Engage the Public?

Public managers should absolutely engage the public on environmental issues even if it is known that the public has limited knowledge of the subject matter. Public managers are duty bound to deliver the public interest and cannot fully achieve that aim without public involvement. Further, empirical evidence has shown that including the public in environmental projects produces outcomes more suitable for and accepted by the public. Slotterback noted that when including stakeholders in the scoping efforts of environmental projects it “reduced conflict, improved coordination” and resulted in “greater stakeholder buy-in related to the process.” This public engagement can be achieved via the EIAs by courting the public early in the process and actually including their feedback into the course of decision making. By engaging the public early in the process, managers also enable the public to become increasingly knowledgeable on a subject by focusing on the germane areas of impact addressed in initial meetings or documents. Even if the public remains relatively unknowledgeable on a specific scientific topic their involvement will allow public managers to better understand what is important to citizens and create projects that are sensitive to those desires.