SIEMENS

Back in 1970, if the Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority of Texas had known what was coming, it would probably have abandoned its idea immediately. The agency had decided to build a petrochemical waste disposal facility in the Galveston Bay area. Although the project was never carried out, it cost the agency more than $10 million to deal with associated protests and local citizen initiatives that seemed to come out of nowhere.

After 15 years of legal battles and countless court rulings in favor of citizens, public officials finally invited citizen groups to a mediation session at the Keystone Center in Denver, Colorado, a prestigious institute for conflict resolution. This didn’t help, though. By then, citizens were simply too enraged — and the damage had already been done. After another five years had passed, several members of the citizens’ initiatives were elected to the Gulf Coast Waste Disposal Authority executive board. The NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) principle had prevailed, and the waste disposal project was history.

But a look at Switzerland and Brazil shows that things can work out differently in such situations. On a winter day in 2011 helicopters transported 20 heavy steel components to a drilling site where a geothermal power facility was to be built in eastern Switzerland. The city of St. Gallen wanted to reduce its use of fossil fuels to just 25 percent of the energy mix by 2050 and provide geothermal heat to half of its 44,000 residences. This energy source is climate-friendly and easy to access, because extracting heat from a depth of 4,500 meters doesn’t require any major facilities that could prove to be an eyesore.

Still, the technology was by no means without controversy, as a similar project in Basel, Switzerland’s third-largest city, had been scrapped after a water injection for tapping into geothermal sources triggered a minor earthquake in 2006. “Dialogue with local citizens was therefore very important for us,” says Marco Huwiler, General Project Manager at St. Gallen’s public utility. “We also made sure our project was embedded in an extensive grassroots democratic process.”

The utility started out in 2009 by gauging the opinion of some 50 interest groups and citizens through interviews conducted in cooperation with the independent Risk Dialogue Foundation.

“St. Gallen is a relatively small city, a place where people generally know one another,” says Matthias Holenstein, a project manager at the foundation. “That’s why we used the first round of discussions to talk to the directors of local associations, firefighters, long-standing members of the community, officials from industry and political parties, young citizens and teachers, as these groups offered a very good sampling of public opinion. We also conducted sample surveys to get the opinions of average citizens. We found there was a positive basic attitude to our plan. But of course there were also some open questions of a financial and technical nature.”

The city initiated a series of events to discuss the issues and provide citizens with more detailed information. The main event was a public conference with some 400 participants that included closed workshops, public presentations, interaction with the media to address the more controversial aspects of the project, and a special exhibition on the geothermal project entitled “Journey to the Depths.” The Risk Dialogue Foundation took part in this process as an impartial observer that brought subliminal emotions to the attention of participants and presented different views of the project. “Because such issues were taken into account at an early stage, there was no need to have any specific mediation between the utility and other interest groups,” Holenstein explains.

The municipal parliament of St. Gallen examined the results of this phase of citizen participation in the summer of 2010 and a referendum was held in the fall, in which 80 percent of the electorate voted in favor of the project. In Switzerland, grassroots instruments such as initiatives and plebiscites ensure that corrections can be made if doubts about a project should arise later. Moreover, the knowledge that they can defend themselves this way if necessary gives citizens in Switzerland a feeling of security and enables the political system to function effectively. “That’s not surprising, given that we’ve been practicing this type of grassroots democracy for the past few hundred years,” says Holenstein.

But why did dialogue fail at the Keystone Center in the U.S.? “Attempting to include citizens in a project that’s already been decided on just doesn’t work,” says Professor Ortwin Renn, Director of the Dialogik institute in Stuttgart, Germany, and a mediator in disputes over public projects. “Besides, the battle lines had already been drawn.”

What to Do? Several years ago, Renn and his team illustrated how to do things correctly during a dispute concerning a waste disposal facility in the Swiss canton of Aargau. “These days, everyone understands the importance of efficient waste treatment, but the people in the affected areas felt that they were being exposed to risks in the form of potential groundwater contamination,” says Piet Sellke, who works at Dialogik. “There were 11 possible sites here in Aargau, and the canton government let the citizens decide where the facility should ultimately be built.”

To this end, Renn and his team brought together some 90 residents from 12 municipalities in Aargau and divided them into four citizen commissions. Each municipality on the list of possible sites was asked to send two representatives to each of the four commissions. “Unlike other citizen participation setups, the municipal authorities selected the citizens who would take part,” Sellke explains. The commission members included housewives, teachers, representatives of nature conservation societies, farmers, and municipal councilors. “Not every member had the same knowledge, so the project team provided everyone with information and written materials first,”

The members were then asked to draw up criteria diagrams for assessing the proposed locations in terms of suitability and risks. During this process they were able to address questions to specialists, listen to expert testimony, and visit the sites in question. The criteria they came up with — e.g. environmental impact, the economic efficiency of the project — helped them compare the different locations. After that, a closed workshop was held in which waste disposal experts evaluated the criteria and made their own recommendations. The results were presented to the citizens.

“The four citizen commissions organized separate workshops for the final assessment of the proposed sites,” says Renn. “The evaluations of the possible sites according to the criteria were discussed in small groups and in a plenary session. Finally, each site was put to a vote.” One site, known as Eriwies, received the most votes in each of the groups. Five members of each commission were then selected to form a “Super Commission” to align the recommendations and forward the results to the authorities in the form of a citizen report. “At the beginning, 80 percent of the members believed their own municipality was not suitable for the waste disposal plant,” Renn says. “But by the end of the process, even the people from Eriwies were saying the facility should be built there.” The entire procedure took approximately two years, and the municipal government agreed with the decision the citizens had made.

Brazil: Home of Participatory Budgeting. These days the scope of citizen participation has expanded beyond major projects into a realm previously considered untouchable: the budget. “Participatory budgeting,” which got its start in Brazil in 1989, is now a welcome vehicle for citizen participation in Europe as well. This process, which gives citizens a say in the distribution of public funds, can take many different forms. The Brazilian port city of Recife, which has a population of 1.6 million, received the 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize from the Bertelsmann foundation for its budgetary policy. “We searched all over the world for exemplary projects that strengthen participation possibilities for all social groups,” says Bertelsmann Project Manager Christina Tillmann. “The citizens of Recife decide every year on how ten percent of their city’s budget will be allocated. Over 100,000 people take part in the process, which generated some 600 proposals in 2010.”

The program focuses on urban development projects for which citizens submit suggestions. The city government distributes flyers in all districts in advance so residents know what’s on the agenda and what they have to do. To this end, Recife is divided into 18 “micro-regions,” which ensures that all districts can express their wishes. “As soon as at least ten people commit themselves to a proposal, it is examined by the authorities in terms of its technical and financial feasibility,” Tillmann explains.

This process is followed by public forums in which citizens select ten proposals per micro-region and elect delegates who are then trained in budgetary matters and refine the proposals. “People who can’t come to the forums can participate online,” says Tillmann. The delegates discuss the proposals with the city council, which then decides on the appropriate measures. “The completed budget plan is presented to the micro-regions, and residents elect representatives who monitor the implementation of the projects,“ Tillmann explains. Almost 5,000 measures in sectors such as wastewater treatment, healthcare, and education have been approved by citizens and then implemented since participatory budgeting was launched in 2001.

“Problems affecting everyone must be solved by everyone,” declared Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt in his play The Physicists. Today, this statement seems more relevant than ever before.