Public Involvement as an Element in Designing Environmental Monitoring Programs

Abstract

The monitoring of various environmental parameters may occur for a wide variety of reasons in numerous venues and at scales both large and small. Significant advances in the realms of data collection and communication technologies, as well as advances in remote sensing, have resulted in the ability to collect, transmit, analyze, manage, and disseminate environmental monitoring data at a scale little imagined only a couple of decades ago. These advances have also significantly increased the opportunities and means by which the public can contribute to environmental monitoring. Some types of environmental monitoring may be targeted at short and long-term observations of changes in ecological systems that are the result of natural processes and their effects, and do not come under significant public scrutiny. However, quite the opposite is true for monitoring of potential effects of various anthropogenic media, especially with regards to their impact on the safety and health of human receptors and associated ecosystems. Members of the public may view the results of such monitoring with suspicion, especially if collected by government agencies or other organizations that could be perceived as having either caused a situation which requires monitoring, or who have a vested interest in the results of the monitoring. Suspicion among the public about radiation monitoring was a major contributing factor to how the “Community Environmental Monitoring Program,” discussed later in this chapter, was designed. However, even monitoring of natural phenomena can have critics. Challenges exist in involving the public in environmental monitoring for environmental changes that may be a result of global issues such as climate change (IceWatch Canada and Project BudBurst are described in this chapter if the issues are viewed by some members of the public as being of ideological or political creation. Alternatively, with issues such as climate change, some people feel that the problems are so big that their contributions in measuring the effects of it, or reducing activities that contribute to it, will make no difference (e.g., Norgaard 2006). Members of the public are often more than willing to participate in environmental monitoring, particularly when they and their own communities have a personal stake in the results or when the monitoring process itself provides tangible benefits. However, sometimes the public does not immediately accept the notion that a monitoring program will have benefits. In fact, there are examples where they have, at least initially, concluded that it would have only