Public Participation in Controversial Engineering Decision-Process

Abstract

This research selected two typical controversial projects, the eventual closing of Hayi gas project and shelving of Nujiang hydropower development project. It was discovered that the participating subjects and forms have undergone significant changes along with the times. In the Hayi gas project instance, the participating subjects were mainly news media, citizens and experts, and Nujiang hydropower development project also incurred active intervention from environmental protection NGO organizations who were not direct stakeholders.From the second aspect, in the Hayi instance, the news media all came up with positive reports thus avoided the "controversies" ; there were only public passive participation, if any; experts were arbitrarily selected and had limited influence; all these circumstances led to only internal disputes in the government, and quelled by virtue of administrative powers. On the other hand, in the Nujiang case, there were diversified news reports, active participations by experts and environmental protection NGO organizations. All these factors resulted in the powerful social outcry due to controversy spillover and eventual abortion of the project.