Analyzing Public Participation in Risk Analysis: How the Wolves of Environmental Injustice Hide in the Sheep's Clothing of Science

Abstract

Abstract

In 1996 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a landmark volume, Understanding Risk, that mandated full public participation in environmental risk assessment, characterization, and management—particularly in environmental-justice (EJ) cases. It argued that because all types of risk decisions are laden with value judgments, experts alone ought not have control over them, and stakeholders should be part of the entire risk-decision process; that expert analysis and stakeholder deliberation should receive equal weight; and that many risk situations require special attention to EJ issues. Since this classic 1996 report, however, most risk assessors appear still to follow the old expert-dominated risk paradigm, in which the public has little or no voice. As a consequence, public participation in risk decision making has been harmed. EJ participation has especially been harmed. Why have risk decision makers not followed the 1996 mandates? Answering this question, the article shows what to do about it. It (1) argues that polluting-industry front groups have spent millions of dollars to promote risk assessment as a purely objective, scientific activity, and they have paid prominent academics, like Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, to promote this technocratic view—which excludes participation of both the public and victims of environmental injustice. The article next (2) outlines the questionable assumptions inherent in this technocratic, anti-environmental-justice account (assumptions such as that risk assessment is objective, scientific, and value free), then finally (3) suggests possible ways that this situation might be remedied.