The Pragmatic Collective Interest as the Product of Civic Deliberation: The Case of Pesticide Management in Belgium
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. The Problem
2.1. Dealing with Modern Risks
- (1)
- analysis of the dynamics is possible and controllable, enabling the effects of actions to be predicted;
- (2)
- evaluating the underlying values of each option enables the desired objectives to be defined in a legitimate manner;
- (3)
- it is then possible to implement strategies and control their effects.
2.2. Policy and Research in Belgium
2.3. The Deliberative Option
3. Material and Methods
- the participants are in no way stakeholders or interest group representatives, but instead citizens who are “interested” in the question;
- a first work phase consists of giving participants a wide range of information, on the one hand from scientific or professional experts so they can become sufficiently informed, on the other hand from stakeholders (specifically manufacturers, administrators, pressure groups, etc.) so they understand the range of positions already established);
- the next work phases are dedicated to a discussion that includes an explanatory stage, a discussion stage and a position-taking stage, without any consensus being required, but in a way that encourages heightened expression;
- the facilitators are sociologists whose task is to encourage democratic expression, by managing the discussion, keeping an eye on the minority voice, and ensuring final propositions are concluded.
3.1. The “Label” Project
3.1.1. Introduction and Development
3.1.2. Analysis
“But I think it’s a very good thing for the big retailers to have a label anyway, for people who don’t have the possibility of going to a small farmer. It’s very good to have some kind of security. But this should be done without raising the price since not everyone can afford the luxury of labelled products. The unemployed have rights like everyone else; they can’t spend so much money on organic vegetables.”
“there must be only one label, one single label that says various things, organic is good, but local produce is good too and so on.”
“there is a vast amount of advertising everywhere you look […] consumers get lost in the face of that mass of information.”
“that catches your eye: it must be able to be visual”.
- Industrial/artisan production
- Product origin
- Environmental approach
3.2. The PEPAM Project
3.2.1. Introduction and Development
- -
- The amount of pesticide used (per crop per pesticide active substance and per use), for a given year;
- -
- The pesticides’ toxicological parameter (LD50);
- -
- A map of agricultural areas;
- -
- The spatial distribution of crops per agricultural area.
“[...] you have to keep being vigilant to constantly make adjustments and perfect the tool. [It is necessary to aim for] adaptability and speed of reaction and reassessment.”
“I notice that people who go into studies [scientists], they go in what I’d call an upward sense, but they don’t go... they don’t move sideways to try and see if there are other impacts, other parameters involved as well. [...] So one of them will take insecticides and pesticides in one direction but it’s just that, sometimes, maybe only by taking a step sideways can we maybe go in another direction to find new systems. [...] if someone pushes you, instead of counteracting it, well... give me a push and we’ll move in the same direction and we’ll arrive at another result.”
3.2.2. Analysis
“The image of the sieve made me see things differently. What if the removal of certain products created a kind of product selection that happened to have very strong synergies, stronger than the previous product synergies? In that case, we might be increasing the risk, in unknown proportions... It is the whole issue of risks that are unknown, but possible. It had never occurred to me that my work could increase these unknown risks.”
4. Discussion and Conclusion
Conflict of Interest
References and Notes
- The acronym of the project stands for: “Feasibility of a Participatory Modelling Process for Pesticides Risk Assessment” (cfr. Section 3.2.).
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- We say “opening” insofar as a true democratisation of the technical choices assumes a commitment by the public authorities to take account of these openings (see next section).
- The modeller/project initiator gave this introspective work concrete expression by writing a document dozens of pages long, rich in details and reflections. This working document was not published, but has been used in the present section as a source for the quotations. One part of this document is also available in the PEPAM report (“Analysis from a modeller perspective”) and in his doctoral thesis, (currently being written).
- Which is, in the present case, all the more comfortable since the modeller belongs not to the model conception team (FOCUS-Gw), but to the evaluation team (APECOP scientific consortium).
- This link between new learnings in behalf of experts and the manner in which these modify their future practices is rarely discussed (if not with their colleagues in the privacy of their inner sanctums). However, in uncertain situations for which the experts have no readymade solutions to propose, the conditions of their creation, especially of their learning, is essential. What the deliberative focus group enabled to come to light was the character of the posture adopted by the modeller in order to give life to this pragmatic collective interest. Because of the necessary interdependence between experiments conducted in the course of this deliberative focus group, we could say that this pragmatic collective interest is jointly the product of the participants and the modeller, since this collective interest is shared by all members of the deliberative focus group set-up.
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Mélard, F.; Mormont, M. The Pragmatic Collective Interest as the Product of Civic Deliberation: The Case of Pesticide Management in Belgium. Sustainability 2013, 5, 2233-2251. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5052233
Mélard F, Mormont M. The Pragmatic Collective Interest as the Product of Civic Deliberation: The Case of Pesticide Management in Belgium. Sustainability. 2013; 5(5):2233-2251. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5052233
Chicago/Turabian StyleMélard, François, and Marc Mormont. 2013. "The Pragmatic Collective Interest as the Product of Civic Deliberation: The Case of Pesticide Management in Belgium" Sustainability 5, no. 5: 2233-2251. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5052233