Procedural inclusion by itself increases acceptance of adverse environmental decisions

Evidence

There is also an independent value to public participation wholly apart from its ability to make substantive differences. The greater the participation the more likely it is that those who are affected will be willing to accept the decision, including the consequences adverse to them. Inclusion itself is meaningful to people, wholly apart from the decision that results. Environmental lawmaking is, for reasons previously detailed, inherently and unavoidably controversial. There are distributional winners and losers. For some persons, the choice between one environmental standard or another poses no less than a choice between competing moral absolutes. Public participation provides a means to reduce the polarization and conflict that environmental lawmaking otherwise seems to attract. Feeling that one was involved in crafting the policy ultimately arrived at can make the risks ultimately imposed seem less involuntary in nature and can foster public trust in the process of government decisionmaking. “The most tragic images of environmental harm are those involving hapless victims, those who without sufficient knowledge or involvement, and without exercising choice, have had risk and damage imposed upon them.” — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 831

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The core public-participation rationale ties to the immodesty and sacrifice essays’ themes about consent and voice in moral communities.
• XREF: connects to: Information disclosure changes agency behavior through good-faith career staff — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 395; Regulatory process capture by developers predates formal public participation; Environmental-law suits succeed by attacking permitting procedure rather than outcomes — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 557 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Broad inclusion in decisions improves outcomes and fairness #corroborates (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 330
• Legitimacy arises from inclusion plus deliberation filtered through reasons #qualifies (0.78) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 16
• Misrecognition and political exclusion structurally block poor communities’ participation in environmental decisions #expands (0.75) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 248
• Environmental injustice includes both disproportionate risk and exclusion from decisions #expands (0.75) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 200
• Ecological reflexivity opens democratic decision-making to excluded environmental viewpoints #complicates (0.72) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 650
• Global environmental justice movements target misrecognition, exclusion, and incapacity alongside inequity #expands (0.72) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 298