The economic dominance of Hong Kong development history is necessarily conducive to economic individualism, reductionism which has significantly impeded the merits of its environmental policy. Without downplaying their roles in mitigating pollution, some environmental policies, like sewage charges and emission limits, are deterministic and do not see the construction of preference as a policy goal in search for a sustainable path. Consultation exercises, on the other hand, are meaningful because it is a kind of deliberative activities that were totally absent in the colonial years. However, did they make any difference to the environmental policymaking? I doubt this. What I want to point out is, one of the goals of sustainability policy is to facilitate formation and transformation of preferences. Preferences, or values, are ultimate cause of behaviours; ignorance of the ways they evolve will produce no qualitative change in the ecological economy.
The idea above is drawn from an academic paper I finished reading a few minutes ago. Below is an extract from that article, written by Niemeyer and Spash; the latter is a prestigious ecological economist who recently works in deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) to which I am very interested in.
“The treatment of individuals as ‘economically rational’ (that is, self-interested and aiming to maximise utility), is far removed from the individual as a member of a community who aims to achieve a collectively best outcome. Thus, economy theory tends to assume that preferences about collective environmental goods and services are predetermined and require no further explanation. Once humans are viewed as moral agents, their values, and consequently, preferences, can only be understood in historical, social, and ecological contexts (Siebenbuner, 2000). Preference construction means taking into account the formation of preferences and their change through campaign, media coverage, advertising, or survey processes.”
(Extracted from Niemeyer, S., & Spash, C. (2001). Environmental valuation analysis, public deliberation, and their pragmatic syntheses: a critical appraisal. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 19)
2 comments:
So how will you summarise all this in a few words?
In an ESD desert like HK, consultattion is a good first start.
But to achieve some real goals, it requires the public awakening and self education then transforming into value & action.
This is the path/roadmap.
But how?
Building social capital is the key to the transformation.
Human's self-interest is inborn, but the factors affecing their behaviours are more than this. It is socially constructed.
In the past, we wanted start from deling with the individuals themselves: directly asking them do this and not do that. But now we find it too difficult to do. So we instead want to start from the community at large, through changing the societal sturctures that could have greater impacts to individual behaviours. i.e. a shift from emphasizing individual values to social values.
Social capital refers to the relationships between different people or groups of people. We found that people tend to more collectively rational when they are in a small group. It is because people are more likely influenced by the preferences, understanding and information sharing when they are more closely 'connected' with others. If you individually ask me how much I will pay for renewables, I will say the minimum; but if you do this in front of a group of people I know or after a delibrative activity with them, I will probably give a higher rate as my decision may be get away from individually determined on my own.
In practive, for example, this helps improve monetary valuation approaches. We sometimes find ecosystem services being underestimated when the interviewees are subject to a valution survey with individual interview or questionnaire. But this situation may improve (of course not absolutely better) in a small group delibration. This is also a way to allow public participation that legitimizes the policy.
So, consultation is a good start, but only a start. How to 'form group' (allow delibration) is the way forwatd.
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