ABSTRACT
Community engagement in various forms is widely supported as both strategy and process in securing improved environmental, social justice and sustainability outcomes from public decision making (Head, 2007; ICCM, 2010), and the importance of public participation in environmental decision making and engagement of affected communities in various forms of impact assessment has been widely recognised in a range of institutional settings. The 1992 Rio Declaration (Boer, 1995), the European Aarhus Convention (Hartley and Wood, 2005) and international bodies such as the International Asso- ciation for Impact Assessment (https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203112625/6b905a3b-eb5a-4665-b71e-3a7c4d3c216b/content/www.iaia.org" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">www.iaia.org) and International Association for Public Participation (https://iap2.affiniscape.com/index.cfm" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://iap2.affiniscape.com/index.cfm) emphasise the value of public participation. In the specific context of sustainability assessment and the challenge created by pluralism (see Chapter 3), engagement strategies offer a means of integrating pluralism into sustainability assessment practice (see Chapter 8).
