Clean air strategies: an environmental nongovernmental organization perspective on the science-policy interface

Environmental nongovernment organisations (ENGOs) in Europe have been hardly involved in AIRNET, in part because the technicalities deter access. However, ENGOs should be seen as representing the public as well as acting as stakeholders in their own right. ENGOs can be intimately involved in assessing the public information, as in the UK example criticized here, and can spotlight an issue like ultrafine particulate pollution that is being avoided for reasons of institutional inertia and special interests. For risk analysis and integrating a precautionary approach, ENGO participation within a stakeholder process is vital. Policies designed to combat air pollutants have to change profoundly how people live, travel, and work (Maynard et al., 2003), yet policymakers tend to duck the hard choices. Winning the public to make such changes requires enrolling the major campaigning ENGOs as allies, in the context of effective stakeholder communication and accountability in public information and policy setting.