Politics and Public Participation

[Jim Creighton <jim@CreightonandCreighton.com>]

Like Greg I'm very uncomfortable with the notion that polluters are evil people who should sit in silence while they are sentenced for their evil deeds. This casts environmental disputes into a theological "good guys/bad guys" mind set that I think it very polarizing, and gets in the way of getting the cleanup done.

In fact -- and this may be an introduction to tomorrow's discussion as well -- it may even be time to question the whole regulatory mind set.

A friend of mine is Deputy Premier for Environment of a Canadian Province. He tells me that they have learned that the regulatory mind-set gets in the way of cleanup. They believe they've gotten much more cleanup done by developing cleanup agreements with all major firms putting emissions into the environment. They much prefer this to the regulatory approach because they can put priority on those cleanup issues that have the greatest impact on the environment, and they can look across all media (air, soil, water) at the same time. They believe that in the regulatory framework, with arbitrary standards that have to be met, the cleanup dollars are often spent to meet a standard that -- in the context of that particular company and province -- isn't even a high priority issue. They'd much rather be able to target the plan at the issues that really make a difference. They also believe that because they did work in a collaborative manner, they got a jump on all the other provinces who spent the first ten years after the regulations were passed in court, not doing cleanup. By working collaboratively, their cleanup started happening right away.

I suspect there's truth in both approaches, and certainly there are some companies who would not cleanup without a hammer. But I personally believe that the creating villains is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

One of the key issues in collaborative processes is there has to be an acknowledgement of the right of all parties to be at the table. For many years, companies didn't want to give environmentalists a seat at the table. We may finally have overcome that. But it doesn't work to then turn around and say that companies don't also have a right to be at the table.

Jim