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"Participation" has emerged as a key to sustainable development and, in particular, to the management of local resources and conflict. This chapter summarises and discusses research on participatory environmental management carried out under the Swiss Priority Programme Environment (1993-2000). The seven papers presented in Part I of this volume focus on innovative forms of participatory management that are often combined with the political empowerment of communities. Two papers describe and analyse the effects of particular cases of participation in environmental management in the urban area. The other papers describe, illustrate, and discuss particular methods and approaches that promote co-operation and co-ordination as well as the empowerment of disadvantaged citizens. This synthesis and overview chapter proposes a distinction between two dimensions of participation: (1) political participation, the degree of involvement of individual citizens and their social organisations in policy and related decision-making; (2) participation in public management, the role citizens and groups of the civil society play in the management of public affairs. Although the two dimensions are not mutually required, in reality many participatory approaches in environmental management promote both more efficient solutions and empowerment of weaker strata of society by redistributing the control of decisions and resources. The following are the key findings of and lessons to be learnt from Part I of this volume: 1. There is a substantial potential in environmental management for new co-operation between emerging actors, such as civil society organisations and commercially oriented micro enterprises. Co-operation brings benefits from the comparative advantages of the different actors with respect to social mobilisation, technical support and operations, and financial management. 2. Civil society organisations become empowered when they obtain greater control of resources and decisions (the "winners"). Their empowerment can go hand in hand with the disempowerment of other social entities, such as conventional local public administration or legislative institutions (the "losers"). The disempowerment of these entities may, however, negatively affect the delivery of public services. One solution lies in decentralisation processes with concurrent new institutional constellations, which could reinforce local authorities in new regulative functions. However, the evidence shows that the political power structures in place tend to persist as long as unorganised interests are not strengthened in a targeted way. 3. Public participation, in the sense of public control of decisions and resources, may reinforce the "local visions" of authorities. The participation of (yet) informal groups of citizens can contribute to the acquisition of legitimisation by political actors. For creating sustainable solutions, the mechanisms of participation, that is the definition of rules and guidelines for participation, need to be formalised and legitimised. 4. The role and degree of control exerted by funding institutions remain unchanged in the cases described here, particularly in the South. Funding institutions retain the greatest influence on decisions and resources. 5. Communication platforms of a non-committal nature constitute an arena for common learning and reflection among the actors, which allows the capitalisation, communication, and reproduction of knowledge and experience. Platforms provide opportunities for coordination and eventual agreement on formal, committal, and binding collaborative arrangements among the interested participants. Those arrangements require legal recognition. 6. Communication of individual perceptions and realities forms the basis for common learning and action. Mental mapping and comparable visualisation approaches as well as facilitation prove to be meaningful aids to communication among different parties with varying and often divergent interests. 7. Conditions of successful participation in environmental management include a common interest and co-operation among the actors; the preparedness of political authorities to provide legitimacy; the availability of monetary, social, and psychological resources; professional process moderation, transparency, and the growing legitimisation of such endeavours in politico-institutional terms. The evidence shows that "participation" can link efficient environmental management with empowerment aims. In this, it can provide for sustainable solutions for increasingly complex environmental problems. On the other hand, the same case experiences reveal that participation is not a "panacea" that can be applied always and everywhere. Social hierarchies, heterogeneous interests of the social actors involved, and their diverging perceptions hinder collective efforts towards action that is environmentally sound and socially just. More research is needed on pre-conditions for environmentally effective collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CERN is a pure research laboratory devoted to elementary particle physics. On top of this mission of discovery, it has also the duties of technological innovation, of human resource development and international collaboration, the latter not being restricted to its member states, as explained in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief summary of Moroccan participation in the ATLAS project at the CERN. The Moroccan contribution has concerned various fields, ranging from instrumentation to the study of physical processes, and has yielded very rich scientific results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of "platforms for resource use negotiation" is a promising way of dealing with complex natural resource management problems, a way of negotiating in order to avoid overexploitation and inter-user conflicts. "Innovation co-operations" then take over the task of realising the ideas developed by such platforms. The first part of this chapter introduces and discusses the concepts of platforms and innovation co-operations, which are two complementary institutions for sustainable landscape and regional development. We propose that these institutions can be the common basis for development processes run by the various stakeholders. In particular, the chapter highlights the learning processes and their characteristics that are constitutive elements of both institutions. in the second part, the chapter illustrates the concept with a concrete case. Organic farmers in the Canton of Lucerne (Switzerland) developed a platform called "Agriculture-Landscape-Economy Lucerne." It brought together representatives of different interest groups in a non-committal way. The platform provided for the joint initiation and development of project ideas. As it did not, however, offer a practicable basis for project planning and implementation, the stake holders participating in the platform founded a commercial enterprise called "Kulturland 21 Ltd." This network, consisting of people, companies, and organisations, assists the implementation of projects that serve sustainable use of the countryside, and it provides the necessary legal framework. The case shows that commitment towards specific and tangible projects requires prior reflection and the definition of goals—that is, the development of a common understanding on a non-committal basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for citizen participation in local sustainability contexts became very prominent with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Since then, participatory processes, known as so-called Local Agenda 21 processes, have been initiated worldwide. While their success is contested, it seems that new forms of exchange among citizens, politicians, and experts have evolved that would not have come into being without a Local Agenda 21 process. This exchange is crucial, because wise policy making on sustainability issues requires both topic expertise and moral judgment. Citizen participation procedures at the local level are faced with the difficult task of bringing together knowledge of local cultures, expert insights, and ethical reasoning. In the first part of this chapter, we focus on the role of citizen participation in democratic societies. Against that background, we discuss the contribution of the New Participatory Instruments (NP!). In the second part, we describe focus groups as an especially valuable participatory assessment technique for combining expert insights with laypersons' valuations. In the third part, we describe a Swiss citizen participation project in the area of local climate policy using a focus group setting. In the fourth part, we comment on success criteria for participatory instruments deduced from this project and from other experiences with NPI. We conclude that NPI fit both representative and direct democratic systems. We perceive a pressing need for transparent institutional mechanisms that assure that ideas and recommendations from voluntary, non-binding forms of politics enter into formal political decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the meeting of researchers from the North and South in Switzerland to discuss innovative institutional arrangements for local environmental management. Aim of the Discussion Forum North-South; Knowledge management; Environmental protection.

The collaboration between CERN and Egypt has entered a more active phase and is seen as particularly important to limit the brain drain Egypt is facing. It will also improve communication between North and South and help in the technology transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]