Community-Based Environmental Planning

Conceptual Ancestry and Rationale

Underpinning CBEP is a strong focus on place-based environmental management. It therefore directs attention to the unique constellation of characteristics that constitute a given environment that provides the problem context for planning. In some cases, this has also been interpreted as prioritizing local residents and local knowledge in a given situation. However, in other cases, particularly in remote locations, nonresidents with [Page 548]particular knowledge or social connections to places have also been given strong recognition in planning processes.

Another important aspect of the ancestry of CBEP is the well-chronicled failings of the so-called top-down, or rational-comprehensive approach to planning, which, it has been argued, is insensitive to the particularities of locality and, thus, poorly adapted to human and ecological diversity across landscapes. In addition, top-down planning has been deemed authoritarian, implementing its prescriptions with insufficient sensitivity to and regard for local values and interests. These problems, as J. C. Scott has powerfully argued in Seeing Like a State, result in the failure of top-down planning to understand and use local, indigenous knowledge, which is crucial to designing and implementing effective interventions.

Advantages

Both the scholarly literature and practice in diverse circumstances across the world provide evidence that CBEP has a number of advantages. First, CBEP is more sensitive to the local characteristics of a given environmental problem. Essentially, place-based communities are thought to be more intimately familiar with environmental problems and solutions and can incorporate local knowledge to better inform the planning process, which in turn increases awareness of environmental issues.

Second, the planning outcomes that result from CBEP enjoy higher levels of legitimacy because they involve local residents and interested parties and promote “ownership” of problems. A common limitation of state-directed environmental planning has been a lack of legitimacy, which has hindered acceptance of planning outcomes. This is, indeed, part of the raison d'être of CBEP: By facilitating the participation of local, place-based actors, CBEP has the potential to avoid community resistance to plan implementation. As a result, CBEP has been seen as a more effective and more efficient mode of planning.

A further advantage of CBEP concerns the fundamental role of community participation in plan development. Relating to Jürgen Habermas's concept of communicative action, citizen involvement in planning processes is perceived to have a democratic benefit in its own right. This benefit stems from the importance of deliberation in the form of questioning, rationalizing, and comparing different perspectives in the planning process. On this basis, even if the planning outcome was identical to a state-dominated process, the social learning that occurs in developing an environmental plan has intrinsic value and is central to a healthy democratic process.

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