From Environmental Campaigns to Advancing the Public Dialog: Environmental Communication for Civic Engagement

This essay examines the claims of environmental identity campaigns regarding the issue of climate change. Identity campaigns are based on the idea that more effective environmental messages developed through the application of cognitive science by professional communications experts can favorably influence public opinion, and thus support legislative action to remedy this issue. Based on a review of the sociological and psychological literature regarding social change and mobilization, I argue that while this approach may offer short term advantages, it is most likely incapable of developing the large scale mobilization necessary to enact the massive social and economic changes necessary to address global warming. Specifically, theoretical and empirical research on the role of the public sphere, civil society and social movements shows that democratic civic engagement is core to successful social change efforts. However, identity campaigns focus on a communications process that centers on elite led one way communications, which falls to allow for any form of civic engagement and public dialogue. This undermines the creation of a democratic process of change and reinforces the professionalization of political discourse, leading to a weakening of the mobilization capacity over this issue of global warming. The essay concludes with the outlines of an environmental communication process that aims at enhancing civic engagement and democratic decision making.     

Land Community Participation: A New “Public” Participation Model

This essay presents a new “public” participation model that responds to contemporary participation problems. The author extends criticism of a false nature/culture dualism and responds to calls for pragmatic ways to expand participation to an expressive land community. The essay draws on existing scholarship that treats a range of direct to indirect forms of participation in environmental decision-making to argue for and explicate the land community participation model (LCP). The model features participation, power, and chronemics along three distinct and intersecting continua that bind and constitute participatory communication in environmental decision-making. Combining professional field experiences with rhetorical criticism, the author pilots the LCP model in a wilderness dispute resolution case study and suggests additional ways for using LCP as an interpretive guide and design tool in pursuit of environmental democracy.     

Public Participation as Participatory Communication in Environmental Policy Decision-Making: From Concepts to Structured Conversations

This essay attempts to distinguish between traditional notions of public participation and participatory communication, particularly as currently practiced in non-US settings. In addition, specific tools for facilitating participatory communication are identified and discussed. The essay is based on the author's extensive experience as a conflict mediator and public participation consultant and scholar. For the past 15 years, the author has served as a consultant on matters of environmental conflict resolution, public participation, and community-based collaboration for federal and state agencies and NGOs, including the USDA Forest Service, the USDI Bureau of Land Management, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, and the Nature Conservancy.     

英国环境管理的公众参与及其对中国的启示

鼓励公众参与环境管理是当今国际社会重要的政策导向之一。本文从法律赋予公民环境权、环保团体在环境保护中发挥重要。作用、环境影响评价中强调公众参与三方面来介绍英国公众参与环境管理的一些做法，探讨其对中国环境管理中公众参与的启示。     

Creating a Place for Environmental Communication Research in Sustainability Science

Environmental communication scholarship is critical to the success of sustainability science. This essay outlines three pressing areas of intersection between the two fields. First, environmental communication scholarship on public participation processes is essential for sustainability science's efforts to link knowledge with action. Second, sustainability science requires collaborations across diverse institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Environmental communication can play a vital role in reorganizing the production and application of disciplinary knowledge. Third, science communication bridges environmental communication and sustainability science and can move communication processes away from one-way transmission models toward engaged approaches. The essay draws on Maine's Sustainability Solutions Initiative to illustrate key outcomes of a large project that has integrated environmental communication into sustainability science.     

中国环境影响评价中公众参与存在的问题与对策

公众参与是环境影响评价中的重要内容,在环境影响评价中发挥着特殊作用。针对目前中国环境影响评价中公众参与的实施状况,提出了公众参与意识不强、参与形式单一、信息公开不充分和公众意见未受到足够重视等一系列问题,并从宏观及具体操作上提出加强环保宣传教育、采取多样化的参与形式、建立完善的环境信息公开制度和认真对待公众反馈意见等相关的有效对策。     

Speaking of Risk: Matters of Context

The risk communication (RC) field is dominated by the practical and normative socio-technical aim of improving communication on risk (CR), especially from the viewpoint of regulatory agencies and government administrations. Despite some change of scope and orientation over the past 30 years, two theoretical ideas have persisted: the subjective–objective risk dichotomy and the transmission (also known as code) model of communication. This theoretical legacy makes context a blind spot in RC. The study of CR themes should consider (1) the socially constructed nature of risk and (2) communication as a situated social practice of information sharing. Results of a case study of public participation in a controversial railway tunnel project in the south of Sweden, offer lessons for future research pointing to crucial contextual dimensions of CR. It is argued that the variable ontology of risk, the constitutive nature of power relationships and the practical rationality of actors must be taken into account in research on the social CR.     

政府环境规制下的企业治理动机与公众参与外部性研究

本文构建了多主体参与环境治理的动态一般均衡模型,进行了政府环境规制下的企业内生治理动机研究与公众参与外部性的分析,模拟结果显示,企业内生治理动机、社会福利等不同目标下对应的最优环境税率存在明显差异。随着政府环境税率的不断上升,企业环境技术研发投入会先上升后下降,当环境研发投入水平达到最大时,政府所征收的环境税完全激发了企业的内生治理动机。在环境税率提高的初期,研发引致的环境技术进步使得企业的全要素生产率得以提高,经济产出不断增加,社会福利水平得到增进。当环境税率上升到一定数值之后,环境税带来的资源配置扭曲效应高于环境负外部性的改善效应,对于经济而言,环境税成为扭曲性税收,并会降低社会福利水平。因此,应在保证经济增长和社会福利增进的同时有效激励企业内在治理动机,将环境税率设定在适当水平。本文还模拟了政府与公众参与的组合对于社会福利的影响情况,与仅考虑政府环境规制政策的情形相对比,政府征收环境税和社会组织参与的共同作用可以使得社会福利提高,充分表明了公众参与环境治理存在着正外部性。环境社会组织在一定程度上可以降低政府信息不对称等因素,改善环境治理状况。环境组织的参与还能够使得环境税所带来的环境治理改善和生产效率提高的双重红利逐渐释放。因此,在发挥政府规制与市场调节功能的同时,充分发挥环境社会组织和公众在环境治理中的作用,是改善环境质量、提高公众福利的重要方式。     

影响农村公众环保参与程度的主要因子辨析

公众参与是环境保护工作的基础,通过环保公众参与可以弥补政府和市场在环境保护中的不足,减少农业环境管理的费用。为了探讨影响农村公众参与的主要因子,为提高农村公众参与水平提供政策依据,用问卷的形式对无锡市大浦镇550人进行调查。问卷设计8个项目,共计24个问题,收集了农村公众环境意识和公众参与情况的相关数据。对调查结果运用逐步多元回归分析的方法进行统计分析,提取了5个影响农村公众参与最为显著的因子,根据偏回归系数的大小,依次为环保知识水平、环保关注程度、文化程度、环保法律意识、污染感受程度建立了逐步回归方程,根据回归分析结果和大浦镇实际情况,提出把提高大浦镇居民环保知识水平、环保关注程度、环保法律意识以及加强公众对污染的感受程度作为近期提高公众参与水平的快速、有效的方法,为解决该镇农业非点源污染提供了参考。〖     

E-participation for environmental sustainability in transitional urban China

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs), e-participation is a tool that promotes the inclusion of the public in participative and deliberative decision-making processes, thus contributing to a transformation of the interaction between government and citizens in environmental governance and sustainable development. In a number of Chinese cities, citizens increasingly draw on ICTs to promote environmental sustainability and to encourage community-based actions aimed to address various environmental concerns. The potential success of e-participation and the role of ICTs in China has, however, not been well explored. The objective of this study is to understand the role that ICTs can play in promoting public participation about environmental sustainability issues in urban China. Based on an online survey with 630 respondents, the study aims to: (1) analyze what public motivations, perception/attitudes and actions drive environmental e-participation; (2) identify barriers to e-participation, and (3) assess the different applications and functions of ICT for citizen participation in environmental sustainability. The analysis illustrates how ICTs have helped the public to obtain sensitive information about sustainability issues, to mobilize people and to gain media coverage for their actions. The central finding is that new technologies have taken citizen engagement to new heights online. More specifically, the age of ICTs has unleashed a stronger public voice on environmental governance and sustainability issues in urban China, which does not go unnoticed by the Chinese state authorities.     

转型期的资源与环境管理：基于市场-政府-社会三角制衡的分析

在经济体制转型期，伴随着经济的持续快速增长，我国出现了前所未有的资源破坏和环境恶化现象，严重制约未来经济社会的可持续发展。由此，构建解决经济发展需求与资源环境供给矛盾的有效机制，成为政界及学术界共同关注的重点课题。从中国经济转型期存在的主要资源与环境问题分析入手，提出资源环境管理制度构建的理想框架，通过进一步评价我国在市场机制、政府干预、公众参与3个方面的经验及教训，分别提出未来改进的方向。研究结果表明：“市场—政府—社会”三足鼎立的制度结构是我国资源环境管理制度构建的理想目标，也是适应世界资源环境保护发展的潮流。最后提出协调政府和市场作用、构建市场运作平台、营造公众参与氛围等方面的政策建议。     

Muting the Voice of the Local in the Age of the Global: How Communication Practices Compromised Public Participation in India's Allain Dunhangan Environmental Impact Assessment

Public participation is widely lauded as a way to make environmental decisions more democratic, to improve their quality, and to enhance their legitimacy. Scholars and citizens around the world repeatedly complain, however, that public participation frequently serves primarily as a pro forma exercise to defend predetermined decisions rather than as a meaningful opportunity for the affected public to influence decision-making. These critiques persist despite considerable research suggesting ways to improve the quality of public participation. This essay explores this problem by analyzing citizen involvement in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes for the Allain Duhangan hydropower project in northern India. It describes how meaningful public involvement was compromised—despite repeated objections by citizens and independent consultants—by four communication practices: (1) failing to provide adequate access to information; (2) predetermining EIA outcomes by controlling the definition of issues (“definitional hegemony”); (3) privileging scientific/technical discourse; (4) utilizing “consultative” forms of communication that promote one-way flows of information rather than more interactive forms that encourage the joint construction of information and values. This study further argues that these practices persist because they serve as acts of power that privilege dominant actors and interests in the larger socio-political context. This analysis thus suggests that altering communication practices that compromise the quality of public participation may require attending to the interaction between communication practices, relations of power, and the larger socio-political context in which public participation takes place.     

三峡库区环境安全保护法律实施机制探讨

继长江截流之后，三峡库区首期蓄水，举世瞩目的三峡工程正在兴建。结合充分的社会调查和区域经济、环境管理等相关理论，详细论述了三峡库区环境安全保护现行法律及其实施机制，深入剖析了现行实施机制包括法的遵守、法的执行、法的适用和法律监督等方面的弊端，提出了完善库区环境安全法律实施机制的建议：给守法主体提供环保教育和技术援助，完善公众参与机制，积极获取公众支持，以完善库区法的遵守；建立科学、高效、统一的库区环境安全管理体制，明确三峡库区各行政执法机关的职责，建立行政执法公示制，健全执法主体的服务机制，建立绿色信息网等以完善库区法的执行；推广环境群体诉讼，扩大环境诉讼被诉对象，改革环境诉讼费用预付方式等以完善库区法的适用。     

Nature,Crisis, Risk,Science, and Society: What is Our Ethical Responsibility?

In his keynote address, Robert Cox raised key questions, many of which force us to consider the larger question of the role of academics in society. The authors respond by suggesting that environmental communication, like other communication studies, is inherently normative and that environmental communication scholarship is closely aligned to risk as a centerpiece to crisis analysis. The authors discuss the productive connections among science, communication and sound public policy that make society more fully functional, including the formation of effective public policy through science that is normative while seeking objectivity, evaluating and symbolizing motives in discourse, acknowledging uncertainty and acceptable uncertainty, and that material and symbolic dimensions of the environment are interdependent. Thus, such studies focus on the ethics of environment and must balance sound science and cultural considerations.     

减少环境污染排放的机制与控制政策

随着经济的快速发展,环境污染逐步恶化,成为可持续发展的"瓶颈"。落实科学发展观,减少和控制环境污染排放,必须剖析影响环境污染排放的主要因素及其作用机理。在分析经济发展和环保制度安排对环境污染排放影响机理的基础上,构建计量经济模型,用1999～2004年全国30个省、直辖市、自治区（不包括香港、澳门、台湾和西藏）的混合截面数据进行实证研究,分析导致我国现阶段环境污染恶化的主要因素。初步研究结果表明：经济活动水平、产业结构、城市化水平加剧了环境的污染,而环保投资和公众参与、规章制度及政府环境管理制度则是减少环境污染的重要变量。最后,提出运用综合管理手段、加快产业结构与布局调整、转变经济增长方式、实现环保制度创新等控制环境污染的政策建议。〖     

The quest for environmental justice in China: citizen participation and the rural–urban network against Panguanying’s waste incinerator

Environmental distribution conflicts (EDCs) related to the construction and operation of waste incinerators have become commonplace in China. This article presents a detailed case study of citizen opposition to an incinerator in the village of Panguanying, Hebei Province. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork, we show how this case was notable, because it transcended the local arena to raise bigger questions about environmental justice, particularly in relation to public participation in siting decisions, after villagers exposed fraudulent public consultation in the environmental impact assessment. An informal network between villagers and urban environmental activists formed, enabling the Panguanying case to exert influence far beyond the village locality. This network was critical in creating wider public debate about uneven power and substandard public participation in siting disputes, a central feature in many Chinese EDCs. By transcending local specificities and exposing broader, systemic inadequacies, this case became instrumental in supporting “strong sustainability”.     

Resource and Environmental Issues in Transitional China： A Perspective from the Interaction Among Market, Government and Society

Along with the rapid growth of economy in the postreform period after 1979,China has faced severe problems of resource overusing and environmental degradation which would threaten the sustainable development of economy and society.This article explores an effective mechanism of managing resource and environment in China.It examines some major resource and environmental issues,and constructs a framework of institution innovation to cover three sectors(government,market and society).In addition,the article analyzes their experience and evaluation in resource management and environmental conservation during the transitional period.We argue that the combination of market regulation,government intervention and public participation is an effective way of allocating resource and protecting environment.Some suggestions are put forward to balance the relationship between them,including coordinating role of government and market,building platform for market operation and creating an atmosphere of public participation.     

论《环境保护法》的修改与环境法律制度的完善

建立良好、和谐一致的环境法律体系是我国环境法制建设的重要基础。《环境保护法》确立的环境目标责任制、排污收费制度、环境影响评价制度、限期治理制度和公众参与制度等制度已经不能适应新的市场经济体制和科学发展观的要求,需要变革与创新。许多新的行之有效的管理制度亟待上升为法律制度。因此,《环境保护法》扮演着整合性环境立法的角色,修订时应持资源、环境与生态的整体观念。基于调研和理论思考,提出6点建议：提升立法层次、增强法律权威;确立环境优先、追求社会至善;制约行政权力、明确政府责任;提倡环境自治、保障公众参与;突破诉讼瓶颈、鼓励公益诉讼;理顺权责关系、提高管理效率,以期为《环境保护法》的修改和环境法律制度的完善提供参考。〖