Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Transformative power in an inert planning system? -implementation gaps, structural resistance and strategy making Ph.D. Karolina Isaksson, VTI/KTH Prof. Tim Richardson, Aalborg University M.Sc. Chia Jung Wu, KTH Barriers and bridges in the planning process • Many efforts have been made to enhance environmental consideration in infrastructure planning • Ambitious goals and frameworks – but slow progess in practice – 1) What are the barriers in the planning process about? – 2) What are the potential solutions for the future? 1. What are the barriers about? • Research findings from Include: a) Implementation gaps: systematic lack of resources for environmental concern in planning practice b) Structural resistance: the importance of norms, perspectives and power-relations in the planning process c) Tools do not produce outputs that can be integrated into the strategic process a) systematic lack of resources “[The EIA-process] starts with the tender. Then we get the offer and we present what we want to do. When we make the offer, the [assigning authority] ask every department to calculate the approximate cost. We say maybe two million SEK. But then [the assigning authority] pay only 1,5 million. So we make the offer for 1,5 million. That means we lack money [for the EIA] from the very beginning.” (EIA-practitioner) b) Norms, perspectives and power-relations “Mostly generation is a problem since some of projects leaders are old. It’s not that they don’t want to take care about the environment. They just don’t have the knowledge really. They [did their professional training] years ago – many things have been changed in the last thirty years.” (EIA-practitioner) c) Tools do not produce outputs that can be used in the strategic process a) Environmental knowledge gets filtered out…. “Ten years ago when I was working with [an EIAreport] [...] the project leader told me he had to follow some [informal] requirements [and that] we should cut off [several things] from the report. [...] At the end we produced an EIA report which was not so good.” (EIA-practitioner) b) …or is integrated too late in the process: “Issues regarding landscape, climate change and other comprehensive [environmental] issues aren’t addressed sufficiently good at the [initial stage]. For example, when you read EIA reports for single road projects, you can find discussions about how a single road will affect climate change. I think […] it should be discussed at a strategic level in planning. It is the same with landscape issues.” (NHB-practitioner) 2. Solutions? • Poor integration of environmental concern= a common feature of many policyand planning areas • Environmental concern is potentially very challenging – so how could it ever be easy? • If there is a solution – it lies not only in the development of new tools and checklists • …there is also a need for capacity-building in the organisations concerned • and an enhanced capacity for ”strategic thinking and action” The need for strategic thinking and action • Strategic thinking – is not the same as “having a strategy or a plan” – shall have a function to encourage the shaping of actions for a certain purpose. – shall ”challenge practices that are justified in terms of ‘following established procedures’ or ‘this is what we have always done’” (Healey 2007:30). • not instrumental! ”A strategy co-evolves with the knowledge, values and politics that will give it authority, legitimacy and framing power.” (Healey 2007:31) • strategic thinking and action – could be enhanced at all stages in the infrastructure planning process – will certainly require new institutional design, new routines,new ways of talking, new processes and new professions – exactly what the potentials are at each stage in the current system is still a question to explore Thank you! [email protected]