Engaging the Public

This week in class we were asked: "Should public managers and environmental planners engage the public when they know that the public’s knowledge is limited about the science of an environmental issue? If so, how would you go about doing that? If not, what are the consequences of not including them?"

Public managers and environmental planners should absolutely engage the public with environmental issues even if the public’s knowledge is limited about the science of an environmental issue. By nature, environmental issues are public issues and affect broad populations so I think in a democratic society, the public should always be informed and involved in making decisions. In a case where the public is not involved in decision making and just needs to be informed about an environmental issue then the public should be informed via print or some other medium in a way that breaks down complex subject matter for the audience to digest. If the public knowledge is both limited about the science of an environmental issue and they are involved with decision making regarding the issue then they need to be effectively educated on the subject and presented the different sides to the decision and the impact each decision could have.

Unfortunately, most of the time different interest groups do the educating on an environmental issue that the public is voting on often presenting the information in a way that is confusing to the public in order to achieve their objectives. For instance, a business that would prefer a chemical not to be categorized as toxic will present only one side of the issue, for instance how categorizing the chemical as toxic will have a negative impact on the industry and cause prices of products that depend on this chemical to go up, but will not present the dangers to public health that are affiliated with not labeling the chemical as toxic. This may not be the best example since the public will likely not be involved in categorizing chemicals as toxic or non-toxic, but it gets my point across that interest groups are not the best educators. Instead, I propose that the EPA or a public agency should be required to put out appropriate and effective educational materials regarding environmental issues. I emphasize effective educational materials because I think many times the information regarding complex subject matter is not scaffolded appropriately - in other words presented in a way where the public can digest starting from the basics - and instead is presented in a complex manner which alienates most of the public from getting involved.

If the public is not informed and unbiasly educated on environmental issues that they are to make decisions about, this will end up affected the general public negatively. Regarding issues that the public is not involved in decision making for, it still has a right to be informed since all environmental issues are by nature public issues. Furthermore, even if the U.S. public is not directly involved with a specific environmental issue they still should be in the know since they have the ability and right to get involved in interest groups to influence decisions and it votes in representatives who are involved with the direct decisions.