Challenge
Creating Common Ground Between Interest Groups and Government
Applied Ethics Strategies:
Prioritizing Middle-Ground SolutionsIntroduction
A city government is revising its strategic planning document which will shape the physical, economic, and social development of the city for decades. It is faced with a massively changed context: poor economic growth and social and environmental inequalities, coupled with an increase in mistrust of politicians and politics. A key issue is the lack of affordable housing, and the city government is under pressure to abandon or substantially reduce existing high environmental standards in the strategy as they are seen as an inhibitor to meeting housing and economic growth goals. Concerns expressed by different stakeholders vary: Local communities want more affordable housing (e.g. for those renting or homeless); developers claim that meeting climate change and environment goals is a huge cost resulting in less housing being built; and environmental NGOs see no evidence of this and fear that hard-won improvements to create green space will be lost. The city government has published a consultation to elicit views on possible changes to certain environment and climate policies and to understand the strength of support or opposition.
How could applied ethics address this challenge?
Representatives of the city government meet with community interest groups, single issue NGOs, developers, and other stakeholders to understand their views, the strength of feeling, and identify whether any compromise solutions exist and are supported. They facilitate a discussion between the single-issue NGOs, applying the “putting yourself in others’ shoes” strategy, to see if any middle-ground solutions can be identified. They then assess the relative impact that the stakeholders’ different and polarized approaches have on the city government’s stated targets and objectives, including any trade-offs. Whilst a political decision is taken to move forward with some ambitious and controversial environmental policies, some middle-ground solutions are also prioritized to address the housing issues. For example, the city government proposes setting minimum thresholds for environmental standards for housing, strict criteria for what land can be built on, and a timetable for their review so that, as evidence changes, there is a case for them to be improved.
Questions to consider
How can the city government convince stakeholders, whose views have not been adopted, that they have not capitulated to vested interests?
What implementation challenges are you aware of where applied ethics strategies could help?
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