Turning the Tide of Opinion – The Severn Barrage and Spaces of Public Consultation Core Paper MSc Nature Society and Environmental Policy Oxford University Centre for the Environment 2008 Turning the Tide of Opinion – the Severn Barrage and Spaces of Public Consultation Introduction The last decade has witnessed an upward trend in the number of public consultation undertaken by governments, especially in Western Europe. British Science and Technology Studies (STS) researchers in particular have observed that the imperative for public consultation on techno-scientific and environmental matters is increasingly recognised by governments (Hagendijk, 2004; Marres, 2007). Scientists too are requested progressively more by governments to engage the public, rather than to merely teach the public what they are presumed to need to know (Sykes, 2007). Concomitant to the increase in public consultation, the beginning of the twenty-first century has seen an “intensified policy debate on energy futures and the environment in many nations across the developed and developing world”, (Pidgeon et al, 2007:1). The UK alone, following the Kyoto Protocol, agreed in 1997 and the Stern Review of 2006 (on the economics of climate change), initiated an Energy Review in 2006 which aims purportedly to tackle the challenges posed by long-term climate change whilst simultaneously addressing the question of energy security. Encapsulating this twin challenge, the UK Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) stated, “together with the Wales Assembly Government, we [BERR] will work with the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC)... and other key interested parties... to explore the issues arising on the tidal resource in the UK, to include the Severn Estuary, including potential costs and benefits of developments using the range of tidal technologies and their public acceptability”, (BERR, 2006:100). The government’s renewed interest in exploiting the Severn estuary’s hyper-tidal regime makes likely the spectre of public consultation on the issue, as per the UK’s previous 2 consultations on genetically modified organisms (GM Nation?, 2002), biosciences (Public Consultation on the Biosciences, 1999) and the ongoing and indeed, controversial public engagement on the future of nuclear power (The Future of Nuclear Power, 2007). Despite, however, the increasing tendency of the government to move to public consultation, much criticism has been levelled against the conduct and purpose of public engagement in technoenvironmental matters. Alan Irwin for example, suggested in a review of recent consultations, “the design of consultations investigated has had less to do with what the public thinks, as with what politicians and advisers think about the public, and about the arguments that politicians think the public should reconsider”, (Irwin, 2001:8). From this, it would seem that the notion and practice of public consultation needs to be reconsidered. Therefore, in drawing on recent literature from STS research, this paper posits three arguments. Firstly, public consultations elicit useful and usable public knowledge and experience whilst also broadening the scope for participatory democracy. However, in line with Irwin’s aforementioned criticism, the paper contends that the internal geography and spaces of consultation needs to change. Secondly, the ways in which the ‘public’ is viewed and constructed necessitates rethinking, from a regard that fixes the public as static and lacking in techno-environmental knowledge to a consideration of a heterogeneous public, not as a pre-determined entity but a shifting, ontogenetic phenomenon, i.e. a public brought into being by a variety of histories, experiences and “knowledge-claims” (Castree, 2005:8). Thirdly, the potential construction of a Severn Barrage presents an opportunity for the UK government to learn from the limitations of previous consultations and to revise the way in which it engages the public over the issue of energy security in the context of environmental change. To propagate these three arguments, the paper addresses the following themes. Firstly, why do governments consult; what is the point and who or what do they serve? What were the 3 limitations to the previous attempts at public consultation? The paper considers the cases of the biosciences review and the nuclear power consultation. The paper then assesses the opportunity afforded by the Severn estuary to provide both a significant portion of the UK’s energy need, but also the potential for the government to instigate a meaningful public consultation. To have a meaningful consultation is to engage a meaningful public; the paper asks who or what is the public and how the public should be reconceived to improve consultation exercises. Finally, some critical recommendations are suggested as to how public consultation can detach itself from cynical criticism and become an active, meaningful device in a representative democratic setting. Why consult? Why consult the public? In representative democracies, governments are mandated to govern, so why bother deferring to the populous? Cynics might argue that elected representatives are elected to use their own conscience and discretion to make judgements rather than to act as delegates for their constituent electorate (Hagendijk and Kallerud, 2003). Realistically however, policies in a democracy, to some extent at least, need to remain sensitive to the preferences of the electorate (Pidgeon et al, 2007). Public consultation can serve to widen what is arguably an otherwise narrow band of democracy, particularly in the UK whereby the electorate is called upon usually only once every four to five years to cast a vote. So there is a normative aspect to public consultation, that at the core of any notion of democracy should be some element of public input into the policy-making process (Fishkin et al, 2000). Opening-up the policy making process provides exciting opportunities for the public and again expands the wider potential of participatory democracy, as claimed by Barry (2001:9), 4 “the contestation of technical designs and practices may open up new objects and sites of politics”. In other words, consultation engenders a new geography of public engagement. Aside from this idealist imperative to broaden the practice of democracy, the increasing need to consult publicly on techno-environmental issues is the outcome of pressure exerted by numerous crises and the ensuing political fallout in the UK during the 1990s, particularly over GM food and the BSE debacle earlier in the decade. In response to these crises and contributing to the zeitgeist of engaging the public more widely, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended that, “those directly affected by an environmental matter should always have the accepted right to make their views known before a decision is taken about it” (RCEP, 1998:102). Drawing on the work of political theorists Dewey and Lippmann, Marres (2007) also identifies a need for public consultation borne out of controversies that existing institutions are unable to resolve; “where facts are most obscure, where precedents are lacking, where novelty and confusion pervade everything, the public in all its unfitness is compelled to make its [the governments] most important decisions” (Lippmann [1927] in Marres, 2007:767). The proposed Severn Barrage represents a situation where the facts are arguably obscure, where precedents are certainly lacking and where at present, novelty and confusion still remains. On this basis, the government is likely to move to public consultation, however, before turning our attention to the Severn Barrage, the paper addresses the limitations to previous public consultations. 5 Framed limitations In the previous section, the paper suggests that public consultations open a new geography of participatory democracy, whilst at the same time governments find consultations useful when trying to overcome seemingly intractable controversies. However, this section explores some of the threats to meaningful public engagement, namely the pre-framing of issues and also a more simplistic disregard by consultants of what publics are actually articulating and concerned about. More importantly, the section considers how publics themselves have been pre-determined, pre-framed and constructed speciously to convey a singular view-point. The section draws on themes from the biosciences and nuclear power consultations in the UK. Framed Issues Millner succinctly defines frames as, “the perceptual lenses, worldviews or underlying assumptions that guide communal interpretation and definition of particular issues” (Millner, 2000:212). Frames have been useful devices with which sociologists and political theorists have been able to articulate discourses and ideologies in a coherent manner whilst for others, frames have been valuable in the deconstruction of arguments or making issues more salient in a communicating context. However, as Marres (2007) warns, consultations may, ironically, obfuscate public consideration because the framings that demarcate the subjects of discussion do not allow for the formulation of public concern. This is a serious shortcoming, particularly when as Hagendijk and Irwin (2006:175) imply, “the framing of debate in Europe is typically decided by a small coterie of officials, organisations and experts”. In other words, a top-down blueprint of how consultations should proceed imposed by consultants renders engagement with the public as futile. Instead the consultation serves to railroad opinion along a preconstructed track of thought. Moreover, underlying these frames are theoretical models. 6 These models are always in play, even when, “their ostensible purpose is to allow the public to frame the process in their own terms” (Lezaun and Soneryd, 2007:292). This pre-framing was in evidence during the UK government’s Public Consultation on the Biosciences between 1997 and 1999. Irwin and Michael (2003) identify several problems with the consultation. Firstly, the frame of the consultation and questions set were established by the government, not by the public, for example, ‘what is the level and nature of people’s awareness of technological advances in the biosciences?’. This questioned assumed a general awareness of the biosciences as a distinct category. The consultation also prefigured that scientific issues are separable in the public mind from other congruent social issues such as environment, housing and food security, therefore discussion on wider issues was curtailed by consultants. Crucially, the question positions and frames the public, not the biosciences, as the subject of research. In addition to the qualitative element of the consultation, a quantitative survey was also conducted. For Irwin and Michael, this represented an atomised and fixed view of public understanding which is contradicted by the reality of more fluid social relations. Although the public is invited to join the dialogue, it does so within the rigid frameworks and “established cultural understandings of policy makers and politicians” (ibid:63). It is perhaps no surprise that a House of Lords Committee review of the consultation concluded that the process had been “closer to market research than public consultation” (House of Lords, 2000:5.3). Ultimately, pre-framing the agenda of a consultation undermines the potential for public responses to operate within their own terms of reference, geographies and frameworks (Irwin, 2001). The representation of science during the consultation was also constructed as a coherent and internally consistent rational system, which as Hagendijk (2004:44) suggests, is, “hardly 7 relevant in most politically controversial issues, where decisions are commonly made in the face of uncertainty, and are based on inconclusive findings and incompatible views”. It is this scientific core/social periphery model which has framed the practice of public consultations over the last decade and a model which needs abandoning. The UK government’s 2006/2007 consultation on the future of nuclear power revealed more fundamental shortcomings in the theory and practice of public consultation. Greenpeace successfully won a High Court challenge against the government in which the judgement stated that the consultation process had been “misleading”, “seriously flawed” and “procedurally unfair” (Justice Sullivan, 2006:27). The government had promised the “fullest consultation” on nuclear power, but Greenpeace complained that issues such as radioactive waste legacies were ignored. A group of seventeen academics and scientists under the umbrella of the Nuclear Consultation Working Group (NCWG) also stated expressed anxiety; “we are profoundly concerned that the government's approach was designed to provide particular and limiting answers” (Dorfman, 2008:84). The judge agreed, concluding that “something had gone clearly and radically wrong” and that the final paper published was more akin to an issues paper than a consultation document. At the time of writing, the government have formally approved a new generation of nuclear power stations. At best, the government inadvertently omitted detail from the consultation, at worst, the government wilfully deceived participants. Framed Publics “People talk about the public as if it speaks with one voice, but this is far from the reality of increasingly complex societies” (Gaskell, 2004:244). As Gaskell suggests, publics have been constructed as single, uniform entities. Publics have been essentialised not only by governments, but also by other actors/actants such as NGOs and academics. Publics have 8 been framed as pools of lay knowledge, sometimes useful, but often dispensable. Whether the knowledge-claims espoused by publics have been of use or not, the public is still framed as an amorphous group with uniform views and ideals. It is, however, unwise to assume glibly that there exists any single or stable opinion, particularly on techno-environmental matters (Pidgeon et al, 2007). Irwin and Michael (2003:60) add that the notion of a uniform public operates on a unsophisticated pragmatist conception that public opinion is, “out there to be mined and collected rather than being actively created within particularly cultural and discursive settings”. This renders the participatory aims of public consultation effectively defunct as participants appear reactive, not active; whereby the participants are actually the subjects of social research and not the conductors of research; whereby the prime audience of a government initiated public consultation appears to be the government itself, not the public. Lezaun and Soneryd (2007) highlight an interesting paradox insofar as there is a tendency by consultants to produce static images of public, yet at the same time, consultants depend on the mobility of public viewpoints. In other words, consultants need to observe public opinion move along a trajectory which might initially position themselves against government proposals, but which may have travelled during the consultancy period to a viewpoint aligned with the government’s own view. One way in which publics are essentialised is documented by Public Understanding of Science (PUS) studies. It proposes that uneducated publics are of little value in consultations on complex matters. This viewpoint is espoused by a deficit mode of thought whereby lay knowledge is relegated to insignificance in comparison to ‘scientific’ knowledge. This bias has dominated recent consultations, particularly in the UK, and as such there has been a schism between the consideration of stakeholder and general public opinion. Inevitably, this gives rise to accusations against the government for engineering consultations to the advantage of, “the usual suspects... the established stakeholders who can speak the language 9 of government” (Irwin and Michael, 2003:147). What space then, for ‘ordinary people’ to engage unconditionally in open-ended deliberation? So far the paper has presented a rather pessimistic account of public consultation in technoenvironmental matters; issues and publics framed in a manner convivial to government strategy, engaged in a tokenistic exercise of public relations. However, as hinted in the section ‘Why consult?’, there are reasons to be optimistic about the potential for public engagement. With a reconfiguring of the geography of consultations and their publics, meaningful dialogue is possible. These arguments will be elucidated in due course. Meanwhile, the paper now addresses the impending possibility of the construction of a Severn Barrage and the possibilities for public consultation. Severn Up “The Severn... a succession of violent cataracts formed in a channel exposed to the rapid rush of the tide which has scarcely an equal on any other coast” (Thomas Telford, 1823). Estuaries attract human activity (Hoare, 2002). These sites of dynamic and turbulent biophysical interactions have generated numerous major Old and New World settlements. By the same token, estuaries are divisive; “they serve to divide in human terms as surely they form unified systems in physical terms” (ibid:2). This divisiveness is perhaps no more evident than it is in the case of the Severn estuary, the mouth of the UK’s longest river. Not only has the Severn acted as the ancient geographic and geopolitical divide between England and Wales, but it threatens to provide the space for a renewed conflict over the UK’s energy security and commitment to curbing the excesses of carbon consumption. Tidal power in the UK has been harnessed since medieval times (NATTA, 1982) using tidal mills (for wheat 10 milling). The Severn estuary itself has long been the subject of government and engineering curiosity with regard to its hyper-tidal regime, the second highest in the world following the Bay of Fundy in Canada. As early as 1933, the Brabazon Commission researched the feasibility of a tidal barrage across the Severn, if only to preserve dwindling coal supplies in the South Wales valleys. Since then, several exploratory commissions have been and gone in an attempt to improve the UK’s self-sufficiency in energy (Severn Barrage Committee, 1981; Severn Tidal Power Group, 1986; Severn Barrage Project, 1989). In all attempts, high expenditure and lack of public appetite for the project are cited as reasons for discontinuation. In 2007 however, the UK government signalled its most serious intention yet to consider the construction of a Severn barrage and therefore commissioned the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) to report on the feasibility of constructing a barrage between Lavernock Point in Wales (one mile downstream of Cardiff) and Brean Down in England (one mile downstream of the seaside resort, Weston-super-Mare) – see Fig 1. The theoretical generating output of the proposed barrage is detailed in Table 1. Fig 1: Proposed location for the primary Severn Barrage option. The barrage will span approximately 10 miles between England and Wales. 11 Table 1: Power Output and Cost Summary for Primary Severn Barrage Option Outputs Lengths of Embankments Generating Capacity Annual Average Electricity Output Contribution to UK Electricity Supply (2006 Data) Estimated Cost of Construction Estimated Cost of Output at Various Discount Rates (High Case Scenario) 2% 3.5% 8% 10% 15% Primary Option: Cardiff-Weston Barrage 16.1km 8.64GW 17TWh 4.4% £15 billion 2.31p/kWh 3.68p/kWh 9.24p/kWh 12.37p/kWh 22.31p/kWh The generating potential of the proposed Barrage is unprecedented, as are the ecological sideeffects which have ignited a fierce debate over the Severn estuary’s future. Its hyper-tidal range results in the Severn’s high-suspended sediment load, giving the estuary its characteristic muddy hue. Whilst this creates a harsh physical regime resulting in low biodiversity, it supports high populations of rarer species of invertebrates and fish. The barrage threatens to reverse this trend. Under the EU Directives on Birds and Habitats, the Severn estuary is a Special Protection Area (SPA) and a candidate Special Area of Conservation (SAC) – the estuary’s vast salt marshes and mobile sandbanks provide refuge to migratory birds, particularly for Dunlin and Berwick Swans. Again, the barrage threatens to undermine these habitats. The nebulous arguments for and against the barrage are still being formulated and it is not in this essay’s remit to adjudicate either way, however, the paper is interested to understand where the potential for public consultation may arise. An SDC poll (n 1010) revealed that 63% of the public had no knowledge of a potential Severn Barrage (SDC, 2007). As the barrage moves higher up the political agenda and thus enters public consciousness, the government will be compelled to inform the public about the 12 barrage proposals before it goes to consultation. Furthermore, as Walker (1995:50) suggests, the exploitation of tidal resources has been, “more talked about than realised and as a consequence experience of the actual impacts of projects is very limited and it is difficult to assess the impact of public concerns on project decisions”. It is this ‘unknown’ which necessitates a public consultation. With recourse to Dewey and Lippman, the public in this instance can actually help resolve what would otherwise be a huge political dilemma for government. Remember also, that following the House of Lord’s recommendations on public engagement in environmental matters, a consultation is almost certain to occur. How then, can the public be meaningfully engaged? This requires a reworking of theory and practice of public consultations. In the next section, critical recommendations are made to reiterate the three arguments of this paper; that public consultations are useful, pending a review of their internal geography; that the idea of public needs to be reconceptualised from being to becoming and finally, that the proposed Severn Barrage provides a prime opportunity for the government to engage the public meaningfully. Recommendations Outlined in the arguments so far, the impact of public consultations has been limited by consultant institutions and their commissioning bodies pre-framing issues, publics and consultations themselves. This has led to consultations being labelled moribund, tokenistic and even deceptive. Notwithstanding these criticisms, this paper argues that public consultations are a good idea; they revitalise the spaces of active democracy and to the advantage of actors such as states, consultations help “assuage public mistrust and reinforces the legitimacy of institutions in charge of their [the public’s] regulation” (Lezaun and 13 Soneryd, 2007:279). What follows are three broad recommendations for consultants to consider when proposing public engagement. 1. Reconfigure the geography of consultation Reconfiguring the geography of consultation involves opening up the spaces of consultation. In turn this entails removing the barriers to meaningful engagement. The main barrier, as previously argued, is the pre-framing of issues. Framing limits the terms of reference for debate, particularly when the frames deployed are the ones chosen by government or their consultants. Indeed, as suggested by Brouwer et al (1999), instead of making assumptions a priori, research efforts should be focused on the processes by which actual public attitudes towards the environment can best be fed into policy decision-making. This might mean allowing publics to generate their own consultation agendas and questions. A further barrier to deconstruct is what Irwin and Michael (2003) describe as the ‘firewall’ between scientific analysis and public evaluation. This is a barrier rooted in an Enlightenment ontology, giving primacy to scientific thought over public opinion, hence generating the science core/public periphery dichotomy, or firewall. This firewall can be overcome by again, reconfiguring the geography of the consultation, by situating scientific knowledge in its social context. Instead of presenting scientific ‘fact’ at the start of the consultation and asking people to respond to this ‘fact’, it should be considered and treated like an opinion from a member of the public, or rather, considered as one knowledge-claim amongst a plurality of knowledge-claims. This way we see the geography of the consultation morphing from a hierarchal process of imparting a privileged knowledge from so-called experts to lay publics, to a more horizontal process of knowledge deliberation. It also demonstrates a closer alignment to consultation proper as opposed to an exercise designed to improve the policy 14 makers’ understanding of the public (Irwin and Michael, 2003). The firewall is also removed by a reconsideration of the public, addressed in the second recommendation. The geography of public consultation should also be reconfigured to elude national boundaries, particularly as environmental challenges tend to challenge on a trans-national scale and that corresponding processes of governance (as opposed to government) begin to go beyond the nation-state. Any consultation on the Severn barrage for example, could benefit from international consultation with actors involved in the development of the La Rance tidal barrage near St. Malo, France – an opportunity to share best, and perhaps worst, practice (where incidentally, no public consultation took place). In terms of methodology used in public consultations, whilst quantitative methods allows engagement with larger numbers of people, Irwin (2001) argues that interpretive flexibility is inevitably constrained. Quantitative surveys rarely grasp the multitude of opinions, particularly when dealing with complex environmental issues. It also adds to the top-down geography of consultations illustrated by the examples discussed earlier, hence a qualitative approach to consultation here is encouraged. As there is a heterogeneity of worldviews, so to there must be a heterogeneity of people expressing these views, accordingly the paper moves to its second recommendation. 2. Reconfigure public(s) as becoming, not being Troublingly, publics have been pre-framed by consultations in the same manner in which issues and topics have been essentialised. Generally, two assumptions have been made. Firstly, that publics are stable entities ‘out-there’, ready to be mined for knowledge and opinion. Secondly, that publics lack the specialist techno-scientific and environmental knowledge to arrive at ‘sound’ conclusions or judgements. In response, the paper recommends that firstly, publics are not pre-determined entities, nor do they pre-exist an 15 issue. Publics are brought into being by issues in the same way that issues are contingent upon these publics. The philosophy underpinning this claim will be explained after making a second sub-recommendation; that consultants should abandon the deficit model applied to publics and instead recognise that lay knowledges can contribute to and inform meaningful debate. To elucidate the first claim, that publics do not exist, but are brought into being, Marres (2007:767) argues, “publics come into being as an effect of changing consequences of human action”. In the same manner that issues and controversies shift and change, contingent on people and geography, so too are publics contingent on the issues and geographies that produce them. Publics are ontogenetic (emergent). Ontogenetics in biology refers to the sequence of events involved in the development of an individual organism from its birth to its death. In turn, biology’s concern with development as captured by ontogenesis can be deployed usefully in philosophy, as suggested by Deleuze and Guattari (1988). Rather than considering objects or things (in this case, publics) as unquestionably ‘established’, an ontogenetic reading the public demands that we consider its becoming in relation to geography, institutions and issues. Regarding publics ontogenetically can public consultations can benefit in two ways. Firstly, it helps again to break down the aforementioned firewall between science and society and instead allows us to witness the blurring of science and society in what Irwin and Michael (2003) describe as an ‘ethno-epistemic assemblage’. Drawing again on Deleuze and Guattari’s semiotics, Irwin and Michael assess how the production of truth claims (epistemologies) and situated, local knowledges (the ‘ethno’) come together in a territory of heterogeneous patterns and routines (the assemblage). Public consultations could be conceived as an example of these assemblages. Secondly, accounting for publics as ontogenetic helps recognise how and why public opinion can be heterogeneous, fragmentary 16 and contradictory. In publishing the outcomes of consultations, consultants have often tried, or felt compelled to portray a panoply of public opinion as a single, coherent narrative which pre-existed the consultation. The recommendation here is that difference and heterogeneity in opinion should be celebrated and harnessed by government. Hagendijk and Irwin (2006) rightly indicate that public opposition has been taken erroneously to signify public ignorance, resulting in the marginalisation of public knowledge-claims. Conversely, many commentators agree that the diverse and dynamic character of public opinion should be deployed as a resource within the decision making process (Irwin, 2001; Pidgeon et al, 2007). Public groups are capable of treating techno-scientific and environmental information in a considered fashion (Lezaun and Soneryd, 2007). Furthermore, publics can make useful contributions to difficult decision-making processes or where politically sensitive issues cannot, or will not be resolved by politicians. Equally, publics too must also assert themselves according to Brown and Mikkelsen (1997:43) in order to become activists, “citizens must overcome an ingrained reluctance to challenge authority”. Considering the vast plurality of publics and their corresponding opinion, there has been an excessive emphasis on reaching a consensus within consultations. This in turn can lead to a sense of exclusion of groups that disagree with the framing of a debate (Hagendijk, 2004). Realistically, the outcomes of consultations will benefit some and disadvantage others, however, the argument here is to reach these outcomes following meaningful engagement. As Irwin (2001:16) concludes, “the relationship between science and democracy should not be about the search for universal solutions and institutional fixes, but rather the development of an open and critical discussion between researchers, policy makers and citizens”. 17 3. Use the proposed Severn barrage as a new space of public engagement Estuaries encapsulate the artificial nexus between nature and society. The Severn estuary is a volatile, turbulent environment which is likely to precipitate an equally volatile debate as the government becomes increasingly serious about constructing a hydro-electric barrage across the channel. The necessity to consult publicly is borne out of uncertainty and the unprecedented scope of the project. When the government does consult the public, it needs to reconfigure the geography of the consultation and also reconfigures its conception of the public. To pre-frame the barrage consultation is both unwise and dangerous. Previous framings of the barrage debate have shifted in the last one-hundred years in the same manner that ephemeral sandbanks shift with the Severn’s perilous rip-tides. From a concern to preserve coal in the early twentieth century to providing sustainable energy in 2008, the framing of the Severn resource is far from stable. The complex environmental and political arguments that will emerge from the consultation are difficult to fathom, but the consulting agency should not take it upon themselves to stereotype or pre-frame the public. Public(s) cannot be identified until the issue itself comes into being and because people bring with them multiple histories, biographies, biases and opinions, consultants should not try to determine an end-game to the consultation or funnel a variety of worldviews into a single narrative. The socio-environmental challenges posed by the Severn barrage proposal entails no simple ‘for/against’ dichotomy. Moreover, the stereotypical battle-lines between environmentalist and development-thirsty government are outmoded and naive. Divisions over the Severn barrage, for example, exist between ostensibly cogent organisations; Friends of the Earth adamantly oppose the proposals whilst Greenpeace has expressed backing for the barrage, albeit it highly limited and riddled with caveats. Again, this cautions against pre-figuring the frames of argument and those taking part in the argument. Following the nuclear power consultation, the Severn Barrage is likely 18 to be the next major environmental topic subject to consultation. The government would do well to rethink its consultation strategy, if only to stay out of the High Court. Conclusion In summary, the propensity for public consultation in the last decade has increased in response to environmental crises and an institutional shift towards wider public engagement, both to expand the spaces of democracy, but also to aid state actors in overcoming political impasses. Whilst the augmentation in public engagement is generally welcome, recent exercises in public consultation, particularly in the UK have been limited by the pre-framing of issues and publics. In most cases, the framing of publics has been to patronise public knowledge-claims in deference to established scientific fact. Following the limited success or indeed legal failure of recent public consultations on environmental and scientific issues, and drawing on STS research, this paper has called for a reconfiguration of the geography of consultations and re-conceptualisation of publics. This requires conceiving publics not as preexisting stable entities, but as ontogenetic publics, brought into being by affective issues. Consequently, there is a clear imperative for an extensive public policy debate which is genuinely sensitive to the multiple biographies of contingent publics (Pidgeon et al, 2007). The proposed Severn barrage represents an opportunity for the UK government to instigate this debate according to a reconfigured geography of more deliberative, inclusive consultation. Without precedent and with the socio-ecological stakes so high, the government cannot afford not to consult the public on the issue. Barry (2001:10) asserts, “the contemporary public sphere cannot be understood as something like a set of spaces in which rational discussion simply takes place in an unmediated fashion”, likewise consultants should not be striving for ‘rational’ discussion within consultations. Consultation on the Severn 19 barrage needs to allow for multiple and contradictory discourses to be articulated. Finally, how these discourses are mediated and narrated necessitates further reflection by consultants. 20 List of Tables and Figures Page 10 Fig 1: “Proposed location for the primary Severn Barrage option”. Accessed on 19 December from BBC News Online; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7021835.stm Page 11 Table 1: “Power Output and Cost Summary for Primary Severn Barrage Option”. Adapted from pp7, Sustainable Development Commission. (2007) Turning the Tide: Tidal Power in the UK. HMSO. 21 References Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission. (2002) GM Nation? The Findings of the Public Debate. HMSO Barry, A. (2001) Political Machines. Governing a Technological Society. The Athlone Press BERR. (2006) “The Energy Challenge”. Energy Review: A Report. HMSO BERR. (2007) The Future of Nuclear Power: The Role of Nuclear Power in a Low Carbon Economy. 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