Global environmental governance should be participatory: Five problems of scale

Abstract

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French

The goals of this project are twofold: (1) to show how research on, and normative-theoretical justifications for, public participation in environmental decision-making can inform discussions about how to improve global environmental governance (GEG) and (2) to present a series of questions that follow any attempt to scale up results from research on local, regional, and national public participation to meet global environmental challenges. It seeks to clarify what the ‘problem of scale’ means for democratizing GEG by classifying, and proposing partial answers to, multiple problems of scale: (1) The social barriers question: What political-economic barriers stand in the way? (2) The institutional formation question: What institutions need (re)forming? (3) The ‘who’ question: Who should participate and how should they be selected? (4) The procedural question: How and when should the global public participate? (5) The evaluative question: What are the criteria for process and outcome evaluation?

Keywords

Analytic deliberation climate governance deliberative democracy environmental decision-making global governance

Introduction: Addressing the call for global environmental governance reform with analytic-deliberative decision-making research

It has become clear that complex decisions about environmental problems are better formulated and more legitimate when those potentially affected by or interested in the outcome of the given decision are able to participate in the decision-making process. This position has been repeatedly endorsed by the US National Research Council (US NRC) (1996, 2008) and the merits of public participation in environmental decision-making have been recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (2003) and the International Risk Governance Council (2005). Public participation in environmental assessment and decision-making has become more common since the early 1990s (Bulkeley and Mol, 2003). Public participation refers to ‘the practice of consulting and involving members of the public in the agenda-setting, decision-making, and policy-forming activities of the organizations or institutions responsible for such functions,’ which ranges from the collection of public input that may not have an influence on the outcome to the public co-determining outcomes in a deliberative process (Rowe et al., 2004: 88–89). It has been shown that it is not only possible to bring scientists, policy-makers, stakeholders, and the affected publics together to assess, evaluate, and govern environmental problems and risks, but that public participation models guided by democratic principles and sensitive to context ‘[improve] the quality and legitimacy of decisions and builds the capacity of all involved to engage in the policy process’ (US NRC, 2008: 226).

The US NRC (2008: 82ff.) clarified that although studies of global environmental assessments primarily focus on the relationship between scientists and policy-makers (e.g., Mitchell et al., 2006; US NRC, 2007), one can induce similar conclusions from their results: increasing and widening participation in decision-making will improve quality, legitimacy, and capacity outcomes. Thus, analytic-deliberative environmental decision-making research (discussed below), largely based on local, regional, and national participatory processes, has delivered an important question: how should decision-making processes be organized and what procedures should be used when the outcome of an environmental decision has international consequences for global publics? This question is especially pressing considering the need for new approaches to achieve multilateral agreements and other forms of international governance mechanisms that effectively address environmental challenges.

The goals of this project are twofold: (1) to show how research on public participation in environmental decision-making can inform discussions about how to improve global environmental governance (GEG) and (2) to present a series of questions that follow an attempt to scale up results, themes, and principles from research on local, regional, and national public participation to meet global environmental challenges. Sociological research on environmental decision-making is brought to bear on the social and normative questions surrounding global environmental governance. It seeks to clarify what the ‘problem of scale’ means for democratizing GEG by classifying multiple problems of scale. Similarly, the contributions of this article to the literature can be viewed from two angles: (1) addressing the possibility of participatory GEG through research on, and the Habermasian theoretical grounding of, analytic-deliberative environmental assessment and decision-making and (2) addressing the problem of scale in analytic-deliberative research, an underexamined consideration (Dietz, 2013).

To accomplish these two goals, I first address two skeptical responses to the very idea of democratizing global environmental governance – (1) that the environmental crisis is too urgent to wait and (2) the political climate too inhospitable to succeed – as well as clarify the method of critical theory. Following, I explain why environmental social scientists and green political theorists have argued that reforms are needed to make GEG more effective and fair. I then explain the theoretical and conceptual foundations of research on public participation in environmental assessment and decision-making and, thereafter, the empirically documented merits of participatory approaches to addressing environmental problems. Finally, I present a series of questions that need answering to both address the problem of scale in analytic-deliberative research and strengthen calls for a more democratic model of GEG. Many of the questions are left open, though I show how existing research on participatory environmental decision-making may provide some tentative answers.

Addressing immediate doubts and clarifying critical theory

In addition to clarifying the method of critical theory, this section addresses two sensible objections to the possibility of democratizing global environmental governance: (1) we must act now instead of waiting for global deliberation, which would likely be a lengthy affair, and, relatedly, (2) the political climate is too inhospitable for participatory global environmental governance to be a realistic option and, thus, is a fool’s errand. I will call the first the ‘urgency objection’ and the second the ‘anti-utopianism objection.’ My hope is that by addressing both objections straightaway the article’s central arguments are taken seriously, even if the reader remains skeptical.

The urgency objection is correct in the sense that deliberative democratic decision-making is time-consuming, which is the basis for a common criticism of deliberative and participatory governance models (for overview and reply, see Renn, 2008: 311ff.). This is an important consideration in the context of global environmental problems because it is better to act sooner rather than later. However, the urgency objection is flawed for making the following assumption, which is difficult to defend: current global environmental governance structures and mechanisms will be quicker in delivering semi-effective to effective results than a more participatory model of GEG. As explained in the next section, current approaches to GEG have not delivered even semi-effective results for all but one global environmental issue (ozone depletion) and there are few reasons to expect semi-effective outcomes for the others, no matter the timeline. In comparison, participatory and deliberative approaches have shown to be effective at smaller scales, even though they are relatively time-consuming. In short, the possibility of comparatively slower yet effective outcomes is more desirable than the status quo: quicker ineffective outcomes.

The anti-utopianism objection is also reasonable. There are few reasons to forecast a favorable future for the global environment and its governance and there are many more reasons to be pessimistic. Of the nine levels beyond which human alterations of the Earth system may significantly alter the functioning of the that system (‘planetary boundaries’) (Rockström et al., 2009), at least four have already been crossed: biosphere integrity (roughly, biodiversity), climate change, biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus cycling), and land-system changes (Steffen et al., 2015). Despite the scale of the environmental crisis, technocratic and top-heavy GEG models remain ineffective, mainstream responses to global environmental problems like climate change habitually rely on ineffective techno-fixes and market-based solutions (see Foster et al., 2011; Gunderson et al., 2018b), and geoengineering, a potentially catastrophic response to climate change, is ‘getting ever closer to the mainstream’ (Preston, 2016: xii; see Gunderson et al., 2018a). Further, the current administration of the most powerful country in the world is actively chipping away at decades of environmental reforms (for a running list, see Greshko et al., 2018). I acknowledge that a participatory form of GEG is an unlikely outcome in such an inhospitable ‘environment’ and is adamant that social and economic barriers to alternatives are investigated to avoid utopianism (e.g., Gunderson, 2015). One goal of this article is to highlight the social and political-economic barriers surrounding the goal of democratizing GEG in the context of up-scaling participatory and deliberative practices. Although participatory GEG is an unlikely future, it is also a desirable and possible future and, thus, worthy of exploration. Not only have deliberative and participatory approaches to environmental governance been shown to be successful and effective at smaller scales, there are already existing yet constrained seeds to democratic forms of global environmental governance. In other words, a desirable alternative to the existing order is germinal within, yet constrained by, this order. An analysis of alternatives and barriers to alternatives allows one to engage in a critical sociology that evades utopianism.

This is a helpful entry point for briefly clarifying the critical theoretical approach. This is a ‘critical theoretical’ project in the sense that it employs a form of ‘oppositional thinking’ to achieve ‘reflection on a system of constraints which are humanly produced’ in order to overcome undesirable power relations (Connerton, 1976: 16, 18). Critical theory diagnoses real contradictions, historicizes social conditions, and subjects ideologies that help reproduce the existing social order to ‘immanent critique’ (for overview in environmental sociological context, see Gunderson, 2017). I have discussed elsewhere policy mechanisms that aid in the reproduction of an inherently ecologically destructive social order (Gunderson et al., 2018b) as well as ways that sociology can theoretically and methodologically respond to the likelihood of a grim social-environmental future (Gunderson, 2015). The goal of this project is different: to investigate a social alternative already present in the existing social order, but present ‘only intermittently, partially, or potentially’ (Young, 2001: 10), that, if expanded and up-scaled, could become a more effective and just form of GEG.

Reforming global environmental governance

Excluding ozone depletion, GEG structures have failed to adequately tackle global environmental challenges for a number of reasons, including: (1) global environmental problems are more difficult to tackle than national ones (more remote, invisible, and complex); (2) GEG structures were designed in a top-down fashion; (3) multilateral treaties are inherently difficult to achieve; (4) corporate interests actively oppose international treaties; (5) the United States, since the 1970s, has failed to act as a leader; (6) there is ambiguity in where blame should be placed (e.g., Third World population or multinational corporate actors) and, following, how to act; and (7) it would be very expensive to effectively tackle global environmental challenges (Speth, 2002). In response to these challenges, authors have proposed reforms to improve GEG structures (Carmen and Agrawal, 2006: 301–302). Two common approaches are to revitalize and strengthen the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and/or introduce a new world environmental organization with a similar function as, though with more power than, UNEP (Esty and Ivanova, 2002; Speth and Haas, 2006; see e.g., Biermann et al., 2012).

The reform route considered in this article is the inclusion of global publics in GEG structures. The immediate reason to consider public participation in global environmental decision-making is that it can address Speth’s (2002) challenges (2), (6), and, potentially, (4). A participatory approach would fundamentally remedy challenge (2) as it would make room for a more bottom-up approach that addresses the ‘democratic deficit’ of existing international regimes (Gellers, 2016; Lemos and Agrawal, 2006: 301; Nanz and Steffek, 2004). Further, including local complexity and voices in global environmental discussions is sorely needed (Jasanoff and Martello, 2004). Public participation could also address ambiguity in normative issues, challenge (6) being only one example (Beierle and Cayford, 2002; Chess et al., 1998; Dietz, 2013; Renn, 2008: 335; US NRC, 2008: 18) (detailed more fully below). The Habermasian approach to public participation outlined below is explicitly modeled to remove arbitrary power from deliberation and, thus, could potentially address challenge (4). The qualifier ‘potentially’ is important because it is possible corporate interests could stand in the way of participatory GEG.

A rapidly growing number of scholars have discussed deliberative and/or participatory possibilities for global governance elsewhere (e.g., Dryzek, 2006; Gould, 2014; Held, 1995; Martinelli, 2003; Nanz and Steffek, 2004; for review and assessment, see Smith, forthcoming; Smith and Brassett, 2008), and democratizing GEG in particular from a number of perspectives, including deliberative systems (Dryzek and Stevenson, 2011; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2014), juristic democracy (Baber and Bartlett, 2009), and stakeholder democracy (Bäckstrand, 2006). While this literature cannot be adequately reviewed within the confines of this project, I follow its lead in considering the possibilities of a more participatory and deliberative form of GEG and discuss some of the proposed ways forward in the penultimate section of the article. My contribution to this discussion is to approach the issue of democratizing global environmental governance from a new angle: research on analytic-deliberative environmental assessment and decision-making and its Habermasian theoretical grounding.

The normative-theoretical basis of participatory environmental decision-making

One dominant theoretical orientation underlying calls for public participation in environmental decision-making is Habermas’s communicative theories and discourse ethics (Beierle, 2002; Dietz, 1994; Renn, 2008: Ch. 8; Webler, 1995). Habermas argued that the possibility for human emancipation in modern societies lies in non-strategic communication in which subjects adopt an ‘attitude oriented toward reaching an understanding’ (communicative action) (Habermas, 1984: 86, 286ff.), as opposed to instrumental attitudes oriented toward success. The normative implications of these arguments – which cannot be given a full exposition here – are formulated in both his discourse ethics and earlier idea of an ideal speech situation. The ideal speech situation portrayed an inaccessible condition, though ‘potentially possible in ordinary interactions between speaking and acting subjects’ (Pusey, 1987: 73), that the public should approximate when attempting to reach mutual understanding: regardless of economic or political power, all participants should have an equal chance to speak, interpret, justify, problematize, and explain any claim free from coercion and manipulation (see Webler, 1995: 46ff.). Rather than arbitrary power, conflicts and disagreements ought to be resolved in a deliberative way where ‘no force except that of the better argument is exercised’ (Habermas, 1975: 108). For modern societies, where a ‘God’s eye view’ of moral commands can no longer be reasonably defended (Habermas, 1998: Ch. 1), Habermas (1996: 107) has put forth a discourse ethics where no conception of the right ought to precede his discourse principle: ‘[j]ust those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses.’

Habermasian alternatives to technocratic environment policy methods (i.e., rational actor models and cost-benefit analysis) were first proposed in Dietz’s (1984, 1987, 1988, 1994) discursive environmental impact assessment method and the discursive environmental decision-making models of Renn, Webler, and colleagues (e.g., Renn, 1992; Renn et al., 1993; Webler, 1993, 1995).¹ There is a Habermasian focus on a participatory process that achieves fairness and – though undertheorized by Habermas (Webler, 1995) – competence (e.g., Dietz, 2003, 2013; Renn, 2008: Ch. 8; Webler, 1995). Two forms of fairness are stressed in analytic-deliberative environmental decision-making research: procedural fairness and fairness in outcome, though the latter, substantive fairness, is intimately linked to the former (i.e., fairness in outcome depends on the careful planning of procedural fairness) (Dietz, 2003). Procedural fairness contains two essential elements: (1) that everyone who is interested in or potentially affected by the outcome of a decision – the public – can participate in a decision-making process that (2) attempts to equalize power relations so all logical and sincere arguments are taken seriously, or, to quote Habermas (1975: 108) again, where ‘no force except that of the better argument is exercised.’ Like fairness, competence in decision-making research also includes two essential aspects: competence in facts (the use of the best methods available for validating scientific information in the decision-making process) (Webler, 1995) and competence in values (acknowledging and deliberating upon uncertainty and diversity in participants’ values) (Dietz, 2003).

Achieving fairness and competence means that both public deliberation and science must be linked in decision-making, especially for making decisions about environmental issues, which frequently involve fact uncertainty and value diversity. The resulting approach, popularized in the US NRC’s pioneering Understanding Risk (1996), is referred to as an ‘analytic-deliberative’ process, where ‘[t]he research agenda in support of a decision is shaped by both the views of the scientific community and the information the public believes it needs to make informed decisions. In turn, public discussion engages science to build trust in scientific results and to clarify the nature of uncertainty and how best to deal with it’ (Dietz, 2013: 14083). Analytic-deliberative approaches allow two questions to be addressed central to any environmental decision: the technical-scientific, ‘What will happen?’ and the politico-ethical, ‘Is it a good idea?’ (Dietz, 1994). This essay focuses on the participatory component of the analytic-deliberative process, summarized well by Dietz (1994: 305):

A rational decision is one taken by a group where all stake holders have an ability for competent, unconstrained communication. … Groups are formed that include all major stake holders. Such groups will include individuals with diverse backgrounds and experience. The rules established for interaction within the group are intended to facilitate effective and fair discussion by limiting the ability of any individual to dominate the group.

This approach to environmental decision-making (a) allows values and norms to evolve, as valuation is achieved through discourse, not technique and positive science; (b) puts all participants on an equal footing, thus minimizing the influence of powerful interests; (c) ‘does not pretend that decisions can be made without consideration of values’ (Dietz, 1988: 223–224; see also Dietz, 2013); (d) can subsume cost-benefit analysis (i.e., if participants agree to maximize utility and price values are seen as sound estimates of social values, then …); and (e) focuses on talking and pattern recognition (cognitive strength) instead of calculation (cognitive weakness) (Dietz, 1994: 305). Limitations of public participation include increased costs and resources and potential schedule delays (Fjeld et al., 2007: Ch. 13); the possibility that an agreement will not be reached; and, even though the procedural rules are meant to equalize power relations, these processes are not immune to power (Dietz, 1994; see also Baber and Bartlett, forthcoming). Although public participation is not a panacea, the advantages for environmental decision-making are established in the literature.

The documented merits of participatory environmental decision-making

Deliberative public participation is supported by environmental scholars for the normative reasons discussed above, including its ability to build trust between publics and experts, the inherent value of deliberation, and the potential to reflect and act upon public values (see also Baber and Bartlett, forthcoming; Bulkeley and Mol, 2003). In addition to these normative merits, research has shown that participation in environmental assessment and decision-making increases the substantive quality of environmental decisions as well as process and other outcome measures. To date, the most extensive review and analysis of public participation and deliberation in environment assessment and decision-making is the US NRC’s Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making (2008). The report argued that the purpose of public participation is to increase the quality, legitimacy, and capacity of decisions. Quality was conceptualized in procedural terms, referring to decisions that

(1) identify the values, interests, and concerns of all who are interested in or might be affected by the environmental process or decision; (2) identify the range of actions that might be taken; (3) identify and systematically consider the effects that might follow and uncertainties about them; (4) use the best available knowledge and methods relevant to the above tasks, particularly (3); and (5) incorporate new information, methods, and concerns that arise over time. (US NRC, 2008: 1–2)

Legitimacy and capacity too were defined as procedural criteria: as a process that the public and stakeholders view as legitimate (fair and competent) and increases the capacity to engage in the decision-making process (including increased participation skills, ability to engage technical knowledge and values, and fostering of understanding and trust). To assess the quality, legitimacy, and capacity of participatory environmental decisions, the report made recommendations based on theories of participatory democracy, decision-making, conflict resolution, and public discourse; social scientific research on topics related to public participation; public participation practitioner experience reports; comparative case studies of public participation processes; and an analysis of almost 1000 case studies of public participation in the US. Based on a systematic analysis of this extensive scope of theory and data, the report found that:

When done well, public participation improves the quality and legitimacy of a decision and builds the capacity of all involved to engage in the policy process. It can lead to better results in terms of environmental quality and other social objectives. It also can enhance trust and understanding among parties. Achieving these results depends on using practices that address difficulties that specific aspects of the context can present. (US NRC, 2008: 226)

Next to the US NRC’s (2008) report, the most systematic and comprehensive analysis of public participation in environmental decision-making is Beierle’s (2002; see also Beierle and Cayford, 2002) review of 239 local, state, and federal case studies on environmental decision-making with public participation in the US. Beierle (2002) found that, in most cases, public involvement resulted in better decision outcomes, including the inclusion of public values in decisions, the improvement of the substantive quality of decisions, the resolution of conflict among competing interests, and the increase of public education and information. Beierle and Cayford (2002: Ch. 4) argued that context (the issue at hand, the institutional setting, and the quality of social relations going into the process) had little influence on decision outcomes. Instead, the ‘intensity’ of the participatory process used (i.e., ones that are focused on reaching an agreement rather than collecting general information) was said to be more important. Intensity was found to be positively correlated with access to external technical information and internal resources, which dispels fears that public participation may not obtain sufficient information about the technical-scientific aspects of the given challenge (e.g., Yosie and Herbst, 1998). The supply of new analyses, ideas, and information from stakeholders and the general public was stressed and they described the relation between technical information and public deliberation as a ‘virtuous cycle’ when structured correctly.

Taken together, public participation at the local, regional, and national scale has been shown to improve environmental decision-making in both process (as stressed by US NRC, 2008) and substance (as stressed by Beierle, 2002; Beierle and Cayford, 2002). One important limitation of public participation research to date, however, is an almost exclusive focus on regional and local decision-making processes and related lack of attention to problem of scale (Dietz, 2013). The goal of the following section is to address the problem of scale through a series of questions.

Five problems of scale: Questions concerning the possibility of participatory global environmental governance

Thus far, I have attempted to answer one question based on empirical and theoretical grounds: should the public participate in global environmental decision-making? It is my hope that readers are persuaded in the affirmative. Yet the daunting nature of this task is clear: making decisions about global environmental challenges, such as climate change, affects everyone (i.e., everyone is the ‘directly affected public’). This section addresses the immediate problem of scale following this consideration through a series of questions. The problem of scale for participatory approaches, associated with small-scale political units, is an old one (Cook and Morgan, 1971: 28ff.). The questions are meant to shine light on some complex issues that must be addressed to begin approximating a plan for participatory GEG. I think this approach is more helpful than skepticism about the possibility of democratizing international institutions (e.g., Dahl, 1999; Grant and Keohane, 2005). While there are good sociological reasons to be skeptical, I agree with others (e.g., Bexell et al., 2010; Dryzek, 2008; Nanz and Steffek, 2004; Stevenson and Dryzek, 2014) that a global democracy would operate differently than the liberal democracies of capitalist nation-states and exploring what this could look like is beneficial.

Excluding the first two questions posed, the questions derive from up-scaling common concerns in analytic-deliberative research. The questions are as follows:

- The social barriers question: What political-economic barriers stand in the way?

- The institutional formation question: What institutions need (re)forming?

- The ‘who’ question: Who should participate and how should they be selected?

- The procedural question: How and when should the global public participate?

- The evaluative question: What are the criteria for process and outcome evaluation?

While I am comfortable posing answers to select questions (e.g., the ‘procedural question’), others are left open. In cases in which I do not have a good answer, an attempt is made to provide guidance based on normative arguments and empirical considerations. The questions are ordered in a way in which I think they should be answered. In other words, if one cannot answer questions preceding a given question, it may be futile to try to answer that question. For instance, if institutional formation proves unfeasible, deciding how to evaluate the effectiveness and success of the participatory process is pointless.

The social barriers question: What political-economic obstacles stand in the way?

What political-economic obstacles stand in the way of public participation in GEG? Another way of framing the social barriers question is as follows: is the goal of participatory GEG in fundamental tension with the neoliberal world order? Indeed, global climate governance is increasingly neoliberal in nature (Ciplet and Roberts, 2017). For critical political economists like Paterson (2000; see also Newell, 2008), the structural causes of global environmental problems should be identified first – namely the inherent environmental destructiveness of growth-dependency (e.g., Schnaiberg, 1980) – to find effective solutions. The implications of approaching GEG in this more critical way was epitomized by Conca’s (2000) distinction between two irreconcilable visions of GEG: trade liberalization aided by closed decision-making, as embodied by the practices and policies of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and sustainability through broad participation. Although an oversimplified and polemical division, the distinction helps illuminate the most pressing barrier to participatory GEG: the power of economic interests in global environmental politics (Humphreys, 2003; Levy and Newell, 2005; Newell, 2005, 2008; Paterson, 2000).

Transnational corporations (TNCs) were instrumental in watering down the 1992 Earth Summit (Hildyard, 1993), there was a failure to develop a UN Corporate Accountability Convention during the 2002 Earth Summit (Newell, 2005), TNCs are increasingly setting their own voluntary standards on their own terms without accountability measures in place (Clapp, 2005), and have attempted to push out civil society actors from direct participation in environmental decision-making (e.g., Kuchler, 2017). Miller (1995: 143–144) summarized this concern straightforwardly:

Power is shifting increasingly from nation-states to transnational actors such as TNCs, international financial markets, multilateral banks, and international media groups. … To the extent that power continues to shift from local communities to centralized global actors, it will become that much more difficult to properly address major environmental issues.

While I agree with the aforementioned critical political economists that social movements are needed outside of formal global environmental institutions – and GEG should not be reduced to international organizations and interstate negotiations – it is important to consider the potential of democratizing formal international environmental institutions² in order to combat the interests of global capital, or, as a another means for ‘holding those with power in the global economy, and/or in states to account, making them legitimise their actions, democratising them, transforming their effects’ (Paterson, 2000: 149). In fact, broad global public participation is precisely what is needed to counteract the particularistic interests of global capital. Yet, as the critical political economists would reply, the crucial question is whether the current global political-economic order would allow for increased public participation in GEG. Similar to thinking of the nation-state as a neutral entity that exists in the interest of all citizens (e.g., Sweezy, 1970), it is equally naïve and misleading to assume that global environmental forums, international environmental law, etc. are neutral regimes formed and operating independently of powerful interests (Newell, 2008).

If the interests of capital restrain, limit, and shape state and global environmental decision-making and policy options (Conca, 2000; Paterson, 2000), what does this mean for the possibility of broader public participation? There seem to be two answers to the social barriers question: (1) increased public participation in global environmental decision-making is a possible route to challenge the decision-making that prioritizes particular economic over generalizable environmental interests, or (2) broader public participation in GEG is unrealistic without a different global political-economic order. Critical political economists must take the possibility of (1) seriously, whereas participatory and deliberative democrats must take the possibility of (2) seriously. A discussion between critical political economy and analytical deliberative literature may resemble Trotsky’s (1963 [1938]) defense of revolutionary means and denouncement of liberal moralism and Dewey’s (1988 [1938]) defense of radical democracy and rejection of formulating ends based on assumed teleological historical ‘laws.’ But this need not be the case. What should be avoided, as Sensat (1979) argued in an early Marxist appraisal of Habermas, is merely categorizing the views of Habermas and similar thinkers as ‘liberal’ without seriously engaging. It is worth emphasizing that Habermas is a child of the Marxist tradition, if an unconventional and eclectic offspring, and names Marx as an inspiration for his radical democratic project (see Kellner, 2000). Analytically, Habermas’s framework is also helpful for thinking through the social barriers question, seeing as a thread underlying his whole oeuvre is comparing the rational potential of communicative action immanent in the interactions of speaking and acting subjects to systematically distorted forms of communication via the system’s ‘colonization’ of the lifeworld.

Further avenues for reconciliation were opened by those who emphasize participation as ‘a catalyst for an evolutionary, or even revolutionary, change of power structures in capitalist societies,’ what Renn (2008: 299–300) termed the ‘emancipatory’ approach to public participation (e.g., Forester and Stitzel, 1989; Fung and Wright, 2001). The emancipatory approach is especially important at a global level as it emphasizes the inclusion and empowerment of less privileged voices (Renn, 2008: 300). Perhaps the first productive step forward is to examine the social and economic conditions that would enable, or disable, the possibility of broader and transnational forms of democracy (Gould, 2014). For example, it is difficult to imagine a just and effective path to climate governance with extremely high levels of global inequality (Roberts and Parks, 2006). The social barriers question is crucial because, on the one hand, what is supposed to be democratic decision-making is often systematically distorted by powerful interests and used as a means to simultaneously prop up and legitimate these interests – indeed, modern ‘democracy’ has often been employed to limit popular power (i.e., democracy) – yet, on the other hand, deeper democratization is a necessary and valuable means for social transformation and an essential feature of any desirable alternative to the current order (Wood, 1995).

The social barriers question should be prioritized in any attempt to scale up research on public participation in environmental decision-making, or in more normative arguments for democratic forms of GEG. A statement made by the South Centre (1996: 32) stressed this concern: ‘an international community ridden with inequalities and injustice, institutionalizing “global governance” without paying attention to the question of who wields power, and without adequate safeguards, is tantamount to sanctioning governance of the many weak by the powerful few.’ Without understanding the systemic barriers to scaling up public participation, calls for more deliberative and/or participatory forms of GEG will remain utopian.

The institutional formation question: What institutions need (re)forming?

Do international institutions exist that could be reformed to make room for public participation or would new institutions need to be formed? Further, what would these look like? One option, proposed in Stevenson and Dryzek’s Democratizing Global Climate Governance (2014: Ch. 8) both answers and sidesteps the institutional formation question in a unique way. Putting forth a model that focuses on deliberative systems (see also Parkinson and Mansbridge, 2012) rather than deliberative forums helps dispel the claim that the democratization of international institutions is technically unfeasible. A deliberative system refers to a number of dispersed locations and practices – both formal and informal – from everyday talks among interested citizens to forums of negotiation. No one institution can or should be the only site of democratic deliberation, an approach akin to ‘polycentric’ approaches to GEG (Dorsch and Flachsland, 2017; Gunderson and Dietz, forthcoming; Ostrom, 2010). To open up GEG to public participation, the prescriptive argument highlights the possibility of (1) Baber and Bartlett’s (2009) plan for the participative formation of global environmental law and (2) increasing public spaces for GEG that are virtual (see also Dietz, 2013) coupled with structured spaces for global publics to physically meet and deliberate. Both pathways are discussed in turn.

Stevenson and Dryzek emphasize the importance of ‘mini-publics,’ or, ‘[b]odies comprised of ordinary citizens chosen through near random or stratified selection from a relevant constituency, and tasked with learning, deliberating, and issuing a judgment about a specific topic, issue, or proposal’ (Warren and Gastil, 2015: 562). They focus on Baber and Bartlett’s (2009) proposal for citizen juries (one form of mini-publics) to deliberate ‘hypothetical disputes that would arise under a variety of [environmental] regulatory approaches’ that, in fact, contain the essential characteristics of actual global environmental challenges (Baber and Bartlett, 2009: 119). The citizen jury judgments, formed in various countries, would be used to establish legitimate and transparent global common laws.

Regarding the creation of new public spaces for deliberation, there have been some attempts to form events and institutions that approximate participatory GEG. The UN coordinated two crowdsourcing projects, though there is much to be improved in terms of representativeness and legitimacy (Gellers, 2016), and the public can participate in the Forum discussions of the World Conservation Congress (WCC), held every four years since 1996 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (n.d.). Perhaps no other project has come closer to participatory GEG than the three global deliberative events held by the global citizen consultation initiative World Wide Views (WWViews) (2009, 2012, 2015). These events deserve extended attention. In September of 2009 around 3860 citizens from 38 countries participated in WWViews on Global Warming (prior to the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties [UNFCCC COP] 15 in Copenhagen) (Rask et al., 2012; WWViews, 2009). Participants were provided with 40-page briefing reports prior to the event and shown videos pertaining to climate change and policy options. Sitting at tables of six to eight around the world, the participants deliberated, filled out an opinion survey about various climate change policy options, and made recommendations to policy-makers. Although based on a one-day event – hardly enough time for genuine deliberation (Stevenson and Dryzek, 2014) – the process itself and results are equally telling. There was strong support for: a binding climate change deal that kept global temperatures below a 2°C rise (90% of participants) – or at current or pre-industrial levels (half of all participants); Annex I countries reducing emissions 25–40% below 1990 levels by 2020; fast-growing and low-income countries emission reductions (a proposal supported, with one exception, by participants of the Global South); financial mechanisms for funding mitigation and adaptation in developing countries; rewards for complying countries and punishments for non-complying countries; mitigation technology available for all countries; and a stronger international climate change institution. In short, almost all citizens chose more aggressive mitigation efforts than their own governments, even citizens of developing countries.

The WWViews process was expanded before the 2012 Convention on Biological Diversity COP11 (WWViews, 2012) and again before the 2015 UNFCCC COP21 (WWViews, 2015). The latter deliberative event was massive, involving around 10,000 global citizens in 76 countries. The participants roughly represented the social and demographic features of their given country or region in terms of age, gender, occupation, education, and residency zone (urban vs. rural). With a similar educational and deliberation format as in 2009, the results of the 2015 WWViews deliberation showed strong support for swift and deep climate action, including the following: support for a carbon tax (nearly 90%); belief that mitigation efforts in developing countries should be partially or completely funded by developed countries (over 80%); belief that the UN climate negotiations have not done enough (over 70%); belief that their country should reduce emissions even if other countries are not reducing emissions (nearly 80%); and support for a legally binding target of zero emissions for developed and developing countries by the end of the century (nearly 70%). Further, issues of apathy and the subjective irrelevance of environmental problems (Ollinaho, 2016) were absent in the participatory and deliberative event, with almost unanimous agreement (97%) on the future use of deliberative processes in global climate governance. Perhaps the greatest feat of WWViews is putting to rest skepticism about the technical feasibility of structured global deliberation.

Despite the benefits of Stevenson and Dryzek’s (2014) deliberative systems perspective, it is also limited. Smith and Brassett (2008) made the case that Dryzek’s (2006) larger approach to global governance overemphasizes representing ‘discourses’ while de-emphasizing the possibility of formal public participation in international institutions, leaving an unclear picture as to how consequential participation would be possible. In this light, Stevenson and Dryzek’s (2014) focus on mini-publics is a step in the right direction, and I share their enthusiasm for the WWViews initiative, but formal access (what they call ‘empowered space,’ as opposed to ‘public space’) to decision-making in already existing and/or new international organizations seems necessary for consequential public participation. This would mean a co-determination of global environmental decisions and laws by the global public.

The ‘who’ question: Who should participate and how should they be selected?

Who from the global public should participate and how should they be selected? When the outcomes of environmental decisions are unambiguous, they generally do not require public participation (Beierle and Cayford, 2002; Renn, 2008). However, broad public participation is helpful, and some argue necessary, when environmental challenges are value diverse and conflict-ridden (Beierle and Cayford, 2002; Renn, 2008; US NRC, 2008). Global environmental problems, climate change being a quintessential example, fit these considerations. Thus, to restate the chief thesis of the first half of this article, it makes good sense to include the public. However, as detailed above, the public here is the global public as making decisions about global environmental challenges, by definition, will affect everyone on Earth. Because it would be technically impossible to include every voice in the discussion, it would be necessary to decide who should be included in the conversation and how these individuals and groups should be selected. (It should be noted that even at the local level, small groups of the public usually ‘act as a proxy for the larger public’ [Beierle and Cayford, 2002: 65].)

At the global scale, selecting a proxy public would, of course, be made more complicated. Should the proxy global public be randomly selected, as is the case with citizen juries, or made to represent socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the given population, as WWViews attempts to do? Who should the proxy global public be a proxy for – national origin, ecosystem region origin, prevalent environmental discourses, or other criteria? Any criterion chosen will lead to further questions. For example, if the chosen criterion is national origin, should indigenous peoples be viewed as citizens of nation-states or ‘members of distinct peoples whose preferred lifeways are encumbered by [nation-states like Australia and Canada]’ (Whyte, 2012: 173)? Here, there must be an awareness of the tendency to treat the participation of minority and marginal peoples as a ‘checkbox’ (Paulson et al., 2012). As mentioned earlier, the emancipatory approach to public participation provides guidance as it explicitly seeks to include and empower those who will be most harmed by global environmental problems like climate change: the poor and marginalized (see Olsson et al., 2014). There is a significant technical consideration as well: depending on how the proxy is understood, what tools could be used to select them as well as reach out to marginalized populations? There are also questions concerning the inclusion or exclusion of non-humans (e.g., Eckersley, 1999) and future generations (e.g., Beckman, 2008) and, if considered part of the public, how they should be represented in decision-making. Even Habermas, who has long criticized nature ‘mysticism’ (e.g., Habermas, 1971: 32ff.), reasoned that humans should strive to communicate ‘with’ animals to understand their interests and that we have a ‘quasi-moral’ responsibility for their protection (Habermas, 1993: 105–111).

The ‘who’ question is complex and multi-layered. Although I do not have easy answers to the questions raised in this subsection, I am sympathetic to models that promote extensive participation of lay people in a way that represents social location. The causes and impacts of global environmental problems like climate change are often highly unequal and just solutions require attention to these inequalities. Broad participation based on representativeness of social location is one means to do so. The selection process employed by WWViews is especially instructive. However, I do not have clear-cut answers. The modest goal here is to clarify the major questions involved in participant selection.

The procedural question: How and when should the global public participate?

In what way, and at which points, should the global public participate? The former ‘how’ of the procedural question contains a number of components (Beierle and Cayford, 2002; Fung, 2006; US NRC, 2008: 14ff.), the most important being (1) the intensity of involvement (the effort made both by the public participants to be involved and the given organization to keep the public involved), (2) what type of engagement is appropriate (ranging from information input to deliberation), and (3) the extent of influence that the public has. This subsection focuses on engagement types and influence. Models range considerably. Some merely allow the public to express opinions through surveys, focus groups, etc. that may not influence the outcome of the decision while others allow the public to co-determine outcomes deliberatively in consensus forums and citizen panels (Arnstein, 1969; Beierle and Cayford, 2002; Fung, 2006; Renn, 2008: Essay 10; US NRC, 2008). Should the global public act as a resource for more input and information, make recommendations, or given the power to co-determine the decision at hand?

Regarding the type of engagement, deliberation – ‘weighing the reasons relevant to a decision with a view to making a decision on the basis of that weighting’ (Cohen, 2007: 219) – will be more fitting for most global environmental challenges as the latter usually involves a high degree of conflict and value diversity. As explained earlier, deliberation in participatory environmental decision-making allows for public values and interests to be shared in a fair process, the understanding of rationales for various positions, learning of all relevant (and contested) claims, the creation of new solutions, fuller understanding and greater awareness of the ambiguities of the challenge, the finding of a ‘common moral ground,’ and the formation of fully informed agreements (which, at minimum, lead to a consensus about where disagreements stem from) (Beierle and Cayford, 2002; Renn, 2008; US NRC, 2008). Additionally, deliberation allows for the development and articulation of generalizable interests as opposed to particular interests (e.g., Habermas, 1975). This is important in environmental decision-making because, as Dryzek (1987: 204) has stressed, ‘the human life-support capacity of natural systems is the generalizable interest par excellence.’ In other words, the ability of ecosystems to support human life is in everyone’s best interest and may even transcend all particular interests (e.g., profit-maximization).

Regarding influence, there are two good arguments for the public to co-determine decisions, or what is sometimes referred to as ‘consequential’ influence. A helpful distinction here is between ‘weak publics’ (those with ‘moral influence’ through deliberative opinion-formation without legal access to administrative decision-making) and ‘strong publics’ (those with legal access to decision-making forums) (Fraser, 1992; Habermas, 1996). It should be noted that while Habermas argues regional transnational institutions (e.g., the EU) can achieve deliberative democratic structures, he believes publics will remain weak in relation to global institutions (see Smith and Brassett, 2008: 80–81). The first argument for co-determination is normative and the second empirical. The normative argument, one made in a well-known essay by Arnstein (1969), posits that genuine public participation is marked by a redistribution of power. In other words, genuine public participation means that the public is the co-determining or determining agent in decision-making. Stated negatively, public participation without a redistribution of power is an ‘empty ritual’ that merely preserves the status quo by allowing those in power to feign legitimacy. While the degree of influence that would best fit participatory GEG is an open question, Arnstein (1969) reminds us that the answer should steer clear of ‘manipulative’ or ‘therapeutic’ models that merely attempt to educate the public, or ‘tokenistic’ models where the public is given a voice without power. The empirical consideration is more straightforward: research shows that motivation to participate is low if the public perceives that their views will have little influence on the decision and higher influence is essential for trust building (Beierle and Cayford, 2002; see also Held, 1996: 268). The possibility of strong public influence and the institutional formation question are co-dependent.

In addition to influence and engagement type, there is also the related consideration of when the public should participate. The global public could be involved early on during process design and problem formation, later during information gathering or, even later, to provide opinions about proposed decisions (US NRC, 1996, 2008). As stated by the US NRC (2008: 17), more participatory processes involve the public earlier in the process and at more points during the process. To only provide one example of why the ‘when’ of the procedural question matters, Paulson et al. (2012) found that only 5% of events related to indigenous rights at the 2008 WCC were sponsored by indigenous group organizations, with the majority being organized by the IUCN and Global North NGOs, which impacts the content and structure of deliberation. The ‘when’ of the procedural question is equally important as the ‘how.’

The evaluative question: What are the criteria for process and outcome evaluation?

How should the effectiveness and success of the participatory process be evaluated? The answer to this question is, of course, directly linked to the answer to the procedural question. However, they are not identical: because it is possible that an institution will engage the public for ‘tokenistic’ reasons (e.g., an agency who seeks public input merely for increased legitimacy without intending to use public input), it is necessary to develop frameworks to evaluate successful public participation (Rowe et al., 2004). Although the wide range of criteria put forth cannot be reviewed here (see Renn, 2008: 320–321), evaluative criteria would be just as important for a participatory GEG as for local participatory processes. For the revised Habermasian reasons described in an earlier section, fairness and competence are often used as criteria for evaluating the participatory process, though there are no established evaluative criteria in the literature because criteria are influenced by researcher values, success/failure can be defined by subjective impressions, different evaluation researchers use different methods,³ and statistical analysis is often unreliable due to a reliance on case studies (Rowe et al., 2004). In addition to varying definitions of an effective and successful process, evaluative criteria range from outcome-focused criteria to process-focused criteria (Rowe and Frewer, 2004).

One line of argumentation maintains that if decision-making is to be democratic, the participatory process selected should, in theory, be based on what the public wants from the process (Webler and Tuler, 2006). Based on 10 case studies, Webler and Tuler (2006) found that there is a surprising diversity in public views about participatory process options. This means present formulas may not be adequate. However, there was consensus on key issues, including inclusivity of all stakeholders, meaningful engagement with participants, ready and open information sharing, and willingness to attempt to meet multiple interests.

Conclusions

The first goal of this project was to explain how research on, and normative-theoretical justifications for, participatory environmental decision-making may improve current models of GEG, which many find inadequate for tackling global environmental problems. After addressing reasonable doubts about the proposal to democratize GEG, I argued that participatory models of environmental decision-making – specifically, deliberative approaches – are both normatively desirable and consistently effective. I then presented five questions that must be answered if we take seriously the possibility of scaling up public participation in environmental decision-making: (1) The social barriers question: What political-economic barriers stand in the way? (2) The institutional formation question: What institutions need (re)forming? (3) The ‘who’ question: Who should participate and how should they be selected? (4) The procedural question: How and when should the global public participate? (5) The evaluative question: What are the criteria for process and outcome evaluation? While I showed how existing research and ideas may help answer these questions, they are primarily left open. My hope is to help build a much-needed conversation between scholars studying GEG processes and those studying participatory and deliberative environmental decision-making (Dietz, 2013) by clarifying what the ‘problem of scale’ means from the perspective of analytic-deliberation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Thomas Dietz for helpful comments and criticisms. All mistakes are my own.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

ORCID iD

Ryan Gunderson

Author biography

Ryan Gunderson is an assistant professor of sociology and social justice studies in the Department of Sociology and Gerontology and Affiliate of the Institute for the Environment and Sustainability at Miami University. His research interests include environmental sociology, the sociology of technology, social theory, political economy, and animal studies.

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