Catharina Landström - Environmental Participation: Practices engaging the public with science and governance

This is a book about some of the ways in which people engage with the natural environment, acting collectively in and through the institutions of science and democratic government. It is not about individual experiences of the natural environment, or cultural values. It is about how people not formally connected with science and government can get involved with the ways these institutions act in relation to the natural environment. Environmental participation is a notion intended to capture the diverse ways in which publics get involved with the work done in institutions to govern the societyenvironment relationship. The four social constituencies discussed in this bookscientists, decision makers, experts and publics all engage with the natural environment, in their own ways. Scientists, decision makers and experts involve in professional practices and environmental participation occurs when publics become involved with the activities of these professionals.

Coming to this phenomenon as a science and technology studies (STS) researcher my perspective on environmental participation originates in transdisciplinary research projects, involving collaborations of natural and social scientists and local publics . As an STS researcher, my work is firmly anchored in qualitative social science and my interest is in the many different ways in which we create knowledge about the natural environment. Working together with other social scientists, natural scientists and local people have shown me that we really can do more and better together. Collaborating with people from different backgrounds have forced a rethink of the way I do STS. In collaborative environmental projects it is not possible to study the creation of scientific knowledge and its role in society from the outside. All project members have to contribute to the shared goals. Doing STS differently in projects with environmental participation has provided the motivation for this book that focuses on practical experience, not societal dynamics.

Working with environmental issues in collaborative projects has also alerted me to the importance of place . Environmental experiences are always geographically specific, there is no general environment outside of the pages of academic journals and books. In reality it is always a particular environment, with its unique configurations of land, water , air, plants, temperature, animals, humidity and so on. STS traditionally focus on science that strives to generate general knowledge and technology that can be applied anywhere has not paid much attention to the specificity of place . Fortunately, I could learn from human geographers in transdisciplinary projects and in this book STS perspectives are supported by concepts from human geography. The hybrid environmental STS perspective resulting from this combination is the starting point for this book that attempts to tell a coherent story about environmental participation in practice.

In this introductory chapter I start by explaining why it is useful to consider environmental participation as a distinct area of public participation . After this I retell some of the origin stories of the field that are told by STS researchers. The existence of a multitude of such origin stories points to the fact that environmental participation is a novel and growing topic in current academic debates. However, this is not a book that aims to make an impact in these debates, hence, they will only be dipped into to offer some concepts that are useful to organise the presentations of environmental participation practices which are my main interest. After outlining STS concepts capturing environmental participation in science , decision making and expertise we will look at the discussion about participants . And, finally, the four subsequent chapters of the book are outlined.