[2] In the context of knowledge management, the establishment of ongoing participatory processes is seen by some as the facilitator of collective intelligence and inclusiveness, shaped by the desire for the participation of the whole community or society.
[4] Similarly major environmental and sustainability mechanisms have enshrined a right to public participation, such as the Rio Declaration.
The desire to increase public participation in humanitarian aid and development has led to the establishment of a numerous context-specific, formal methodologies, matrices, pedagogies and ad hoc approaches.
[3] In recent years, public participation has become seen as a vital part of addressing environmental problems and bringing about sustainable development.
In this context are limits of solely relying on technocratic bureaucratic monopoly of decision making, and it is argued that public participation allows governments to adopt policies and enact laws that are relevant to communities and take into account their needs.
Activities such as knowledge exchange Archived 2021-05-03 at the Wayback Machine, education, consultation, exhibitions, academic events, publicity campaigns, among others are all effective means for local participation.
[13] A conservation programme in Dangeil, Sudan, has used social and economic relationship with the community to make the project sustainable over the long term.
[14] In Australia, Indigenous communities increasingly have stewardship of conservation and management programs to care for, monitor and maintain their cultural heritage places and landscapes, particularly those containing rock art.
[16] In the UK and Canada it has been observed that all levels of government have started to build citizen and stakeholder engagement into their policy-making processes.
[18] This may involve large-scale consultations, focus group research, online discussion forums, or deliberative citizens' juries.
Public participation may also be used to measure attainable objectives, evaluate impact, and identify lessons for future practice.
[20] In Brazil's housing councils, mandated in 2005, citizen engagement in policy drafting increased effectiveness and responsiveness of government public service delivery.
[18] All modern constitutions and fundamental laws contain and declare the concept and principle of popular sovereignty, which essentially means that the people are the ultimate source of public power or government authority.
The relationship between citizens and local governments has weakened over the past two decades due to shortcomings in public service delivery.
[27] Obstacles like: finding affordable childcare, getting time off of work, and access to education in public matters exacerbate the lack of participation by low-income citizens.
[16] To foster greater participation of all social groups, vanguard privileged classes work to bring in low-income citizens through collaboration.
There have emerged a number of arguments in favor of a more participatory approach, which stress that public participation is a crucial element in environmental governance that contributes to better decision making.
Critics argue that public participation tends to focus on reaching a consensus between actors who share the same values and seek the same outcomes.
However, the uncertain nature of many of the environmental issues would undermine the validity of public participation, given that in many cases the actors come to the table of discussion hold very different perceptions of the problem and solution which are unlikely to be welded into a consensus due to the incommensurability of different positions.
[38] As Davies suggests, participative democracy could not guarantee the substantive environmental benefits 'if there are competing views of what the environment should be like and what it is valuable for'.
As shown in Christopher Weible's study, it is obvious that the public has an intrinsic desire to participate in policy making to some degree.
A study by Milena I. Neshkova and Hai Guo[43] illuminates the effectiveness of public participation by using analyzing data from U.S. state transportation agencies.
The researchers concluded that "public participation is, in fact, associated with enhanced organizational performance" (Neshkova and Guo, 2012).
Lastly, public participation is indeed an effective tool when lawmakers or bureaucratic agencies are making policies or laws.
As such the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, have public participation and freedom of information provisions in their legal systems since before the Middle Ages.
Reporting and evaluating methods of public participation and involvement in across multiple disciplines and languages has been an ongoing challenge, making it difficult to assess effectiveness.