Why social media should be used by public authorities
Effective public participation means that citizens are informed about the procedures involved in environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and are aware of their opportunities to participate. However, the public is often unaware of the relevant websites or EIA portals. Social media, on the other hand, is used by a large majority of citizens and should therefore also be used by authorities to provide information about EIA procedures. In many countries, information about ongoing procedures is currently only provided via newspapers and government websites, with hardly any use of social media. However, more people could be reached via social media, especially younger generations, who are increasingly obtaining information in the digital space and using less print media.
As some countries do not even have EIA portals, citizens would have to regularly visit many different government websites to find out whether new EIA procedures have been published. This is not something that citizens can do on a regular basis, so it is usually left to environmental organisations, which are often organised on a voluntary basis and have few resources. There is therefore an urgent need to disseminate information via social media. In some cases, information on EIAs is also disseminated by environmental organisations and activists to their communities themselves via social media.
Good practice examples
Germany
A good practice example for dealing with social media in Germany is the Federal Network Agency. The Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railway is an independent higher federal authority. It acts as a regulatory authority to ensure competition in the so-called network markets. Since 2011, the Federal Network Agency has also been responsible for the grid development plan and the authorisation procedures for the extra-high-voltage grid in Germany. The agency regularly provides information about ongoing procedures on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.
However, other German authorities predominantly do not provide information about EIAs on social media. Some local authorities, such as cities and county councils, sometimes publish information about EIAs on social media, but it is unclear how many authorities do so.
France
In France, there is an account on the platform X under @etude_impact, which is hosted by the national EIA portal, available at https://twitter.com/etude_impact. However, the account was only active from 29 March 2018 to 12 June 2019 and was only used to disseminate information about the portal itself and its activities, but not information on specific EIA procedures. It is to be welcomed that the existence of the portal was at least publicised on social media.
USA
The Permitting Council in the USA has an account on the platform X under @PermitCouncil, which is regularly updated with information on major national permitting processes. The Permitting Council was established in 2015 by Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41) and is a US federal agency designed to improve the transparency and predictability of the federal environmental review and permitting process for certain major infrastructure projects.
Quelle: X-Account des Permitting Councils (@PermitCouncil)
