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Citizen Participation Approaches in Environmental Health

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Environmental Determinants of Human Health

Part of the book series: Molecular and Integrative Toxicology ((MOLECUL))

Abstract

Environmental health is a very complex topic, as a whole range of factors are involved, many with high risks and uncertainty. The combination of complexity and uncertainty requires a different approach to support decision-making than traditional science has been offering to date. The last decades have shown that in order to support knowledge-based decision-making and to solve problems, knowledge and experience from different actors have to be taken into account through participatory approaches, including both traditional science and the general public.

The overall objective of this chapter is thus to demonstrate the role of public participation in the field of environment and health. We define the role of and present common approaches for public participation as well as elaborate further on two rather new approaches: Citizen Science and Citizens’ Observatories. At the end, we discuss some of the challenges involved and identify the development needs in public participation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term “Empowerment “ describes a process that enables people to make decisions and gain greater control over their personal life (WHO 1998). We can find the concept of empowerment in different settings, ranging from empowering of employees in organisations to legal empowerment, economic empowerment, and community empowerment or in the context of health (e.g., Wilkinson 1998; Piper 2010; Open Society Foundations 2014; UNDP 2015). The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion identified already back in 1986 community empowerment as one of the central concepts in health promotion to enable citizens to set priorities, make decisions, plan and implement strategies, that would ultimately lead to improved health for each individual (WHO 2015e).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Impacts and Economics (IMPEC), NILU – Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway

    Sonja Grossberndt & Hai-Ying Liu

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  1. Sonja Grossberndt
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  2. Hai-Ying Liu
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Correspondence to Sonja Grossberndt .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway

    Jozef M. Pacyna

  2. Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway

    Elisabeth G. Pacyna

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Grossberndt, S., Liu, HY. (2016). Citizen Participation Approaches in Environmental Health. In: Pacyna, J., Pacyna, E. (eds) Environmental Determinants of Human Health. Molecular and Integrative Toxicology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43142-0_11

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