Greening government11.4 Headline indicators of sustainable development in the UK- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Resource use
- Waste
- Bird population
- Fish stocks
- Ecological impacts of air pollution
- River quality
- Economic output
- Active community
- Crime
- Employment
- Workless households
- Childhood poverty
- Pensioner poverty
- Education
- Health inequality
- Mobility
- Social justice
- Environmental equality
- Well-being
Source:DEFRA (2005b: 12).stimulating and sustaining this political momentum might be to extend
the use of participatory mechanisms in the policy process at every level of
government.
Critical question 3
Can the Dutch NEPP model be transferred elsewhere?
◗ Democracy and participation
The central argument for extending democracy and participation in
decision-making, echoing the green case for democracy discussed in Chap-
ter3,isthat ordinary citizens must play a key role in the achievement of
sustainable development. As the Brundtland Report put it: ‘The law alone
cannot enforce the common interest. It principally needs community knowl-
edge and support, which entails greater public participation in the decisions
that affect the environment’ (WCED 1987 : 63). A complementary argument
holds that greater democracy will improve the quality of decision-making
about complex environmental matters because by listening to a full range
of voices, including environmental, consumer and citizen viewpoints, the
government is more likely to anticipate problems and build environmental
considerations into policy. This section briefly assesses the role of democracy
in environmental decision-making.
Most liberal democracies have long recognised that where major envi-
ronmental decisions mobilise deeply held competing interests, then demo-
cratic mechanisms may be the best form of conflict resolution. The pub-
lic inquiry is often used when controversial projects provoke conflict. In
Britain, for example, there have been several large public inquiries into pro-
posed nuclear installations (notably the THORP reprocessing plant at Wind-
scale (now Sellafield) and a pressurised water reactor at Sizewell B, Suffolk),