Noise and newts: public engagement in the UK and Sweden

Environmental Impact Assessment Review 23 (2003) 17 – 37 www.elsevier.com/locate/eiar

Noise and newts: public engagement in the UK and Sweden Linda Soneryd a,*, Sue Weldon b,1 ¨ rebro University, SE-701 82 O ¨ rebro, Sweden Man-Technology-Environment Research Centre, O b Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Furness College, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA 1 4YG, UK

a

Received 1 February 2002; received in revised form 1 July 2002; accepted 1 August 2002

Abstract There are many incentives to improve public participation involvement in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and public inquiries not least because the conflicts arising from protests against new developments are practical problems that need to be solved. This paper addresses the ambition of promoting public participation in EIA. In doing this, it illustrates how legal or quasi-legal processes, such as EIA and public inquiries facilitate or restrain public involvement. Two cases of airport developments are ¨ rebro, Sweden and compared: the EIA process for the planned extension of the airport in O the public inquiry process for the planned extension of the airport in Manchester, UK. The concluding section discusses how the requirement to achieve efficient public involvement could be met. D 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. Keywords: Environmental impact assessment; Public participation; UK; Sweden

1. Introduction When you wake up in the morning and the first thing you hear is a big roar from an aeroplane crossing your garden it is if no consequence to know what decibel level it was. This technical knowledge only becomes significant when the *

Corresponding author. Tel.: +46-19-303979; fax: +46-19-303463. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Soneryd), [email protected] (S. Weldon). 1 Tel.: +44-1524-593198. 0195-9255/02/$ – see front matter D 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Inc. PII: S 0 1 9 5 - 9 2 5 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 5 7 - 4

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nearby expanding airport begins to make a distinction between which estates have this and that decibel level as a proof of what noise levels are tolerable for the local community. Equally, you may have lived in a place for 30 years and never seen a newt once on your daily walks—but when proposals for a new runway are announced you begin to collect all the knowledge about how newts may be affected. This is not because you care about newts but because the impact of the development on the newt population is the most powerful legal argument you can come up with when you want to convince others that there is something worth protecting in the environment in which you live. This paper uses cases about noise and newts to illustrate the ways in which local people’s concerns, about large infrastructure projects, can be excluded by the institutional conventions of planning processes. Public involvement is a matter of urgency not only in the interests of promoting participatory democracy, or the idea that consultation gives better knowledge about the environmental impact, but also because the conflicts arising from protests against new developments are practical problems that need to be solved. On the basis of our case studies, we argue that the ambitions and practical experiences of EIA have been shaped by the contradictory ideals underlying science based environmental assessments and local perceptions of the environmental impact of large developments. The aim with this paper is to analyse public participation in quasi-legal processes, such as EIA, and how these processes facilitate or restrain public involvement. We do this by comparing two cases of airport developments, the EIA process for the planned extension of the airport in ¨ rebro, Sweden and the public inquiry process for the planned extension of the O airport in Manchester, UK. The EIA process is given greater weight in the paper than public inquires and an outline of the aims and development of EIA in an international context is provided. In the concluding discussion, we ask how an efficient public involvement can be institutionalised in a legal-administrative framework, and point to some directions towards potential improvements.

2. Regulating expert authority—public participation in quasi-legal processes In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas (1996) deals with a tension within modern law which he describes as a tension between facts and norms—a claim of reason on the one side and a social reality on the other. We will not go any deeper into Habermas’ discussion on this theme but we will use it as a starting point for our discussion about the attitude of the law to objective knowledge and the possibilities for public involvement in a quasi-legal process, such as EIA or public inquiries. By a quasi-legal process, we mean a process that has the character of a legal-process but not conducted in a court setting, but in a wider area of political and administrative life (cf. Wynne, 1989, p. 27). The legislative praxis is related to a complex network of discourses and negotiations (Habermas, 1995, p. 67). Among these are the negotiations that shape the authority of knowledge claims.

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Legal processes involve negotiations about what the factual questions are and which knowledge claims can be valued as reliable and useful for answering them. Both scientific and legal institutions rely upon claims to generate rational knowledge and seek to frame the problem at issue in factual terms; impartial, objective and separated from a political – economic context (Smith and Wynne, 1989, p. 6). This means that the political and ethical aspects and assumptions of a scientific issue are hidden or at least not explicitly expressed. In a controversial situation, as for example in our cases of planned airport expansions, opponents or opposing experts often question the neutrality of the scientific knowledge. But in the presentation of the decision (in judgements or inquiry reports), the arguments and conflicts over knowledge in a local context are not given any consideration; and the justifications and explanations of the decision are presented as ‘natural revealed knowledge’ (Wynne, 1989, p. 37). Both legal and scientific institutions are part of the many ‘expert systems’ we as ordinary citizens are surrounded by in modern society. By expert systems, Giddens (1990, p. 27) means ‘‘systems of technical accomplishments or professional expertise that organise large areas of the material and social environments in which we live’’. As laypersons, we are influenced by these expert systems both directly—when we employ them as consultants, i.e. doctors or lawyers, and indirectly—surrounded by technology that we know how to use but not really how they work or are constructed: ‘‘when I park the car at the airport and board a plane, I enter other expert systems, of which my own technical knowledge is at best rudimentary’’ (Giddens, 1990, p. 28). Furthermore, expert systems can be understood as disembedding mechanisms since they frame out underlying value-judgements and social relationships from the immediacies of context. They provide expectations across time and space boundaries. Thus, we do not have to be familiar with the knowledge within the expert field in order to trust them (Giddens, 1990, p. 28). It is not our intention to give full justice to Giddens’ writings on trust and expert systems here. Instead, we will use the notion of disembeddedness from the immediate context and ask what happens when expert knowledge are refuted on the basis of immediate contextualised knowledge. Whilst scientific and legal expert systems on the one hand operate through single verifiable statements, lifeworld communication works through the reproduction and creation of meanings in the light of the total life situation. This is ‘holistic’ in that it deals with inter-related issues (such as quality of life) rather than discrete physical impacts of a project. Two notions are especially relevant for our conceptualisation of the lifeworld. The first one is Ju¨rgen Habermas’ differentiation between three actor-world relations and the validity claims connected to them. Habermas (1987) suggests that whenever we make an utterance we refer to something in: – the objective world (facts that can be supported or refuted by saying they are true or false),

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– the social world (norms about how we should live together with other people and which can be supported or refuted by saying that they are right or wrong), and – the subjective world (the personal experiences and history of the speaker which she or he has privileged access to, and that can be supported or refuted by saying it is sincere or insincere). One implication of this is that while systems can refer to one world at the time—for the scientific system for example the objective world and the issue of true or false are relevant—lifeworld communication always refer to these three worlds simultaneously. The second notion relevant for our discussion of the lifeworld is Ingold’s (2000) concept of dwelling which captures the engagement between persons and the environment. A concept of the lifeworld deals with the reproduction and creation of meanings in the light of the total life situation. This always happens in a local environment. To dwell in the world means that the environment becomes part of us, just as we are part of it—by living in a place we simultaneously make that place: A place owes its character to the experiences it affords to those who spend time there—to the sights, sounds and indeed smells that constitute its specific ambience. And these, in turn depend on the kinds of activities in which its inhabitants engage. It is from this relational context of people’s engagement with the world, in the business of dwelling, that each place draws its unique significance. (Ingold, 2000, p. 192) Ingold contrasts the dwelling perspective with the view that every object is seen as a self-contained entity related to each other in a certain way which a surveyor or cartographer can represent more or less accurately. He argues that this view is ignorant of places and implies that measurements can be taken from a considerable number of locations, and a single picture can be produced by combining these data—as if we could conceive the world by being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The consequences of taking full account of local people’s perceptions of the environment and a planned development would, according to Habermas and Ingold, mean that discussions about the environmental impact cannot exclude moral issues, subjective feelings and the fact that it is a place, made up by people and their activities, which is the theme for the discussion. How then can we understand the dynamic of processes that excludes issues and concerns of the people that are invited to participate as representatives of the public, in environmental planning? One contribution to such understanding would be a new institutional perspective. This might be one that focuses on how laws and regulations establish standards and procedures as well as norms and values, which both enable and restrain what the actors involved can think and do. There are many approaches to new institutional analysis and the assumptions within them depend on the theoretical tradition in which each approach has developed. From a sociological perspective, the notion of institution is both restrictive—in the sense

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that institutions have a more rule-like status than conventions—and applicable to a wide range of phenomena, from handshakes and marriages to strategic planning departments (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991, p. 9). A sociologist account also emphasises the supra-individual character of institutions. As an individual, one cannot freely choose among customs, social norms or procedures. Instead, individual choices, interests and preferences must be understood in relation to cultural and historical frameworks. Individuals reproduce institutional arrangements because they ‘‘often cannot even conceive of appropriate alternatives [. . .] Institutions do not only constrain options: they establish the very criteria by which people discover their preferences’’ (Powell and DiMaggio 1991, p. 11). An essential characteristic of institutions is that they represent a relatively stable order of beliefs, standards and procedures which are made durable by routine behaviour, rather than mobilised collective action (Jepperson, 1991, p. 149). An institution could be a formal organisation, but Jepperson (1991, pp. 150– 151) also distinguishes between two primary categories of informally organised institutions: regimes and cultures. Regimes refer to institutions in some central authority system with explicit codified rules and sanctions, for example a legal or constitutional system or a profession. Cultural institutions involve beliefs, rules and procedures without such central authority and they have a more customary and conventional character. The degree of institutionalisation depends on how long it has been in place and how embedded it is in a given situation. In Collaborative Planning, Healey (1997) develops an institutionalist account of physical planning. In this context, the institutionalist approach gives some insight into the diversity of claims in environmental conflicts and how power relations structure the planning process. Healey (1997, p. 9) argues that scientific knowledge has been seen as the key resource for the project of planning in providing an objective basis for identifying problems and predicting the future. She stresses the cultural character of institutions and how local environmental conflicts can be understood through the different cultural frameworks of the conflicting parties. Culture refers here to systems of meanings and frames of reference and the institutionalist approach analyses how these are constituted in webs of social relations (Healey, 1997, p. 37). In these webs of social relations, power and resources are distributed unequally, but we can, however ‘‘build up links with networks with richer resources than ours’’ (Healey, 1997, p. 118). This implies that if the cultural system of meaning in planning has developed in a context of scientific reasoning, it would provide scientific experts with more resources than non-experts, and that this would presumably be exclusive of other forms of reasoning, such as for example local people’s concerns about the environment. Local people could, however, build up links to provide themselves with resources and act collectively in order to make their claims heard. The emphasis on webs of social relations also prevents a thinking of cultures and institutions as fixed categories—you are not bound up to a special way of thinking and acting just because you are a member of or restrained by a particular institution.

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2.1. What’s EIA and what is it supposed to do? During the last decades, there have been many efforts to combine environmental and democratic considerations in the planning process. Both decision-makers and affected parties engaged in environmental problems have recognised that traditional decision-making is insufficient and that they often lack popular acceptance and that it is incompetent because it fails to incorporate local knowledge of the people concerned. It is argued that citizen involvement in decision making can be a potential and partial solution to these problems (see Renn et al., 1996). Changes in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process can be seen in the light of those efforts, although it is argued that the concept of public participation has underpinned EIA since its inception (Petts, 1999). Although the ambition among decision-makers and legislators has been to address local concerns and knowledge by increased citizen involvement, this is where the process appears to fail (see for instance, Dresner and Gilbert, 1999). We argue that this is due to contradictory ideals that have shaped the EIA process from the beginning: that it should contain more certain and objective assessments of the environmental impact and that it should engage a broader set of actors with the aim of enhancing the knowledge base. The first ideal implies that there are superior methods, i.e. certain scientific methods to assess the environmental impact. The second ideal implies that knowledge production is opened up for other actors than scientific expertise. These two ideals are expressed both by researchers and legislative organs when EIA is discussed and evaluated. The Commission of the European Union (COM, 2000, p. 839) states that effective public participation helps in achieving the aims of preserving, protecting and improving the quality of the environment. Among the benefits of public participation that are mentioned are: discouraging poor proposals, supporting innovation, helping managers make better decisions, and building trust in surrounding communities. It also increases the accountability and transparency of the decision-making process and contributes to public awareness of environmental issues. The commission states that good decisions meet the needs of the community while minimising adverse impacts on the environment. However, the benefits of public participation expressed by the European Commission can be contrasted with the discussion that preceded the introduction of EIA into environmental legislation. The debate was very much scientifically framed and accentuated the need for more clarity, simplicity and certainty in environmental impact assessments. This was also the strategic focus at the international conference on Environmental Assessment in 1994. At the conference, the widely shared aim was to improve the credibility of environmental assessment for decision-makers by upholding an ‘orthodox’ stereotype of scientific expertise, which relies on the assumption that science represents the closest access we have to the unambiguous truth of the matter (International Summit, 1994, see also Weldon, 1996).

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Environmental impact assessments are covered by EU regulations as well as legislation in the Member States. According to the EIA directive (85/337/EEG), article 6, the public has the right to get all information concerning the environmental impact of the project, alternatives and methods, etc. within reasonable time so that the concerned public have the possibility to make statements before a project is given permission. The member states decide the form of this information (local papers, exhibitions, etc.) and consultation (through written statements or public hearings, etc.) as well as what counts as reasonable time. An evaluation (Wood, 1996) of performances of the EIA process in the member states shows that their incorporations of the EIA directive have improved during the 1990s. But it also shows that there are some problems concerning insufficient quality of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and an underestimation of negative environmental effects. However, the EIA directive establishes only the procedure to be followed and has no real power to monitor the results of the assessments (Wood, 1996, p. 13). The national regulations on EIA in Sweden and the UK have both integrated the EIA directive of the European Commission. Both Sweden and the UK also have guidance that goes further than their regulations concerning public involvement, early consultations are recommended but not demanded in the regulations. There are also what counts as principles of good EIA practice. A typical formulation to summarise these principles is that ‘‘EIA should be performed in an open way and in co-operation with different knowledge possessors’’ (Jonsson and Palm, 2000, p. 51). For both Sweden and the UK, all relevant comments on the EIS, which is made publicly available and open for comments within a given period of time, must be taken into consideration before any decision on the proposal can be made. Both Sweden and the UK have a clear ambition, visible in EIA guidance, to promote public participation and also provide quite similar opportunities for public participation in EIA regulations. Large infrastructure projects are especially characterised by a great deal of public attention and protest, but at the same time this type of development has been shown to be difficult to influence from a public participatory perspective (Lidskog and Soneryd, 2000). The trends of an increasing distrust of the institutional framework of politics, i.e. the traditional representative political system, can be seen in both Sweden and the UK, and they are partly addressed by encouraging new and more participatory forms of public involvement in decisions about technological developments. In our two case studies, we will illustrate some of the problems encountered in doing this. ¨ rebro and Manchester 3. Noise and newts: engaging the public in EIA for O Airports We have taken our comparison to two large infrastructure projects, one in ¨ rebro Airport and one in the UK to Sweden to extend an existing runway at the O

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¨ rebro Airport is located 12 km west build a new runway at Manchester Airport. O ¨ of Orebro, a town in the middle of Sweden with 124 000 inhabitants. The airport is owned by the surrounding municipalities and the County Council and it is among the most expansive airports in Sweden. Similarly, Manchester Airport is owned by a company in which the local authority—Manchester City Council— holds a major share. In international terms, when the plans for a second runway were announced, it was struggling to become established as an international ‘hub’ airport. The planning process for the expansions have both been subject to the minimum requirements on public participation in an EIA process and later, in the Manchester case, a public inquiry which, in the UK at least, has been the traditional arena for public participation.2 In both case studies, we focus on local people’s actions and reactions as well as what legal or quasi-legal mechanisms are facilitating or restraining the way in which perceptions of the local people get integrated in the processes. The cases have been selected on the criteria that they both can be described by the general mechanisms presented in the sections above; that the public is invited to participate and that the scientific framing of issues has for local people both been as a focus for criticism as well as providing potential tools or resources in putting forward local concerns. The two cases are different not only because they refer to different kinds of processes, EIA and public inquiry, but also because they are situated within different political cultures. In Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden, the planning practice has been shaped by a long tradition of broad-based local collaborations. But in Britain according to Healey (1997, p. 34), the planning culture is characterised more by institutional constraints that mitigate against collaboration. However, the tradition of collaboration in Sweden is based on a consensus model, which presupposes that different interests are compatible and represented within the formal planning process. The result is that conflicts between interests are concealed in the final documentation by vague formulations or technical language (Eckerberg, 1995, p. 116). Even though these aspects are relevant, this study does not focus on, and therefore do not allow any general comparisons between, the different political cultures in the two countries. The case studies are based on public records as well as interviews with local ¨ rebro case, nine people and representatives from local protest groups. For the O interviews were conducted with interviewees selected on the basis of a survey sent to all households in the vicinity of the airport, as well as through contacts with the most active persons in the local protests, three men living in the vicinity of the airport. For the Manchester case, interviewees were selected during the course of a participatory observation of the public inquiry process.3 For this 2 ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport Company applied for the expansion, the EIA-directive In 1997, when the O 87/337/EEG was not yet integrated in the Swedish legislation. Still, the applicable regulations at the time demanded an EIA and public consultation. 3 The presentation of the case study is based on Weldon (1996).

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presentation of the cases, only parts of the material have been used in order to highlight the aspect relevant to the context of the paper. ¨ rebro Airport 3.1. An extension of the runway at O ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport Company applied for an extension of the In April 1997 O runway with 600 m (to total 2600 m), and of the permitted starts and landings from 21 000 to 30 000 per year. The EIS that was attached to the application concluded that the extension would not imply any serious impact for the environment, animals, vegetation or humans. In September 2000, the Swedish Government gave the final decision that allowed the extension, by then the greater part of the extension was already carried through, this despite of many protests and actions amongst people living in the vicinity of the airport. The EIA process according to the concerned public has been characterised by exclusion (too short announcement of the consultation meeting and lack of concern of their arguments). According to them, the environmental assessments in the EIS were incomplete and the final decision was purely political and not based on scientifically based knowledge or environmental concern. 3.1.1. Judicial refutations—the consultation process and interpretations of the law In February 1997, the Company arranged a public consultation meeting. About 50 local people were present at the meeting together with representatives from the Franchise Board for Environmental Protection.4 They listened to the statements of the local people but a representative from the local people, states that ‘‘nobody wants to be ‘just listened to’ if it doesn’t make any difference for the decisions. The developer gave information and the participants were able to pose questions. The Franchise Board was interested and listened. It was a good meeting. But when their decision was announced it was like they hadn’t listened at all’’ (Interview, 2001c). The EIA regulations state that the public should be informed and given the possibility to make statements ‘within reasonable time’. A man, who lives in the vicinity of the airport, was one of the 50 local people who were at the public consultation meeting. He reacted strongly to the fact that he had heard from other neighbours that the consultation meeting was going to take place within 2 days. He had not seen the small note hidden somewhere in the newspaper that invited the general public to this meeting. He went to the meeting and demanded that it should be cancelled. It was not a legally correct arranged meeting since the general public had not been invited. He claimed that for an expansion like this the concerned should have received personal invitations to the first consultation meeting (EIA, 1997b).

4 The authority that used to decide on enterprises on this scale. The Franchise board was in 1999 replaced by an Environmental Court.

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In April 1998, the Franchise Board announced their decision to permit the applied expansion. Besides, many individual written statements about 200 local people signed a protest list and an appeal against the decision. In the proceedings that followed, some of the local people hired expert help—someone who spoke the language of the legislative system. This resulted in some efforts to show that the process was not following applicable regulations. 3.1.2. The regulations of noise as a quasi-legal process A report on how the Airport Company was going to handle the noise issue ¨ rebro in was sent to the Local Board for Environmental Protection in O September 1999 (Noise Investigation, 1999a,b,c,d). The basis for the investigations was the decision from the Franchise Board, which set the maximal level for noise to 80 dB(A), and the estates that are subjected to that level regularly three times a day will be subject for soundproofing. The Company interpreted regularly as everyday (i.e. 3
365 = 1100 air movements a year). In the noise investigation, the estates in a wide area were mapped and on the basis of a traffic prognosis the estates were ranked according to the number of air movements they would be subjected to that exceeded 79.50 dB(A). These houses are within the ‘noise abatement zone’ and measures will be taken such as soundproofing or in some cases the buying in of estates. The Franchise Board has delegated the Local Board for Environmental Protection to decide how the limits set by the Franchise Board should be interpreted. It also has the right to comment on the methods used by the Company to set out the noise abatement zone. In January 2000, the Local Board for Environmental Protection decided the bases for calculations of soundproofing. In their statement they approved of the methods used, except for one area where they asked for real measurements because the houses were very close and some of them were not included in the calculated area. However, they made another interpretation of the limits than the Company and decided that ‘regularly’ is every second day (i.e. 3
180 = 550 air movement a year) (Noise Investigation, 1999c, 2000a). The Company did not accept this interpretation on the basis that: ‘‘Our model is simple and entails stable values. All air movements of the time period has to be included in order to include all the different types of planes. The limit for regular noise events must therefore be set to the totality of days with air movements in a year (i.e. everyday)’’ (Noise Investigation, 1999d). The decision by the Local Board for Environmental Protection implies that 57 houses are included; 23 more houses and a cost of 0.5– 1 million Euro more than the airport had calculated with. The Airport Company made an appeal against the decision from the Local Board of Environmental Protection on the amount of houses subjected to soundproofing. The County Administration Board gave the Airport Company right in its demands and the Company’s interpretation is now prevailing (Noise Investigation, 2000b). The Local Board of Environmental Protection made an appeal against this and the issue is not yet decided.

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The lawyer, who represents some of the local people, referred to the national guiding values of 70 dB(A) as a maximal level for outdoor areas connected to residents.5 He stated that there are no legal reasons to deviate from the guiding values that the government and the Environmental Protection Agency have set up. Furthermore, he tried to include animals in the Company’s responsibility for individuals subjected to noise by referring to the prescriptions of the Swedish Board of Agriculture on animal breeding which gives guidelines for the maximal levels inside stables (EIA, 1998b). The Franchise Board had another interpretation of these prescriptions and stated that they are only applicable for noise that have a source inside the stable (machines inside the building). The local people’s hired lawyer referred back to the initial aims of the regulations—to protect animals from noise—but with no success. A local resident continuously reports incorrect over-flights but the cases reports are always dismissed and he makes appeal after appeal against the decisions and the cases eventually goes up to the Environmental Court but he never succeeded to win any case. He says that: ‘‘There are regulations—it is the same thing if you would say that sometimes it is OK to drive on the wrong side of the road. It is wrong that the Local Board for the Environmental Protection takes the Airport Company’s assurances that all the flights run according to the regulations’’ (Interview, 2001d). The handling of noise issues and environmental regulations in general depends in this case, both on the legislative system and the interpretation of the regulations made by the decision-making authority, the Franchise Board for Environmental Protection. In relation to the new institutional perspective, the institutional restraints against the claims by local people can in this context be understood as institutional regimes, with a clear central authority. According to a study of 204 cases handled by the Franchise Board, only 1 case was denied permission and in 14 cases the permission was restricted, the rest of the cases were permitted without restrictions (Svenning, 1996, p. 165). The conclusion of this study is that the Franchise Board almost exclusively made their decisions with consideration to economic concerns. In this case, none of the refutations presented above made by the local people or their lawyer had any success in that it had any influence to change the restrictions decided by the Franchise Board. The examples above, including the discussion between the Company and Local Board for Environmental Protection, show that the negotiations in the process of determining limits for the enterprise is a matter of who has the authority to decide what counts as relevant issues and principles of ‘good’ arguments, which also could be described in terms of institutional power relations.

5 He represented 14 local people who lives at the north of the airport in the appeal against the decision of the Franchise Board (April 1998). Later (May 1998), he represented 9 of these people.

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3.1.3. Scientific refutations The Company’s EIS was refuted by local people on the basis of its scientific methods and results concerning noise. Several estate owners have made statements and questioned that their houses were not in the noise abatement zone. One estate owner says, ‘‘the noise is so loud we can’t hear what is said on the television with maximum volume on with all windows and doors closed. The window glass vibrates when the planes come, and it has happened that a person on the other line in the phone asks what is going on’’ (Noise Investigation, 1999b). The method used in the EIS was theoretical calculations, based on the expected noise made by each aeroplane at a certain height during starting and landing. At the consultation meeting, a nearby neighbour to the airport, presented his own measurements of decibel levels and state that ‘‘the calculations made by the company are incorrect, real measurements show that the levels are much higher’’ (EIA, 1997b). The Company’s answer to the local people’s own measurements of noise is that they are not properly done: ‘‘To carry out reliable noise measurements demand a great experience and that you follow standardised procedures. In the noise measurements carried out by private persons elementary information is missing that makes it possible to judge why the levels deviate from those in the standard noise abatements. A contributing cause to the higher values can be an incorrect integration time (a measurement with the setting ‘peak’ instead of ‘slow’ can give 10 to 15 dB(A) too high levels). However, it is obvious that the measurements show unreasonable high levels’’ (EIA, 1998a). An interesting note to add to this dispute about noise levels is that theoretical calculations were chosen as a method because real measurements is very expensive and time consuming. It is unreasonable to think that the local people should afford to do reliable measurements if the Airport Company does not. The theoretical calculations therefore become ‘untouchable’ since there is no alternative method to compare the results with. However, the man who made the measurements refutes the theoretical calculations because it is insensitive to the local context: ‘‘The airport draw a line. . . it doesn’t work like that in reality. The calculations are based on American planes for ideal conditions in American airports—it doesn’t apply to our conditions in Sweden, with our weather and temperature’’ (Interview, 2001e). It seems as if the construction of noise abatement zone is a typical example of how a single picture is produced by combining pieces of data from a number of locations and with the ‘expectation to cross time and space boundaries’, i.e. that it is applicable in any context. However, this mistake could also be done with real measurements. He says that ‘‘today we make measurements of everything—but we have to trust our own senses, it is our best instrument. We can sense something is wrong, but not what decibel level it is—that is why the measurements are important’’, i.e. in order to have any rights to receive compensation in some form if your estate are exposed for decibel levels higher than applicable limits.

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3.1.4. Local representations The local people who are affected by the airport expansion express feelings of threat against their dwellings, powerlessness as well as worries about the future. A man at the age of 72, who is a farmer and have lived in the same estate since he was born talks about the technical language used at the consultation meeting: ‘‘the person from the Airport Company who goes there, first of all he is more prepared than yourself, secondly he used technical terms you don’t understand. It is like I would talk about agriculture, then he wouldn’t understand either, I guess. . .’’ (Interview, 2001a). A woman, who is 28 years old and has lived in the estate for 4 years, feels she had no possibility to influence the process: ‘‘Nobody has asked for our opinion. Concerning the consultation meeting it was held only because legislation demands it not because of any interest to hear our opinion. Nobody wanted to know what we had to say’’ (Interview, 2001b). She was present at the information meetings, is a participant of the action group, has signed protest lists, supported the appeal against the expansion, has arranged measurements of noise at her estate and sent letters to ministers at the government. She is worried about the expansion. She has a strong relation to the place since her husband’s family has owned the estates and the farm for 60 years. And the feeling of belonging to the village is very strong among the community members. ‘‘And we have felt that. . .those who have a negative attitude to the air traffic have had some weird arguments but then the Airport Company says things like ‘well, the airport has been here for ages but you have your self to blame if you move there’. But my husband who is 30 years old remembers when they built the airport. It is not like it has been here since Stone Age. We made an appeal to the government and despite that the government was dealing with the appeal they started the expansion [of the start and landing strip]. And then you feel—what’s the point? It is already decided. They know they will have this permission. Then you feel very small as a citizen actually. We would like a limit on the flights during night time—that they are not allowed to fly night time. The night to yesterday we woke up half past 12 when a big aeroplane landed. You wake up yourself, and then you think ‘oh no, what if the baby wakes up’. Like that. That kind of limitation we really would like, that some time during night and day there will be pass no aeroplanes at all’’ (Interview, 2001b). She also questions that the Airport will keep the permit concerning numbers of starts and landings they were given by the Franchise Board and later by the Government. ‘‘They have already crossed the permit they have, they have done that for several years. What will make them to keep the permit they get now? What tells you it is not going to be worse than that [than the future allowed permit]. You feel you don’t really trust them.’’ The ways in which an expansion of the airport will affect people’s lives are not possible to distinguish out as single issues of noise, air or water quality, etc. Instead, the issues are intrinsically related to people’s total life situation. Interconnected to how you can relate to these separate issues, are the issues of

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how long you have lived in the place, if your children grew up there, if you have followed the expansion since the airport was established in 1979, etc. But when worries about the environmental impact as well as human health because of emissions to air, were brought up in local people’s comments on the EIS, the Company refers back to the EIS: ‘‘in [the EIS] it is clear that people in the vicinity will not be affected by any health—or environmental effects because of emissions to air. It is clear that the increase of Nox in the Airports surroundings is far below the applicable limits’’ (EIA, 1998a). In other written statements, local people express that ‘‘an expansion will dramatically impair our life quality’’, and that ‘‘the close surroundings will be sterile when the forest is cut down and the ground is covered with asphalt’’. Farmers are worried that there might be ‘‘a sceptic attitude to the agricultural products from the area when people know they are produced close to an airport—an expansion will be the deathblow to our farms and breading possibilities’’ (EIA, 1998c). Stories of how people’s life will be changed are met by figures. The consultant that made the EIS, on the basis of the national standard methods to calculate noise, has already framed out the specifics of the place that the affected people live in. When the opponents refer to things as their lives, their trust in the Airport Company and the sincerity of the Company’s explicit intentions do not fit into any of the issues staked out in the EIS. Local people are supposed to contribute with knowledge to environmental impact assessments but when they, in this case, try to do so they are neglected. One problem is the selection of experts—local people are not judged as qualified experts even if they would come up with qualified figures and factual arguments. Another problem seem to be that direct experience that we can have with our own senses does not translate into the language of the expert systems which is suppose to cross time and space boundaries, to use a term from Latour (1993)—it doesn’t commute. Expressed feelings of worry and the expression that the Airport Company has no right to change the conditions of living and farming in the area do not correspond to the ‘objective world’ of facts that counts in the quasi-legal process of settling limits and regulations for the Airport. To refer to life environments is not possible in a process where the environmental impact is framed by another type of institutional thinking. The different parties’ goals and interpretations of the situation, framed by institutional thinking and cultural contexts are summed up in Table 1. 3.2. A new runway at Manchester Airport Manchester Airport first announced a decision to build a second runway in 1991. The plan, submitted for planning approval in 1993, was for a parallel runway 3050 m long and extending into 571 m of English countryside, where land designated as ‘green belt’ separates the conurbation of Manchester from the rural villages and farming areas of the Bollin valley. The EIS accompanying the application gave details of the environmental impact of the development in terms of, amongst other things, loss of wildlife and

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Table 1 The actors’ themes, goals and interpretation of the situation Actor

Theme

Goal

Interpretation of the situation

Airport Company

Environmental impact Economical impact Environmental impact Decision-making process Environmental impact Environmental impact

Permission to expand Economical gains

Judicial

Residents

Local Board for Environmental Protection

Life quality

Economical Life situation/ citizen rights

Participation Environmental considerations Environmental and health considerations

Judicial

countryside: this included, 4 ha of woodland (most of it ancient), 43 ponds, 4 km of high value hedgerow, flower-rich grassland and a major badger sett.6 The integrity of the river Bollin would be seriously disturbed and it was foreseen that many other effects, due to increased numbers of aircraft, would be experienced by the local community. Six years after the first announcement, in January 1997, the Secretaries of State for Transport and the Environment approved the application after considering the outcome of a nine month public inquiry. 3.2.1. Great crested newts as powerful allies Major objectors, such as the local wildlife trust, an adjacent local authority, and a number of local residents associations invested significant amounts of money to have their evidence heard. Most of this financial burden arose from the need, at the inquiry, to employ legal and scientific experts to frame the issues, present the ‘real facts’ of the matter and to refute the ‘facts’ of the environmental impact assessment. The fate of the local populations of great crested newts was much debated at the inquiry. In terms of financial input and time taken to debate the matter, the great crested newt acquired status way beyond many of the beleaguered local residents. This was not because local activists and opponents of the plan cared more about the fate of this small amphibian than any of the other threatened aspects of their environment, but because it is legally protected (not only is the great crested newt protected by UK legislation, but it is also a species named twice in the EU Habitats Directive). As such, it was considered to be a powerful ally—but only if the impact of the runway on its status (in terms of habitat and numbers of the species) could be proven scientifically by recognised experts (herpetologists). 6

The presentation of the case study is based on Weldon (1996).

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3.2.2. Planning inquiries The public planning inquiry is only one example of a public forum within the UK planning system, but it is still generally perceived by the public to be the nearest thing to democratic decision making, and people still call for a public inquiry in cases where developments are controversial. To act within the planning process, a dissenter could on the one hand take a legal stance and engage in a gladiatorial battle to refute the evidence brought before the inquiry. This course of action requires not only considerable expenditure but also a translation process in which certain qualities of the argument are lost. On the other hand, our dissenter could try to present a ‘narrative’ based on an authentic qualitative account of the impact of the development on his/her quality of life. For instance, as one local resident put it in her brief account: ‘‘I fear the loss of something which is perhaps unquantifiable and indefinable, but which I must try to express to the inspector’’ (Evidence J58 given by MB at the Public Inquiry into Manchester’s Second Runway Nov. 94). This evidence was heard, and respectfully noted as a ‘viewpoint’ rather than a factual claim. We argue that the time and money spent by the local residents to prove that the great crested newt would be significantly affected by the expansion was an implication of the quasi-legal process favouring factual statements and the framing of the issue in objective terms. From an institutional perspective, members of the public can be understood as non-members of the institutions that surrounds these formal processes, and their ability to put forward their claims are dependent upon active mobilisation and collective action within the institutional context. The local people felt that their whole community was changing as a result of the Airport’s continued growth, and the environmental factors associated with it. This amounted in a reduction in quality of life and sense of community, and an increase in anxiety. These experiences were indefinable and unquantifiable and could not simply be taken apart and measured by experts. But the lifeworlds and dwellings, i.e. the place and environment, of people affected by the expansion could not be fully expressed in the proceedings of the public inquiry. And in stripping away complexity, there is a danger of losing a whole layer of meaning in the process. 3.3. Mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion One could say that the EIA regulations permit that the local people (and the general public) are let in—they are invited to meetings and they can express their opinion, but that other mechanisms throw them out again. In the process of making the EIS, disciplinary categories are selected and the environment is divided into discrete categories. Claims that do not fit into those have no authority as ‘knowledge’. The local people in our cases tried to express their perspectives on the impact that the expansions would have for them. They were well aware that these arguments are not taken account of on the same terms as the arguments

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put in scientific and professional formats—as recognised by a scientific or legal expert system—i.e. statements that are disembedded from particular life experiences. This is how noise contours and newts become powerful allies. The issues of limits of noise and protection of newts are surrounded by regulations that local people can use in their efforts to say something that counts in the process. Thus, arguments based in the ‘objective world’ of facts seem to be the only type of argument that the scientific and legal expert systems can handle and the means by which local people can use in their efforts to make their claims heard. This can be understood by reference to Healey’s institutional approach that recognises webs of social relations, which can give access to resources, rather than seeing groups as members of fixed cultures and institutional thinking. Still, the promotion of public participation is based on the argument that it would improve the knowledge base and this implies that local contextualised knowledge is also of worth. In both our cases, the focus on noise and newts in the protests by the local people expresses the opposite. They hired experts to prove the impact on newts or tried to ‘speak the expert language’ themselves by doing own measurements of noise, because statements that referred to life quality or the specifics of the place did not count. The place in which people live was already taken apart in the EIA as ‘habitats for newts’ or ‘noise abatement zones’. To the local people—it also meant something else. This inability to take into account contextual local knowledge, we argue is one main obstacle preventing real public engagement in EIA or public inquiries. In the next and concluding section, we will discuss what can be done about it.

4. Conclusions—no more ‘the last ditch blood bath meetings’ In this paper, we have noted the aims to involve the public in the EIA process and public inquiries and the problem of reaching this goal. Some of the deficiencies in the process can be solved within existing legal requirement. Some of them could be met by changes in the requirements while some problems can only be dealt with by more severe changes. We argue that amongst these deficiencies are: (1)

(2)

The incompatibility of scientific and context-dependent knowledge of environmental impacts because of different knowledge systems, i.e. expert systems and lifeworld understandings. Qualitative concerns, such as the impact of a development on ‘quality of life’, will most likely not be integrated in the EIA process. The lack of promotion of public involvement in legislation. The public is invited into the process but can easily be neglected within the process. The public can use scientific arguments as a means to give more authority to their claims, but even when they do so it is far from evident that this will

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(3)

have any impact on the final decision. This leads us to a third point that is important, but not yet discussed in the paper. If people’s own arguments and life stories were integrated in the EIA or the inquiry—what difference would it make for public influence on the final decision?

The first and the second point can both be met partly by a further emphasis on symmetry in the interactions between scientists, or technical experts and the public. These interactions are so often based on misunderstanding and lack of effective dialogue. For instance, Irwin and Wynne (1996, p. 6) have made the point that due to an apparent assumption of a public deficit in relation to matters of science and technology there is a widespread belief that public participation is a means of one-way information transfer—from the expert to the public. Given this assumption, the expert could be forgiven for believing that all that was required for more effective participation was for them to provide more and better scientific information about the likely impacts. In recent years, this view has changed radically, (at least in literature on public participation and technology assessments) now there is an emphasis of dialogue and two-way communication. But what has not yet been sufficiently addressed in practice is the information transfer from the public to the experts— how can scientists and experts be less illiterate about public understandings? A recent study on Canadian environmental assessment process and the mutual learning by EIA participants conclude that government officials have begun to recognise that the forms of the consultation process have been unsatisfactory: ‘‘environmental groups do not like proponent driven consultations. . .we have recognised this and have established other venues and opportunities for people to express themselves. We try not to set up the last ditch blood bath meetings’’ (Sinclair and Diduck, 2001, p. 124). Thus, we argue for more emphasis on symmetry within the existing legal requirements on public participation in EIA. There could even be economic incentives to do so because the conflicts between opponents and proponents often result in lengthy and costly processes. However, our second point was that public perceptions of the environmental impact could easily be neglected even though that does not have to be the case. The applicable EIA regulations in both Sweden and the UK, as they have integrated the EIA directive from the European Community, declare what should be included in an EIS concerning the planned development and its environmental impact. It gives minimum requirements for public consultation. Although there is a requirement that the public statements during the consultation process must be ‘taken into consideration’, the legal requirements give little guidance on how ‘the assessment of the environmental impact’ and ‘the consultation’ should be seen in relation to each other. To strengthen the consultation process, we argue that the declarations of what an EIS should include should also take account of how to integrate the statements from the consultation process.

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Our third point was that even if peoples’ own perceptions and arguments were integrated in the processes of EIA and inquiries, it might not be enough to make any difference to a final planning decision. What we have to ask is what influence the EIA or the inquiry report has on the decision. Studies have shown that EIA in many cases plays a minor role in the decision-making process and that this is most obvious for issues with a political content (see for instance, Leknes, 2001). In both our cases, there were both strong political and economic arguments for (and against) the airport expansions. When the results of the EIA and inquiry reports also have to be evaluated and weighed against the economic value of a project, the possibilities for public influence in formal consultation processes seem to be small. As we have stated earlier, there are many incentives to deal with these problems; to encourage democratic decision making, to get better and more informed decisions and to mitigate the severe conflicts that often arise with new developments. We conclude that efficient public involvement could be met by more symmetry in practice and that experts also have to become less ‘illiterate’ or more attuned to public perceptions. There needs to be some changes in the EIA regulations that would make it more difficult to neglect the public when they are invited into the evaluation process.

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1997. She works as a teacher, her husbands family has been farming in the area for three generations, 2001-05-08; 2001b. Interview. Telephone interview with a representative of the local protest group, 2001-09-08; 2001c. Interview. Telephone interview with a representative of the local protest group, 2001-09-10; 2001d. Interview. Interview with a representative of the local protest group, 2001-09-12; 2001e. ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport, 1999-09-08, journal number 99.13, available from the Noise Investigation. O ¨ rebro, SE-701 35 O ¨ rebro, Sweden; 1999a. Environmental Office in O Noise Investigation. Written Statement from an estate owner south of the airport, journal number ¨ rebro, SE-701 35 O ¨ rebro, 99.13, 1999-10-05, available from the Environmental Office in O Sweden; 1999b. Noise Investigation. Local Board for Environmental Protection, Statement concerning investigation— ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport according to the limits in decision by the FranSoundproofing estates at O chise Board 1998-04-09, 1999-10-08, journal number 99.13, available from the Environmental ¨ rebro, SE-701 35 O ¨ rebro, Sweden; 1999c. Office in O ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport Company, statement concerning noise measures on estates Noise Investigation. O ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport, journal number 99.13, 1999-11-30, available from the Environmental at O ¨ rebro, SE-701 35 O ¨ rebro, Sweden; 1999d. Office in O Noise Investigation. Local Board for Environmental Protection, Decision concerning noise measures ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport, journal number 99.13, x2, 2000-01-26, available from the on estates at O ¨ rebro, SE-701 35 O ¨ rebro, Sweden; 2000a. Environmental Office in O ¨ rebro-Bofors Airport Company, appeal against the decision of the EnvironNoise Investigation. O ¨ rebro-Bofors Airmental Board 2000-01-26 x 2 99.13 concerning noise measures on estates at O ¨ rebro, SEport, journal number 99.13, 2000-02-17, available from the Environmental Office in O ¨ rebro, Sweden; 2000b. 701 35 O