Participative Procedures for Sustainability: IAP2 Call For Papers

Why participative procedures? Because they are one of our best hopes for sustainable development. The core operative idea of sustainability is the integration of all aspects of a political issue - environmental, social, and economic into the political problem resolution processes. Participative processes, if intelligently designed, can deliver this integration.

That close interrelation between participative procedures and sustainable development is also the central theme at the next Conference "Making Sustainable Decisions: The Price and Promise of Public Participation" of the The International Association for Public Participation in San Diego, September 21-23rd, 2009. Their call for presentations is out now (here the link to the download of a doc).

They are looking for presentations focused around the following themes:

• Sustainable decision-making processes: what characteristics are necessary for a public participation process to be sustainable?
• Sustainable decisions: In what ways does public participation lead to decisions that are more workable and enduring than those made without public participation?
• Sustainable outcomes: How do public participation processes and better decisions specifically contribute to the sustainability of projects and programs?

Those are good questions. My own focus would be not on participation per se, or the decision process, but on the whole process itself. (Thinking "decisions"is actually one the mind sets we should overcome. A political problem resolution procedure - or the creation of social, ecological, cultural etc. surplus value - is so much more than a process of consecutive decisions, and the preperation therefore. The focus on decision is very much inherent in our situational thinking.) Sustainable development is a political process that is larger than any one intervention or process. So what's needed is a regime of processes, and we need to know just HOW to design and implement that practically. That's a issue of what I call procedural politics (also here).

Tell me whether you are going there!