1. Public Participation in CEE: Pitfalls and Challenges Capacity Building in Implementation of the Environmental Acquis at the Local and Regional Level Multi Country Workshop, Prague 7-9 June Jiri Dusik REC Environmental Assessment Team

2. Presentation outline Changing management of EIA process
Notifying “publics”
Feedback mechanism
Account of comments
Will capacity building help?
Going beyond procedure - concerns around valuation and analysis of impacts
Observations raised within Sofia EIA Initiative and REC Public Participation programme.

3. Changing management of EIA process
Public scoping “ regarded too advanced tool” in 1990s
Increased use internal scoping process through
expanding two EIA tier-systems
transposition of the EC EIA directive
Public scoping unfortunately not feasible
too many EIAs - administration lacks capacity
only if required by international legal instrument (amendments to Aarhus Conv. or EC EIA Directive)

4. Notifying “publics”
Extensive definitions of “public” and “public concerned” by Aarhus Conv. and Directive 2003/35/EC
To be notified individually or by public notice
Effective notification often difficult
Three means sometimes required – local notice boards, www sites (central registers) and at least one locally appropriate means determined by respective municipality
Individual notification – “please forward this notice to anyone who may be interested”

5. Feedback mechanism
Public hearing - often legally required - perfect tool to expose conflicts (their original objective)
Move towards more collaborative means – workshops, etc.
Simple rules:
Seating arrangement DO matter
Cut hearing into logically separate blocks, each followed by discussion
Enable limited questioning back

6. Account of comments
discriminative treatment of comments by authorities and public concerned – reflects traditional administrative processes
will be limited by new access to justice provisions (Aarhus Conv /35/EC - Art. 10a,b)
Simple rules for non-discriminative treatment of comments:
Annex all comments, give them number (1,2,3) and highlight and code number key substantive arguments
Cluster similar substantive arguments into categories (A, B, C,)
Respond to these arguments category by category

7. Will capacity building help?
No …. but can stimulate incremental reforms:
Official guidelines (rules of notification, public feedback mechanisms and treatment of comments)
More emphasis on PP in accreditation systems (for EA experts and within professional training of public administration)
Position papers (benefits of public participation)
Annual conference (like IAIA) to benchmark good practice
PP Awards

8. Concerns around valuation and analysis of impacts
Evaluating importance of impact – are simple system of determining regional importance (local, regional, national, int.l) more effective the sophisticated valuation techniques (aggregate social importance, willingness to pay, etc.)?
Multicriteria analysis - is it helpful to shrink logical discussion about impacts into irrational discourse on numbers?
Social and economic impacts – usually most important to population - should EIA/IPPC help to properly analyze them?