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BUILDING CONSENSUS FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING IN SCOTLAND: A REVIEW OF BEST PRACTICE
CHAPTER EIGHT SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS OF CONSENSUS BUILDING
8.1 The issues, questions and principles identified in this report are complex and challenging. Making decisions about whether and how to pursue consensus building, or how to evaluate practice, is highly problematic. Reflective consideration of these issues may highlight the need for a fundamental rethinking of how public involvement has traditionally been approached, and how it has been integrated with policy and decision making, raising new challenges to policy makers and elected representatives:
The potential for effective adoption of consensus-building approaches presents a challenge not only to the traditional public participation requirements, and democratic processes, of local policy-making and planning in Britain, but also to the skills and general understanding of the techniques of public involvement among local authority officials and elected Members. (Petts, 1995).
8.2 Drawing from the discussion in preceding chapters, and in particular using the decision checklist set out in Annex C, it is possible to make some initial observations on the application of consensus building within specific policy applications. Here we briefly discuss applications within Community Planning, National Park planning, and National Forest Programmes. It is clear from this study that there exists no generic framework for consensus building which can be universally applied. Consensus building approaches need to be developed specifically for their application, and will be heavily determined by the nature of the issues being addressed, the type of output required, the range and nature of possible stakeholders and the tensions between them, and the different needs for democratic participation, debate and action. It should be emphasised that these are initial observations, based on a preliminary analysis of each policy application. A more complete assessment of the possibilities for consensus building in each policy area would be based on further research applying the decision checklist more rigorously, based on closer engagement with the organisations, interests and issues at stake in each policy area.
Community planning
8.3 Perhaps the most challenging and ambitious sphere in which consensus building is proposed is Community Planning, where the ideal is that a strategic plan for an entire local authority area embodies a consensus across the population and statutory agencies over both aims and broad policy initiatives. At the highest level the criterion of the existence of a common goal is plausible and assumed to exist - the ideal is premised on the idea that everyone shares an interest in good governance, and this requires strategic planning. However, to introduce consensus building as the decision making principle for local governance would require major changes in existing democratic and policy making processes and a significant shift in the relationship between state and citizen.
8.4 Analysis of pathfinder authorities concluded that there is potential for community planning to establish joint visions shared by partner organisations; and to streamline, integrate and improve partnership working and community consultation and involvement (Rogers et al, 2000).
8.5 The large numbers of stakeholders and thus potential participants, of overlapping groupings with differing interests, the varying levels of capacity of stakeholders to become involved in strategic consensus building processes, and the wide range of issues to be addressed at a whole-authority level all pose substantial challenges. They raise problems of potential conflict between interests, of securing involvement and thus of legitimacy, and of providing sufficient resources to support a meaningful process.
8.6 These are not reasons for abandoning consensus building as an approach to community planning, since conflict and legitimacy issues are endemic in current processes, and appropriate use of consensus building can overcome these. They do, however, mean that consensus building will almost inevitably be limited in some ways - that the processes of exclusion referred to in the body of this report will necessarily be present. The crucial issues for policy makers will be managing these - deciding who is party to consensus building over what issues, and how this limited process relates to wider policy making processes and the wider community - and ensuring that there is transparency over how the decisions to exclude are made.
8.7 Trade-offs will have to be made between inclusivity on the on hand and the level of policy detail and extent to which process outcomes specify action on the other, both because of the range of issues involved and the almost inevitable conflicts over implementation even where broad policy aims have been agreed. The typical response is to create a very participative arena at the highest level- to establish a 'visions' of an area - but then to severely limit the extent of civic participation in working out policies. Changes in this probably require not the extension into greater details of the remit of the large scale visioning process, but the creation of hierarchy of sub-processes, all based on consensus building principles, but covering more limited agendas and with more limited stakeholder groups which are better placed to arrive at consensus on appropriate actions. At each of these levels there will be a question of how thoroughgoing the commitment to public involvement is, with decisions to be made over which stakeholders to involve, whether these should be agencies working in partnership (the most limited model) or involve a significant input from a broader group, and also over the significance of the outputs - essentially over how much decision making power is to be shifted to consensus building arenas involving members of the public. The more open and more powerful these processes, the more the issues around representativeness and democratic legitimacy are heightened.
8.8 More specifically, within Community Planning the preparation of Strategic Visions seems to rely on a broad based participative approach to establishing consensus between communities and public, private and voluntary sector agencies in the area. However alongside this the preparation of action plans appears to be based on a closer consensus between partners who will be responsible for delivering aspects of the visions.
8.9 In particular, four major issues of linkage will have to be considered:
- The relationship between broad based consensus over visions, and partnership based consensus over action plans
- the relationship between the consensus building processes and elected bodies (though note that inter-agency partnerships already imply the sharing of power by local authorities with non-elected bodies: arguably involving representatives of the public in such partnerships makes them more democratic, even if this is still in tension with the traditions of representative democracy)
- relationships with other policies, with an imperative of establishing a hierarchy of plans
- linkages between participants and non-participants, particularly from the public/community sector, with a recognition that resources may need to be deployed to create and support such linkages to increase the legitimacy of the process.
8.10 Consensus building is unlikely to be universally appropriate within the Community Planning process, but as part of a planned blending of representative democracy, consensus building processes as part of consultation process supporting representative democracy, and lower-level, more focused processes which bring together agencies and public to reach consensus over specific policies, neighbourhoods or conflictive issues. To support such a collection of decision making processes will require institutional change within government: the development of structures which provide a framework within which they can take place and be linked, rather than separate structures for each process, and a less tangible change in culture and ethos which will accept and encourage the incorporation of wider participation and consensus building processes as part of the routine of governance. It will also require change within the community, and consensus building for Community Planning should be seen as integrally related to processes of community development and building social capital.
Protected area planning and management: the Scottish National Parks
8.11 The Scottish Parliament's approval of the designation and establishment of National Parks in Scotland (Scottish Parliament, 2000) has led to considerable work on the institutional arrangements to facilitate these developments. While debating the National Parks proposal, MSP's have stressed the need for democratic accountability in the frameworks which are to be devised for their management. Even with such accountability built-in, experience suggests that conflicts between a range of conservation, development and recreational interests will occur. The structures designed for governance must therefore be geared towards the resolution of such conflicts, and ideally towards establishing consensus around National Park objectives.
8.12 A key consideration is the extent to which incorporating consensus building into particular frameworks and processes can help in addressing such conflicts. In particular, proposals for a Cairngorm's National Park have not met with the same degree of consensus as those for Loch Lomond and the Trossachs:
Overall, the 'yet to be convinced' lobby is still the largest one, with a general theme emerging of sympathy with the Cairngorms Partnership approach, coupled with a desire to see whether this approach will be effective in the longer term. There may be a number of reasons for this response, including a wariness about external interference, a lack of time or sufficient detail to assess fully the implications, or quite simply the view that the case for a National Park was not sufficiently convincing. (SNH, 1999, Section 6.4).
8.13 SNH's advice also identified the need to further explore possible structures for governance, and various means for the effective promotion of partnerships. Critical to the success of each National Park will be the negotiation of a 'local-national contract', and then its longer-term maintenance in the various areas over which the new authorities will have responsibility.
8.14 The potentially problematic role of wider public interests and voluntary organisations within any local-national framework requires careful attention. A central question is how particular techniques of consensus building might be deployed to assist in seeking difficult balances between the different interests of development, conservation, community and recreation. The new frameworks will need to balance the interests of local communities alongside those of visitors, and a range of interest groups, coalitions and partnerships, operating at local and national levels.
8.15 The challenge is, then, whether consensus can be built between actors and interests at levels from the local to the national, and across a range of stakeholder types from resident communities to public agencies, the private sector, and interest groups. In the emerging institutional structures for national parks, there has been a separation of representation between nominated authority members, resident communities who are engaged in area specific participation programmes, and advisory panels which are designed to engage broader interests. This institutional separation of stakeholders does not allow for explicit consensus building to be attempted, as stakeholders with different types of interests do not necessarily spend time exploring each others' positions, or establishing common ground. Instead the authority officers (and members) will act as filters.
8.16 Because consensus building has not been institutionalised in the way the national park structures are being constructed, there is a need for process-based consensus building approaches.
8.17 Given the complexity of issues raised, the diversity of interests at different levels, and the possibly controversial nature of many of the policies and decisions to be reached, it would seem appropriate to consider how different approaches to consensus building might be deployed in the face of different challenges. In the case of longstanding conflicts and differences of position over, in particular, land ownership and management, and major developments, it may well be preferable to use approaches which do allow the established positions of key stakeholders to be voiced and explored within a more confined arena. This might possibly follow the model of the Access Forum, but with more explicit attention to the linkages between any new fora and their respective national park authority decision making processes.
8.18 Furthermore, the proposed arrangements for planning are likely to raise new challenges for building consensus between National Park Authorities and local authorities veering the park areas. This seems likely to be the case in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, where development control and the preparation of the Local Plan will be carried out by the National Park Authority but Structure Plans, containing strategic policies on many issues affecting the park, will be prepared by the different authorities overlapping the park area (Scottish Executive, 2001).
8.19 Alongside this, however, the national parks provide a new opportunity for all stakeholders to explore common ground, and so a broad based approach would seem appropriate. One of the most apparent opportunities for doing this would be through the national park plan process.
8.20 Further research is required, to critically examine the emerging frameworks for public involvement and partnership working in the planning and management of the new National Parks, commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the emerging framework in the light of the findings of this study, and evaluating the ability and potential of the new frameworks to lead to consensus around National Park objectives.
Natural resource management: the implementation of the scottish Forestry strategy
8.21 This study has identified the significant potential for consensus building in natural resource management. Here, we discuss briefly the opportunities for its application in relation to the implementation of the UK National Forest Programme (NFP) in Scotland, particularly through the Scottish Forestry Strategy (Scottish Executive, 2000).
8.22 The Scottish Forestry Strategy has been prepared in advance of the NFP's of other European countries, based primarily on national level consultation rather than a more participative approach. In other countries (e.g. Germany) a more intensive, explicit consensus building approach is being pursued, grounded in conflictual principles. The approach adopted in Scotland has not followed any explicit consensus building approach, and the process has not allowed stakeholders to explore common ground, or to explore their differences. This may mean that certain differences, conflicts, or opportunities have not been fully identified or resolved in the process.
8.23 Given this, and that the Scottish Forestry Strategy sets out a partnership approach to its implementation, and recognises the significance of both consulting and involving local communities in implementation, the key question flowing from this study is whether the use of consensus building approaches might be appropriate in the implementation phase of the NFP, in particular in the review and monitoring at the Scottish level, and in implementation at the regional / local levels. The Strategy recognizes the need for mechanisms for participation, sharing and explaining views, and for working towards consensus, though it recognises that this may not always be attainable in practice.
8.24 Evidence from different European countries developing NFPs confirms that a wide range of different interests exists (COST E19 Conference, Aberdeen, 2001). In Scotland these include commercial and professional interests in forest production, conservation interests, community interests, and land ownership interests. The Strategy sets out a balanced approach, through its Strategic Directions, which acknowledge the significance of conservation and community interests. Challenges in balancing these potentially divergent interests are likely to arise in the preparation of more detailed strategies. Based on this study, one of the critical issues in this process is likely to be the need for such different stakeholders to explore how their different understandings of and relationships to forests interrelate. This is likely to require an approach which brings together the different stakeholders, rather than, say, separating 'experts' from the 'public'. Related to this is the need to rethink how 'expertise' is regarded within forestry, by incorporating dimensions of lay knowledge. Given that stakeholders are likely to start with opposing and more or less entrenched positions, reflecting perceived differences in interests, it is probably appropriate to use a conflictual style, in which differences are made explicit and then worked on, rather than ignoring them in the search for potential common ground with the risk that unresolved interest differences will bedevil implementation.
8.25 This 'bringing together' could usefully occur at two levels - those of the region and of the individual forest. The former would be a time-bound process to draw up a regional forest policy within the Scottish strategic framework. It would necessarily involve a broad range of stakeholders, and therefore limited participation, so attention would have to be paid to ensuring that representatives of all stakeholders were involved, and so also to how they represent. This might require support in particular for links between community representatives and the wider community, potentially in the form of local deliberative processes, and care being taken that purported representatives from all sectors are in positions to deliver the support of their constituencies for process outcomes.
8.26 Such a regional process would lay down broad aims for forest management, but because of the local variation in the makeup of stakeholders, particularly in terms of land holders (community, state, private individual, commercial), and possible forest outputs (including amenity and conservation 'products') it will be appropriate for the regional policy to also establish local, single forest based consensus building processes. In order to address the rather separate issues of establishing a management plan and of ensuring its implementation and adaptability it would probably appropriate for these to have two distinct stages - a time-bound initial process and an institutionalised management structure. Both would bring together landowner, community, workforce, production, conservation and tourism interests, but the former would be broader in its composition, reflecting the need for all local interests to be represented. Part of its remit would be to establish an acceptable mechanism for those interests to be represented on a smaller management body.
8.27 As elsewhere, the critical issue is not that participation in the consensus building process has to be all-inclusive, but that the limitations imposed on this by the need to have a manageable process are transparent, acceptable to those excluded, and are compensated for by mechanisms which link those inside and outside the group involved in making decisions through consensus building.
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