decisions of high environmental quality?”

It is often claimed that complex infrastructure projects, such as nature restoration projects for rivers for example, require new and complementary modes of political decision-making in early stages that are based on participatory modes of deliberation in order to foster mutual trust.

Increased power of participants is generally viewed as leading to superior participation and related social outcomes. However, it has also been showed in more recent research that participants rather appreciate a transparent and well structured, professionally led process that helps them shaping their expectations, taking advantage of their possibilities and being most efficient in the attempt to take influence. It is thus questionable whether formal participation rights alone are sufficient for positive social and subsequent environmental outcomes.

We build our research on five case studies (flood management at different areas along medium-sized rivers in Switzerland) for which we have turned out a standardized survey among the participants of these processes at two points in time (at the beginning of these participatory processes and after one to two years). This allows us to measure the social outcome of participatory processes (e.g. trust in institutions) as well as the characteristics of the process (“margin of negotiation” and “quality of the process”) over time. Although we have received around 120 answers from these 5 processes, repeated observations are only available for 26 participants. We thus apply Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) techniques, not exclusively due to the small sample but also to examine the expected configurational relationships between margin of negotiation, process quality and outcome expectations.

Our results suggest that trust in institutions is not only dependent on the margin of negotiation but also on a combination of outcome expectations with different aspects of the quality of the participatory process.

This paper examines the institutionalization of the Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) concept for businesses seldom subjected to this policy approach: tourism concessionaires in Protected Areas. A case-study on New Zealand is used to unpack the policy interplays, political contextual factors, and the possible behavioural responses of businesses subjected to both CER expectations and legally-enforceable instruments. A conceptual framework referred to as ‘Persuade-Enable-Constrain’ is applied towards this purpose. Gaps are noted in the ability of constraining mechanisms to protect the environment through ‘preventive’ types of objectives, while good provisions are available for ‘management’ and ‘recovery’ objective types. However, the CER strategy has a different focus. It encourages concessionaires to contribute to ‘nature enhancement’ objectives, through biodiversity conservation gains. Concessionaires are asked to help the Department of Conservation achieve its service delivery responsibilities, while it refocuses operations towards Protected Area commercialization. Pitfalls in strategy design are exposed, indicating that conservation gains may be limited, while policy interactions may undermine the ability of constraining mechanisms to prevent and manage environmental damage. The government appears to ignore the resource/power obstacles encountered by concessionaires. Its implementation plans focus on narrowly-conceived persuasion mechanisms, which fail to recognize major factors demotivating businesses from engaging in, or extending their CER activities.  

Keywords: concessions, Corporate Environmental Responsibility, volunteering, Protected Areas, biodiversity, behavioural change.