Dear All,

A short reaction to Barbara's last message in which she discusses in particular consensus-building processes and their usefulness for enhancing science-policy interaction with regard to biodiversity. I think that what we are looking into here are participatory processes and I prefer to use that terminology as opposed to the consensus terminology. The point is that full consensus is an ideal and, because of the unavoidable existence of an irreducible plurality of values, it is very seldom achievable. Hence participatory approaches should rather be thought on a continuum between consensus-oriented processes in the pursuit of a common interest and compromise-oriented negotiation processes aiming at the adjustment of particular interests. Awareness of this allows to avoid some of the pitfalls of idealistic conceptions of participatory approaches where the negotiation dimension tends to be denied and occulted. In particular, ignoring the negotiation dimension of participatory approaches can impede their legitimacy and effectiveness as learning processes to resolve complex environmental issues beyond the interest of the more powerful actor. We might want to keep this in mind when designing, implementing and assessing participatory science-policy interfaces for biodiversity governance.

Best regards and thanks to all for a great e-conference.

Sybille

Reference:
van den Hove, S. (2004) "Between consensus and compromise: acknowledging
the negotiation dimension in participatory approaches", Land Use Policy, in
press.

Sybille van den Hove
Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
s.vandenhove@terra.es