«Экспертная сбалансированность» в общественных экологических советах регионов России

Abstract

Introduction: advisory institutions are now called “frontier” organizations that link science, politics, and society. For public authorities, ensuring support for its positions through processes of participation and interaction with stakeholders has become as important as ensuring a deeper understanding of problems and developing solutions using scientific and professional knowledge. Accordingly, a balanced representation of experts presenting, on the one hand, specialized knowledge, and, on the other hand, the interests of stakeholders, can be vital for the potential effectiveness of such public bodies. The environmental field covers many interests, as well as technical and scientific knowledge, hence requiring a wide range of actors in making more environmentally beneficial decisions. However, due to serious disproportions in the ecological situation, various regions of the Russian Federation may show a different degree of a certain type of experts and, accordingly, the presence of “fair balance” representation. Objectives: to identify the relationship between the composition of regional advisory bodies in Russia involved in environmental activities and the regions characteristics in the environmental sphere. Methods: typology, comparative analysis. Results: a comparative analysis of the 34 regional public councils composition showed the lack of “fair balance” in most of them. The study’s key theoretical expectation that environmentally depressed regions would see more “fair-balanced” councils was not confirmed. At the same time, it was found that the industry specialization of a region can play an important role: in a region with a “dirty” industry there will be a greater bias towards experts representing the interests of stakeholders than those focused on personal professional knowledge. Conclusions: the sectoral specialization of the region can have a significant impact on the composition of regional public councils under environmental executive authorities. The chaotic representation of the two types of experts in the studied institutions confirms that there is a continuous lack of a unified approach to the requirements for candidates selection, which may indicate both a potentially different quality level of their activities and a low degree of political importance given to the environmental sphere and, consequently, a low interest from politicians and civil society to participate in such institutions.