Memo on the kick-off meeting for Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making Project

REC
Szentendre, Hungary
11-12 September 2001

The kick-off meeting for the research project on public participation in environmental decision-making was held on 11-12 Sept.2001 at REC, Szentendre. The participants included the co-ordinators from REC and WRI (World Resources Institute), NGO-partners from 6 accession countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia), as well as a Brazilian NGO. Please, refer to the list of contacts.

The main objectives of the meeting were as follows:

• Discussion of the major project-related problems

1 Indicators of public participation in the survey;
2 Methodology to be applied in the survey;
3 Outreach activities - to share the experience;
4 Format and timing of the reports;
5 Use of the reports;

• Synchronization of the efforts of the partners.

By way of introduction, Mr.Kysela (REC) presented a project on public participation as the last stage of a larger project on Climate Change. The latter project started three years ago and included the studies on Activities Implemented Jointly in the CEE Region in 5 CEE countries, domestic policies and measures in the sphere of Climate Change in 6 CEE countries, and capacity building for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. The project was undertaken by initiative of REC and WRI under the auspices of EC, US EPA, Japanese, Dutch, and Italian governments. Mr.Kysela emphasized the consistency of the current stage of the project with the previous ones.

The next speaker, Ms.Toth-Nady (REC), delivered a presentation on the Aarhus Convention on Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Issues. She gave a brief introduction to the history of the Convention, as well as an extensive overview of its main clauses and their interpretation. She also pointed out some loopholes in the text of Convention. Please, refer to the slides.

Ms. Petkova (WRI) discussed how access to decision making by the general public affects climate. For example, public participation in the development of land privatization schemes can significantly influence land use patterns and, hence, climate change.

The discussion of the indicator framework proposed by WRI followed the presentations. The framework lists indicators to measure public participation in climate and will be used by the NGO partners to assess public access in their countries. The structure of the survey is as follows. The indicators are divided into three parts:

• Access to General Information and Compliance;
• Access to Participation in Decision Making Affecting Climate Change;
• Efforts to build the capacity of the Public for Meaningful Participation in Climate- Change-Related Decision Making.

Each part is divided into categories; each category is comprised of indicators. Each indicator contains several values. The discussion focused on the appropriateness of the indicators and values chosen, as well as the methodology for applying them in the surveys. Please, refer for details to the full version of the survey.

The last part of the meeting concentrated on the methodological issues of the survey:

1. Selection of respondents. The questions discussed under this topic included the list of possible respondents to be approached to assess the different indicators: the sector (justification should be given for why this sector is important for the national economy), enterprises with different ownership structure (both private and public) while assessing the access to information on potential pollutants; government officials; environmental NGOs (which NGOs could be qualified as "dealing with climate change"); mass media. At this stage, the documents to be studied (National Communications, Inventories) were discussed.

2. Methods. Among the methods the following were named: interviews, requests for documents and data from governments and business entities (both anonymous and official ones), mass media review, field studies (i.e., in the libraries).

3. Methods of verification and justification of the information. The required information for the above mentioned methods. For example, for the interviews the following information is required: the name of the interviewed person, person's position in the organization, the name of the interviewer, time and place, the list of the questions.

A methodology to assess mass media coverage of climate change was suggested, including assessment of newspaper coverage of major climate events (COPs, IPCC report) over a period of 3 weeks around any of the events and 1 week selected at random.
It was pointed out that the requests to the governmental agencies to measure the accessibility of information should be made strictly by "people from the street" to avoid biased reaction from the institutions.

4. Approaches to deal with the areas on which data are not available.

At the end, the NGO partners should fill in the Scoring Card in order to make the cross-countries comparisons. This Card should be easy to read in order to present it to the media.

As to the time schedule, the partners agreed to prepare the ten-page interim report based on the questions by the end of January and the National Reports by April. The partners agreed that it would be useful to complete the Report of the Region before the September Conference on Sustainable Development.