Hartz-Karp, Janette

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188 ADDRESSING  CLIMATE  CHANGE:GOVERNANCE  AND  POLICY  ISSUESClimate Change Policy:The ‘Whole of Community’ ApproachHow Deliberative Democracy can ReshapePolicy-Making Processes to Improve ourCapacity to Address Climate ChangeWhile regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions needto be in place, this article says, if we are to make thetransition to a more sustainable world, it will require anenormous social and cultural shift in our attitudes, valuesand behaviours. It makes a case for involving ordinarypeople in the policy-making mechanism especially toaddress a complex problem like climate change, anddiscusses how ‘deliberative democracy’, whose three basictenets are representation and inclusion; deliberation; andinfluence, offers a real opportunity to reshape and reformthe policy-making processes so that they are not only morerelevant, but also more capable of bringing about thechange they intend.Janette Hartz-Karp12Source: www.newmatilda.com © New Matilda. Reprinted with permission.189Climate Change Policy: The ‘Whole of Community’ Approach...It is becoming increasingly apparent that we are facing humanity’s greatest adaptation challenge—the urgent need to reduce our oil dependency and avert catastrophicclimate change. While politicians would like us to believe that this ‘crisis’ can be fixedwith a silver bullet (such as nuclear power or carbon sequestration), many of us aredeeply sceptical that any one-dimensional approach will provide the solution. On thecontrary, there is a sense that we are enmeshed in a turbulent, complex system withno-one at the helm and no-one able to predict or plan for the consequences. Whilemany of us are willing to make important changes in our own lives, individual effortsalone are not enough. While we may hope that governments will regulate to reducegreenhouse gases, we are concerned that this will be too little, too late. Deep down, weknow that if we are to make the transition to a more sustainable world, it will require anenormous social and cultural shift in our attitudes, values and behaviours.Such a shift is unlikely to occur with a top down, unilateral edict. For any policydirected at climate change to be both successful and equitable, we will need to radicallyrethink how to involve citizens in the policy-making process.Governments do not have a good track record of involving citizens in policydevelopment. Although community consultation has been ensconced in regulation,especially in the environmental and planning portfolios, the result has usually beendisappointing. Rather than enabling citizens to add value to the policy-makingprocesses that affect them, community consultation has often backfired, withparticipants feeling outraged or disinterested and public sector staff feeling besieged.It is not difficult to see why this has happened.• Community consultation has been tacked onto our technocratic, managerialsystems of governance. Our society has become so specialised and focused oncredentials that much of the decision-making has been handed to ‘experts’, towhom we have given the power to determine what is legitimate knowledgeand what is not. While policymakers are prepared to accept the views of such‘experts’, the views of ordinary citizens are treated with suspicion.• Most forms of community consultation tend to attract those with vestedinterests. The ‘uninterested’ public generally has no incentive to participate—and when they do participate, their voices are rarely heard. Unsurprisinglytherefore, most consultation has failed to forge a communitarian outlook.190 ADDRESSING  CLIMATE  CHANGE:GOVERNANCE  AND  POLICY  ISSUES• Our hierarchical institutions ensure that the gateways to decision-makingare strongly guarded; those with extraordinary influence may enter butordinary citizens are excluded and often left in the dark. The community isfrequently cajoled to ‘have a say’, but when ordinary members of thecommunity do so, there is rarely any indication of how these views havebeen considered in policy development.The unintended consequences of bolting community engagement on to such asystem have been:• The alienation of ordinary citizens, who feel unable to participate in thedecisions that affect their lives.• The growth of highly successful, media-savvy lobby groups and ‘communitiesdoing it for themselves’ without the involvement of politicians and policydevelopers—or in spite of it.• The alienation of policy developers and decision-makers from what MichaelBooth and others (2006) have called ‘practical wisdom’—the experience,insight, understanding and local knowledge of ‘ordinary people’.To deal with the complexity of climate change and oil dependency, we need a radicalrethink of how to engage citizens in meaningful, influential dialogue. Climate changeis complex and unpredictable. In our current attempts to combat it, we resemble someonewho shoots at rapids and whirlpools and expects them to disappear. We need a newparadigm to guide our thinking if we are to stay on course. ‘Systems thinking’ may bethe best way to find points where we can intervene and ‘nudge’ the system towards amore sustainable direction. However, we will need to heed key principles:• In systems theory, elements of the system only interact with their neighbours(Finnigan 2005). Hence, top down policy solutions that aim to impact equallyon the whole population are not going to work. Much of the adaptation willneed to take place at a local level.• However, local level adaptation does not take into account what Portney (2005)has termed ‘the three deadly sins’ that can stop local decision-making fromleading to long-term sustainable solutions. These include the ‘Not In MyBackYard’ (‘NIMBY’) syndrome (e.g., ‘public transport is fine as long as the191Climate Change Policy: The ‘Whole of Community’ Approach...bus stop is not outside my house’); the tragedy of the commons (e.g., ‘I don’twant a new freeway outside my house either but I’m still going to buy a secondcar that will contribute to the need for more freeways’); and the difficulty ofreducing ‘ecological footprints’ when the full impact of that footprint is notfelt locally (e.g., when environmental impacts such as waste are shifted largedistances into someone else’s ‘backyard’). These ‘sins’ represent the system-wide application of individualistic attitudes and behaviours that work againstthe common good.Awareness of ‘the three deadly sins’ alerts us to the danger of throwing out oneinadequate world view of technocratic, managerial decision-making for anotherpotentially inadequate world view of local interest decision-making. Instead, we needto devise ways for the local to be ensconced within a broader, communitarian frame.A second critical feature of complex systems is the interdependence of the elements.The interrelationships between people, politics, power and the natural and economicworld will be critical to significant change. Meaningful discourse across a number oftraditional divides will also be crucial; including public/private, local/national/international and economic/social/environmental. The focus will need to be onreplacing false dichotomies with meaningful attempts at resolution.However, to achieve this, ordinary people will need to practise systems thinking.This is not easy, and cannot be done alone. It will be important for all of us to see theworld from the perspective of both like-minded people and those with differentviews; to understand complex systems we need to bring in as many differentperspectives as possible. We’re going to need to grasp a new principle—we are all onthe same side, playing the same game.We are beginning to see opportunities for this kind of inclusive and influentialengagement through a nascent social movement: Deliberative Democracy.Deliberative Democracy combines three basic tenets (Carson & Hartz-Karp 2005)1) ‘Representation’ and ‘Inclusion’: As in Athenian times, the opportunity exists fora representative group of ordinary citizens, of the population, to come togetherto deliberate on issues important to society. However, this time thosedeliberations need to include citizens regardless of gender, age, wealth, educationrace and religion. Random sampling is still the best known method of inclusion.192 ADDRESSING  CLIMATE  CHANGE:GOVERNANCE  AND  POLICY  ISSUES2) ‘Deliberation’: Disparate people have the opportunity to engage in egalitariandiscourse on a public issue, taking into account multiple views andcomprehensive, balanced information. The hope is that through respectfuldialogue, participants will solve problems creatively and find common groundthat reflects the common good.3) ‘Influence’: This tenet requires a reversion back to democratic basics—heedingthe informed will of the people, particularly when their ideas have been testedout against others, in an environment that seeks to discover aggregate,communitarian viewpoints.Pioneering work in deliberative democracy has been undertaken over the pastfive years in Western Australia (WA), particularly under the auspices of the Ministryfor Planning and Infrastructure. Initiatives including Citizens’ Juries, DeliberativeSurveys, 21st Century Town Dialogues and Multi Criteria Analysis Conferences havebeen implemented to deal with complex local issues. Each technique depends ongetting a representative/inclusive group of participants to deliberate on an issue,taking all viewpoints into account, and for their deliberations to have influence ondecision-makers.One such initiative, ‘Dialogue with the City’, demonstrated how a deliberationwhich commenced with a broad scale goal—‘making Perth the world’s most liveablecity’—could then be activated at the local level, with local communities determininghow best to achieve that goal.‘Dialogue with the City’ was an extensive engagement process that started with acommunity survey sent to a random sample of 8,000 citizens to determine their keyissues and concerns. The process also involved an interactive web site, a series offeature articles on issues facing the city in the state newspaper, a commercial televisionprogram outlining various scenarios for the future that was broadcast during primetime, special listening sessions with youth, indigenous people, and those from nonEnglish speaking backgrounds, and a competition for primary and secondary studentsto describe their vision for Perth in 2030. It culminated with a ‘21st Century Dialogue’involving 1,100 participants seated at small facilitated tables with networkedcomputers. Participants deliberated and prioritised their values and objectives, andusing a regional planning game, determined the way they wanted their metropolis to193Climate Change Policy: The ‘Whole of Community’ Approach...grow into the future. Over the following six months, more than 100 participantsworked together to create a Community Plan known as ‘Network City’, which wassubmitted to Cabinet and accepted. Local Governments were then funded to rundeliberations in their own communities to determine how the framework could beimplemented at a local level (Hartz-Karp 2005).‘Dialogue with the City’ demonstrated the possibilities for reshaping ourpolicy-making processes. Rather than the top down ‘expert’ plan created by theDepartment that had been gathering dust on the shelves, there is now a CommunityPlan supported by local and State government, community and industry. When itappeared that this Plan too might disappear into history with the polarising impactof a forthcoming State election, it was the people involved who took up the mediachallenge and ensured that it lost traction as an election issue (Hartz-Karp 2005).In his submission to the Senate Inquiry into Australia’s Future Oil Supply (2006),the author Brian Fleay makes a key recommendation:Processes for inclusive community and stakeholder dialogue based on democraticparticipation with attention to social justice are essential for a successful transition toa world ‘beyond oil’.In explaining this recommendation, Fleay outlines the principles upon which theWA deliberative democracy initiatives have been based and which he contends arecritical to meaningful civic engagement:• Government must genuinely listen to divergent voices.• Stakeholders are to listen to others in the same way.• Governments must ensure the engagement is reflective of the community—that the aspirations of special interest groups are calibrated against a broadcross section of the community.• Governments to be open with the process of engagement and with its sharingof information.• Governments to be genuinely committed to embracing the outcomes of theprocess.194 ADDRESSING  CLIMATE  CHANGE:GOVERNANCE  AND  POLICY  ISSUES• Establish continuous feedback links with participants to ensure the broadercommunity stays engaged.• Leadership must reflect and implement these principles’.Pilot projects like those in Western Australia (which have now extended beyondthe Planning and Infrastructure portfolio), show that deliberative democracy offers areal opportunity to reshape and reform our policy-making processes so they are notonly more relevant, but more capable of bringing about the change they intend.Based on the success of previous projects, an extensive and innovative deliberativedemocracy process is about to commence in Western Australia. It is aimed atsupporting participation and innovation that will help Western Australia to becomea global leader in addressing climate change and achieving sustainability1 within ageneration. Once again, it will combine local with broad scale adaptations, but thistime, it will begin at the local level, encouraging citizens to develop good ideas intoproposals using online deliberation in self managed teams. A Foundation is beingcreated to fund the most promising local ideas, creating demonstration projects. Theprocess will culminate with a large scale 21st Century Dialogue of several thousandparticipants working in small teams with the aid of networked computers to determinethe broad scale initiatives that will work best for the State.This initiative, together with other deliberative democracy mechanisms, has thepotential to significantly reform our current policy-making processes, allowing us toenhance our capability of dealing with the turbulence of the current world. It is easyto understand why deliberative democracy has resurfaced now. The question will bewhether it will take root and spread.(Dr. Janette Hartz-Karp is renowned nationally and internationally for her innovativework in community engagement and deliberative democracy. She is currently the inauguralWA Government Associate Professor Community Planning at the Institute of Sustainabilityand Technology Policy (ISTP) Murdoch University, Western Australia. She can be reachedat j.hartz-karp@curtin.edu.au).1 Sustainability has been defined as meeting the needs of current and future generations through an integration ofenvironmental protection, social advancement and economic prosperity (WA State Sustainability Strategy).195Climate Change Policy: The ‘Whole of Community’ Approach...ReferencesBooth, M (2006) ‘Public Engagement and Practical Wisdom’ in S. Paulin (ed.)Community Voices: Creating Sustainable Spaces, Perth, Western Australia: University ofWestern Australia Press, pp. 120-26.Carson, L & Hartz-Karp, J (2005) ‘Adapting and Combining Deliberative Designs:Juries, Polls, and Forums’ in J. Gastil, & Levine P (eds) The Deliberative DemocracyHandbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century,San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 120-138.Finnigan, J, (2005) ‘The Science of Complex Systems’, Australasian Science, June, pp. 1-5.Hartz-Karp, J (2005) ‘A Case Study in Deliberative Democracy: Dialogue with the City’,Journal of Public Deliberation, Vol 1, Issue 1, Article 6.Portney, K (2005) Civic Engagement and Sustainable Cities in the United States, PublicAdministration Review, September/October, Vol 65, No 5, pp. 577-589.Fleay, J (2005) Submission to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport CommitteeInquiry into Australia’s Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels, pp. 1-42.

Climate Change Policy: The ‘Whole of Community’ Approach How Deliberative Democracy can Reshape Policy Making Processes to Improve our Capacity to Address Climate Change

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Climate Change Policy: The ‘Whole of Community’ Approach How Deliberative Democracy can Reshape Policy Making Processes to Improve our Capacity to Address Climate Change

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