Citizen Participation Approaches in Environmental Health
Environmental health is a very complex topic, as a whole range of factors are involved, many with high risks and uncertainty. The combination of complexity and uncertainty requires a different approach to support decision-making than traditional science h
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Citizen Participation Approaches in Environmental Health Sonja Grossberndt and Hai-Ying Liu Abstract Environmental health is a very complex topic, as a whole range of factors are involved, many with high risks and uncertainty. The combination of complexity and uncertainty requires a different approach to support decision-making than traditional science has been offering to date. The last decades have shown that in order to support knowledge-based decision-making and to solve problems, knowledge and experience from different actors have to be taken into account through participatory approaches, including both traditional science and the general public. The overall objective of this chapter is thus to demonstrate the role of public participation in the field of environment and health. We define the role of and present common approaches for public participation as well as elaborate further on two rather new approaches: Citizen Science and Citizens’ Observatories. At the end, we discuss some of the challenges involved and identify the development needs in public participation. Keywords Public participation • Citizen science • Citizens’ observatories • Environment and health • Environmental governance • Decision-making
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Why Public Participation?
Health can be subject to a range of factors. The World Health Organization (WHO) defined the following determinants of health that can influence the health condition of each individual to a stronger or lesser degree: income and social status, education, physical environment, social support networks, genetics, health services, and gender (WHO 2015a). We know that a diversity of environmental factors can harm human health, such as air pollution from burning fossil fuels and biomass (WHO 2015b), noise from transportation (WHO 2015c) or use of pesticides in agriculture (WHO
S. Grossberndt (*) • H.-Y. Liu Department of Environmental Impacts and Economics (IMPEC), NILU – Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 J.M. Pacyna, E.G. Pacyna (eds.), Environmental Determinants of Human Health, Molecular and Integrative Toxicology, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-43142-0_11
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2015d), etc. On the other hand, different environmental factors have the potential to influence our health into the opposite direction, such as the benefit of urban green spaces (WHO 2015c) or the intake of fruit and vegetables (WHO 2015d). Environmental health is a very complex topic, as a whole range of factors with to some extent high risks and the predominance of uncertainty determinate it. The combination of complexity and uncertainty requires a different approach to both communicate scientific results, risks and to support decision-making than traditional science is offering. Over hundreds of years, scientists have erected an ivory tower, keeping the ignorant public with their negative attitude towards science outside (e.g., Frewer 2004; Ahteensuu 2012). Instead, the public should be fed only with bit
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