Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/52852

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/61991

KEYWORDS : public participation;deliberation;participant observation;World Wide Views (WWViews);biodiversity

World Wide Views on Biodiversity (WWViews2012) was held on September 15, 2012. Roughly 3,000 ordinary citizens in 25 countries participated in it simultaneously, and they deliberated on issues such as the conservation of biodiversity both on land and in the sea and the way of burden and benefit sharing. WWViews is a participatory mechanism designed to involve “ordinary citizens” in discussion about complex global issues for the purpose of giving advice to policymakers. It was introduced for the first time in 2009 on global warming issues, and the WWViews2012 was the second attempt. Prior studies on the WWViews2009 show that there were great difficulties in participants discussing global issues in internationally uniform agendas and programs because they found the issues something unfamiliar and far from their life. In this study, we investigated the way the participants and facilitators overcame the difficulties through close participant observation of the process of WWViews2012 in Japan. By analyzing the data of group discussion and post-event interviews with participants, we found that the participants utilized three methods in order to “contextualize” the complex and often unfamiliar topics: (1) bringing in life experience and actual feeling, (2) using information material as a catalyst to draw out diverse points of view, (3) bridging the gap between personal interest and public agendas by sharing different understandings of key concepts in discussion.