Study reveals gaps and limitations in academic participation in debate on environmental laws – 2024-07-19 06:32:01 – 2024-07-19 06:35:15

Actively participating in the discussion of a new law can have important implications for its development and subsequent implementation. For this reason, legislative commissions are a very valuable and relevant space for providing knowledge to the legislative process, where spaces for participation are usually generated for public and private actors who seek to inform and influence such discussions.

In an article published in The Journal of Legislative Studies, which included the participation of Francisca Reyes and Stefan Gelcich, academics from the Catholic University, the Millennium Institute in Coastal Socio-Ecology (SECOS) and the CAPES Center, together with the political scientist, Valentina Opazo, it was explored who participate in the hearings of the Congressional committees in environmental legislation processes, key instances for assessing how diverse and representative these spaces are.

The analysis focused on the category of participants called “knowledge producers,” which includes people from higher education, research centers, think tanks, and think tanksThese individuals presented 73 bills on environmental issues at the committee hearings – a privileged access mechanism for science to reach the law-making process – in which they debated and voted on them.

“This work focuses on participation in the Chilean Congress commissions during the discussion of draft laws of environmental relevance in the last twelve years, between 2010 and 2022, concentrating specifically on the subgroup of knowledge producers. Thus, we found that those who produce knowledge participate less than expected and that this participation has biases based on gender and geographic location, among others,” says Francisca Reyes, UC academic and SECOS and CAPES researcher and lead author of the study.

As for the results, regarding the group of ‘knowledge producers’, the total number of people who attended for 12 years is equivalent to only 7.6% of those who attended the commissions, revealing the low participation of this group in the parliamentary discussion.

Regarding gender gaps, 22.2% of ‘knowledge producers’ participants were women, whose participation was more concentrated in the Senate with 73.6% compared to the House.

Furthermore, within the same group, higher education institutions were the most numerous with a total of 116 of 171 participants, concentrated mainly in universities in the Metropolitan Region, Biobío and Valparaíso.

On the other hand, although between 2020 and 2022 the sessions were largely held online, the participation of academics from the regions did not increase significantly.

“The findings of the study suggest that the barriers to participation largely go beyond time and travel costs. In line with other international studies, it is possible that participation in committees is affected by unequal access to skills and contact networks, which are more complex to develop for academics from regions and for women,” Reyes says, which raises concerns regarding the number and diversity of those who provide evidence and research knowledge to Congressional committees.

For the academic at the UC Sustainable Development Institute and director of the Vincula platform, an instance in which several universities and research centers in the country participate and which specifically seeks to generate closer ties between knowledge producers and Congress, the results call for more attention to be paid to the factors that act as barriers or facilitators of the participation of a more diverse group of knowledge producers in these privileged areas of deliberation.

“It is important to remember that in Chile access to Congressional committees is exclusively oral and by invitation, which in some cases does not facilitate the diversity of participation, given that there are large information asymmetries on how to access the system. In addition, the selection of participants depends on the existing contacts and networks of each parliamentarian, which limits the participation of actors who do not have access to these networks, making it very important to create instances that create and nurture them in a transparent and systematic manner,” Reyes points out.