Risky business: Engaging the public on sea level rise and inundation

To examine whether U.S. public opinion may become as sharply polarized on adaptation responses as it has been on mitigation policies, we surveyed a sample of urban coastal residents in Maryland (n = 378). We then tested the impact of a community deliberative event (n = 40) with small-group sea level rise discussions as a depolarization strategy. Cultural worldviews which contribute to politically polarized beliefs about climate were predictive of perceptions of sea level rise risk. Living close to flooding hazards also significantly predicted respondents’ perceptions of household or neighborhood risks, but not of risks to the entire county. The event significantly increased topic knowledge among all participants and, among those with a worldview predisposing them to lower risk perceptions, significantly increased problem identification and concern about impacts. These results suggest small-group deliberation focused on local problem-solving may be an effective tool for reducing the polarizing effects of cultural worldviews on decision-making.     

Energy Futures: Five Dilemmas of the Practice of Anticipatory Governance

Public participation has become standard practice in both environmental communication and science and technology studies, with such engagement increasingly moving “upstream” to the early stages of technological development. One framework for these activities is anticipatory governance, in which foresight and public and stakeholder engagement are used to reflect on—and direct—the impacts of new technology. In this essay we draw on our experience of anticipatory governance, in the shape of the “NanoFutures” project on energy futures, to present a reflexive analysis of engagement and deliberation. We draw out five tensions of the practice of deliberation on energy technologies. Through tracing the lineages of these dilemmas, we discuss some of the implications of these tensions for the practice of civic engagement and deliberation in a set of questions for this community of practitioner-scholars.