Toward Institutionalizing Participatory Technology Assessment in Japan

Transcription

1 Toward Institutionalizing Participatory Technology Assessment in Japan Yukio Wakamatsu Professor, Ph. D. College of Science & Engineering Tokyo Denki University Hatoyama, Saitama Japan This paper deals with the situation for participatory technology assessment in Japan. Based on my own experience with participatory TA methods, I will firstly, discuss the robustness of participatory methods, and secondly suggest ways to introduce participatory technology assessment into Japan. In Japan, the attempt at introducing technology assessment in the early 1970 s failed. Although the national environmental assessment law was enacted in 1997, technology assessment has yet to be institutionalized in Japan. But since the early 1990 s, the need for public participation in the policy-making process has been widely recognized. This trend to listen to the voice of the people in policy-making will most likely continue for the time being. Using this short history of TA in Japan as a background for this presentation, I will first describe participatory methods which have been used in Japan. Together with fellow colleagues, I have researched the possibility of introducing pta to Japan, putting the consensus conference method to the test twice, one in 1998, another in And in the year 2000, I worked as a chairperson of the steering committee of a consensus 1

2 conference on the theme of GMOs sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. Recently, I tested the scenario workshop method. In the concluding discussions, firstly I will discuss what we have learned from our experiences, and show that the robustness of the consensus conference method, and possibly of the scenario workshop method, has been demonstrated. And using the analogy of games, I will argue that because of the robustness of participatory methods they could be utilized or played fairly universally as games. Secondly, I will touch upon the potential for TA/pTA in Japan, and the design of pta for Japan. And perhaps this paper could work as a proposal for introducing pta into Japan. Lastly in this introduction I would like to call your attention to my standpoint. I am a researcher in the field of the sociology of science and technology, specializing in science & technology communication and participatory technology assessment. However, at the same time, I am also a practitioner of pta, experimenting with methods and advocating the institutionalization of pta in Japan. Pre-history of participatory TA in Japan from the 1970 s up to the present Failure to Introduce TA In 1969, the year man landed on the moon, a Japanese delegation of industrialists and academics to the United States discovered that a new concept, technology assessment was being heatedly debated there. Though the original mission of this delegation was to discover new trends in technological development in the U.S., they accepted the concept of TA as useful for developing Japanese technology and the economy, and imported it into Japan. It was welcomed as a new concept that should be included in the science and technology policy paper. And thus, the Science and Technology Council, which is the center of Japanese science and technology policy making, proclaimed in its report to the Prime Minister in 1971 that technology assessment should be introduced into Japan. As the background for introducing TA concepts into Japan in 1969, I should mention the culmination of citizen movements against pollution and environmental destruction, which of course included sufferers from 2

3 severe pollution, such as the Minamata Disease, the Itai-itai disease etc. In the 1970 s, this anti-pollution movement (including grassroots movements against pollution and NIMBY facilities) continued, and a move toward institutionalizing Environmental Assessment (EA) began. (1 Following this policy, several ministries began pilot projects for surveying how TA, namely TA methods study, could be implemented. First of all, bureaucrats wondered how, if at all, new technologies could be assessed. Here we should notice that efforts for coping with TA activities were thought to be within the ministerial or bureaucratic domain in Japan in those days. Even until now, a small number of parliamentarians have continued to advocate establishing an OTA-like institution within the Parliament but their influence seems to be very slight. In the fall of 1973, the first oil crisis began, which clearly hindered the development of TA in Japan. The industries, it was claimed strongly, should respond to this crisis and Japan had no time to think of TA. Furthermore, introducing TA was thought to be an obstacle against reviving Japanese industry and economy (2). Although pilot projects by several ministries for testing TA methodologies continued until the middle of the 1980 s, the enthusiasm for introducing TA almost faded away already in the latter half of the 1970 s. Meanwhile, discussions on how TA could be institutionalized continued in Europe, where countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, West Germany, and the United Kingdom established TA institutions. A New National Goal - Recognition of the Need for Participation After the collapse of the bubble economy, Japan began to search for a national goal, or model, and set up a new goal; i.e., nation-building through the promotion of science and technology. As one of the goal seeking efforts, the National Diet passed the Science and Technology Basic Law in And following the Law, Science and Technology Basic Plans (5 year-plan) have been continually made, the first from 1996 to 2000, the second from 2001 to Now we are in the second Basic Plan, and the third one is being discussed. Although the aim of this Law is to promote science and technology in every sense, we, STS researchers, have found that the Law and the Basic Plan have begun to acknowledge the need to listen to society s or the people s voice, albeit timidly or subtly. The article 3

4 19 (Chapter 5: Promotion of Learning on S&T) of the law says that the nation should implement necessary policy measures to promote the learning of S&T in school and social education, to enlighten the people in S&T and to disseminate knowledge of S&T, so that all Japanese people, including the young, can deepen their understanding of and interest in S&T with every opportunity. Following this article, in the Basic Plan we can find phrases such as Scientific communication is important to increase public knowledge about science and technology, etc. Although these phrases don t directly show a move toward listening to the people s voice, we, Japanese STS researchers, are able to discern a trend toward public participation. Trends toward public participation The following five examples, though chosen rather arbitrarily, may show a trend toward institutionalizing public participation in Japan, although they are not particularly related to science and technology policy. The first example is the public comment system, which was institutionalized in 1999 in Japan. According to the system, when government ministries and agencies make policies, they should show their plans openly and ask for comments from the general public. Now every ministry and agency asks the public to comment on their policy plans, but this has not been welcomed by the mass media and the public so ardently because it is not clear how the comments submitted influence policy-making. The second is the so-called public involvement procedure in road construction and also river management. Now the ministries and agencies concerned have to organize public involvement in order to make and advance their plans. The third is public participation now widely observed in regional and local scenes. We can find really quite a few cases of public participation in municipal government activities. As the fourth example, I would like to mention research programs that show this tendency or recognition. Now there are research programs either partially or wholly aimed at promoting research on STS. In particular, a research program described as a program for the promotion of social technology directly shows the tendency toward this recognition. This presentation is based on a project supported by this program. 4

5 The last example is the creation of an academic society for STS studies, namely, the Japanese Society for Science and Technology Studies. Since the 1980 s, researchers from the fields of science history, science philosophy, sociology of science and technology etc. began to meet in order to deal with STS issues. And in 2001, this movement culminated in the formation of an academic society, just like the 4S in the United States, and the EASST in Europe. This doesn t directly show the trend we are now dealing with, but certainly this society provides an academic forum for discussing public participation in science and technology. Japanese Experiences of Participatory TA methods The beginning In 1990, I came to know the consensus conference method (hereafter, CC) (3). Introducing it into Japan in 1993, I still felt that it couldn t be applied in Japan. Also in Europe, some science policy researchers commented that the method was particularly Danish and that it couldn t be applied in other countries. However, after the Dutch trial of this method in 1993, other countries such as the United Kingdom, New Zealand etc. began to follow suit. Feeling a kind of friendly atmosphere toward public participation in science and technology policy, I began to test the method in Japan in In this section, I will briefly introduce my experiences in organizing 3 consensus conferences and 1 scenario workshop as participatory methods in Japan. Consensus Conference on Gene therapy in 1998 (4) Selection of the Theme We chose gene therapy as the topic for the first CC in Japan for three reasons. First, gene therapy, although it was already practically applied in clinics, was still at the experimental stage. Gene therapy, therefore, was suitable for CC, as the goal of the method is to elicit assessment and values on technologies that are not yet widely accepted in society from lay people. Second, since all humans are prone to disease, 5

6 everyone has a chance to consider having this treatment. Therefore, we expected that members of the lay panel might consider gene therapy to be a topic which was relevant to their lives, and we thought that it might encourage good discussions. We also expected that this topic might receive media attention and thus facilitate social debate. Lastly, we anticipated having willing-cooperation from experts in gene therapy, as they might be searching for ways to gain public support to carry out their clinical trials. Recruiting and selecting expert and lay panels For the expert panel, we recruited 9 people. They included university professors/researchers in medicine/gene therapy, life ethics, and medical economics, and 1 science reporter. We also contacted some patients organizations and a citizen group, but we could not get their agreement to participate in the CC. We asked the experts to write up a summary of their presentations that were sent to the citizen panelists before the conference. For the citizen panel, due to limits in funding, we used community newspapers which were distributed only in the Kansai (Kyoto-Osaka) area. We chose to recruit lay people in the Kansai area, as we planned to present the results of the CC at the International Science, Technology and Society (STS) Conference in March 1998 in Kyoto, and we wanted the lay panelists to report on their experiences there. So because of our budget constraints, and for the lay panelists convenience, we decided to recruit lay people locally. We also asked local municipalities to post our advertisements in their public relations journals. In addition, we left leaflets in certain public places such as Osaka Science Center and asked train companies to post advertisements at train stations. Consequently, we received more than two dozen applications. Among them, however, some misunderstood our project, and some failed to give us enough personal information. As a result, we had 20 valid applications. We decided to have all 20 applicants on the lay panel, but one got ill on the day of conference, and actually the lay panel consisted of 19 people (9 male and 10 female: between the ages of 20 and 70). Implementing CC The CC on gene therapy was held over three Saturdays. The first and second days were used for experts presentations and questions and answers, and the third day was for the lay panel to discuss and come to a consensus. In order to support the lay panel to write 6

7 up a report about the discussion and the points that were reached in consensus, we provided secretarial support, which is usually not done in Denmark. At the International STS Conference on March 21, our project team, as well as the participants of the CC (both lay and expert panel members), presented the results and their impressions of the conference, and the lay panel s final report. Listening to our presentations, two commentators remarked that this application of CC in Japan demonstrated its potential. In order to make this method widely known, we issued press releases at each stage of the project. Our efforts to get media attention were successful and our experiment was covered by three national newspapers. Consensus Conference on High Information Society in 1999 (5) Following the success of the first CC in Japan, my collaborators and myself re-organized the project team, and held a second CC on high information society: especially focused on the internet in 1999 with financial support from the Nissan Science Foundation and Tokyo Denki University This time, we recruited 4 experts for presentations to a lay panel to develop key questions, and 10 experts to answer the questions. These experts included university professors who had expertise in information/communication studies and sociology, representatives from an internet provider, the Internet Lawyers Association, Japan Council on Disability, Ministry of Post & Telecommunications and a journalist. For the lay panel, we advertised for volunteers in the Tokyo metropolitan area, and selected 18 people (11 male and 7 female between the ages of 20 and 70). The second conference was held over 5 Saturdays. In the first CC on gene therapy, the lay panel were not able to jointly develop their key questions to ask experts by themselves because of time limitations. Instead, the secretariat prepared key questions and the lay panel agreed to use them. However, in the second CC, we asked the panel to develop their key questions by themselves. For this purpose, 2 Saturdays were used for preparatory meetings where the panel learned about the issues and problems related 7

8 to the topic, and then developed key questions through discussions. Four experts helped this process. On the third Saturday, experts answered the key questions and other questions from the lay panel. On the forth Saturday, the lay panel developed a final report on their discussions. The fifth Saturday was used for a public symposium to report on the experiences and results of the CC. This time, four national newspapers and one TV news show reported the conference. Consensus Conference on Genetically-Modified Crops in 2000 My collaborators and I were also involved in the third CC on genetically-modified (GM) crops in 2000, which was organized by STAFF (Society for Techno-innovation of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries), an umbrella organization of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. This CC was different from the previous two cases, as it was held by a public organization. It took 9 months to design the whole process. First and foremost, it was difficult to persuade the responsible officials of the Ministry to use the CC method. However, by confining the CC outcomes within a single project, we were able to begin the conference. We recruited a lay panel, this time using one national newspaper, and we received 479 applications. The steering committee selected 18 panel members through stratified random sampling. This time, we scheduled 6 days in total, including 2 Saturdays and 2 weekends, and we asked the lay panel to stay over nights. 2 preparatory meetings were held over 3 days: 1 weekend and one Saturday. At the preparatory meetings, the panel received lectures on GM crops, visited a laboratory researching GM technologies, and developed key questions. Experts answered those questions on one Saturday, and on the following weekend, the panel developed their final report. We also received good media attention this time. Although we had to have repeated discussions with members of STAFF so that they understood the key concepts and procedures of this methodology, in the end, they seemed to have acquired a good understanding of the strengths of the CC. And since this trial, STAFF has repeatedly used CC method. 8

9 Lessons from Organizing 3 CCs in Japan In all three cases, members of the lay panels actively participated in discussions and had good arguments. These trials also demonstrated that CC was a good way for both lay people and experts to understand different perspectives. For instance, on hearing the lay panel report on High Information Society, all members of the expert panel spoke very highly of the results and commented that it included some points that previously had not been recognized by experts. Above all, my experiences from organizing 3 CCs have provided an answer to the fundamental questions concerning dialogue between laymen and experts: namely, Can citizens evaluate or understand expertise at all? ; in other words, Can they evaluate science & technology? My experiences clearly demonstrated positive answers to these questions. Trial of the Scenario Workshop Method in 2003 Scenario Workshop: Introducing another participatory method in Japan The scenario workshop (hereafter, SW) was also developed in Denmark in 1992 and has been implemented in many European cities (6). SW aims to incorporate into policy-planning views and opinions from a variety of social groups and individuals, in particular, issues that are currently being debated and which demand immediate societal decisions. In May 2003, we implemented the first scenario workshop in Japan to discuss the future of the Sanbanze (a shallow sea area located in Tokyo Bay) and its surrounding cities, as a social experiment of participatory methods within a research project. Background of the Sanbanze The Sanbanze is a shallow sea area surrounded by three cities in Chiba prefecture. Some parts of the Sanbanze were reclaimed under the rapid economic growth since World War II, and a plan for further land reclamation was developed. However, the governor of Chiba prefecture withdrew the reclamation plan for reconsideration in 2001, 9

10 in accordance with the growing concerns about environmental degradation and the need to preserve seashore and tideland ecosystems. The governor, instead, set up a committee for round-table meetings to discuss the future of the Sanbanze, inviting the local residents, fisheries, industries, environmental groups, and academics. The Round-Table Committee meetings were open to the public, and were intended to serve as means for public participation in policy-planning. We chose the issues of the Sanbanze as the topic for the first SW in Japan. The topic for the scenario workshop needs to be one which is currently being debated in society. In addition, people who have special interest in the topic and are able to participate in the scenario workshop need to be easily identified. The case of the Sanbanze meets these criteria. The SW on the Sanbanze was supported by Chiba prefecture and the Round-table Committee, which facilitated our recruitment of the participants. However, we had full responsibility to implement the scenario workshop, and there was no promise for SW to influence the round-table committee s discussions. Developing the Scenarios As developing scenarios requires detailed knowledge of the topic, we commissioned the Nature Conservation Society of Japan to call key informants about the issues on the Sanbanze and to organize a team for drafting future scenarios. The project members attended team meetings to give input as well as to make final judgments. The team generated 4 different scenarios, each of which presented different visions for the Sanbanze and its surrounding cities by emphasizing different concerns, such as the conservation of biodiversities, economic well-beings, as well as the security and amenities of the surrounding communities. Recruiting the Participants The participants of the SW were stakeholders as well as lay public. Originally we had planned to recruit stakeholders from the following four sectors: 1) experts - researchers who had expertise in the issues being discussed; 2) administrative officials and the parliament members of Chiba Prefecture and the three surrounding cities; 3) members of Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) that were active in conservation of the ecosystems of the Sanbanze; and 4) the private sector (industry). In our search for participants, 10

11 however, the three surrounding cities refused to allow their administrative officials to attend the SW. For the lay citizens, we intended to recruit 12 people, who resided in Chiba and were over 18 years old. In order to call for the participants, we asked Chiba prefecture and local municipalities to post and disseminate posters. In response to our press release, the newspapers also reported our recruiting activities. As a result, we received 11 applications in total. Consequently, we decided to form 5 groups (each group had 6 members, with 30 participants in total): 1) experts; 2) parliament members & lay citizens -3 people from each; 3) NPOs; 4) the private sector & lay citizens (four and two people respectively); and 5) lay citizens. Designing and Implementing the SW Considering the complexities of the topic and issues to be covered, we designed a three-day-sw, instead of the standard two-day SW held in Europe. The first and second days, to be held over a weekend (May 17 and 18), were to draw future visions for the Sanbanze and its surrounding cities, and the last day (May 30) was for developing action plans to realize these future visions within 20 years. The SW consisted of a combination of group discussions and plenary sessions. For facilitating these discussions, we contracted with 6 experienced facilitators, identified through the project members personal networks. Through repeated discussions in groups and plenary sessions, participants generated a list of factors for future visions of the Sanbanze at the end of the second day, and also a list of factors for action plans at the end of the third day. In order to put the opinions of the participants together, we utilized a method called strategic voting, in which each participant held three votes to cast on the factors of their choice. At the end of the second day, 13 factors were selected for the future vision, and on the third day, five factors for action plans. These were considered to be the collective outcomes of the SW. Future Directions Although we are still in the process of analyzing the SW, the results of the participants questionnaires indicated that the majority of the respondents positively evaluated the overall experience of participating in the SW, and half of them considered SW to be a useful methodology to solve conflicts and jointly develop future plans for the Sanbanze. 11

12 This suggests that, with adequate resources and support, SW, is feasible in Japan and has high potential to serve as an effective tool for facilitating public participation in policy planning. The Sanbanze SW however, also highlighted issues for further consideration. In order to establish SW as a tool for public participation in Japan, rules and methods need to be elaborated, for instance, for recruiting participants, facilitating discussions, and developing collective opinions. For this objective, we suggest conducting more experiments on SW in Japan, as well as learning from the experiences of SWs held overseas. Concluding Discussions In this section, I will try to elucidate what lessons can be derived from the experiences of Japanese pta trials. Game-ness of the consensus conference method as a background for its robustness The CC method has, up until now, been tested in many countries including New Zealand, Japan and Korea (7). All these conferences worked well in the sense that the citizen panels achieved their tasks working through the whole conference process. Thus, in contrast to the comments often heard in the early 1990 s that this method was particularly Danish, it has been shown that this method can be applied in many countries. At least, we should say that this method has been firmly constructed to be applied in wider contexts. We can call this characteristic of the method robustness. Through organizing and carrying out three CCs, I also came to realize the robustness of the method. Furthermore, through my own experiences I have come to think that this robustness of the method is supported and/or explained by its game-ness (game-like quality). If we could take the method as a game, just like any sport or game, we could easily evaluate how well the game was organized and how well it was played or even enjoyed by the participants. And our world-wide experiences in holding CCs clearly show that 12

13 the method as a game is very well organized and can be applied in many countries, possibly even universally. The game was originally based on the jury system, which is popular in Europe and the United States. Since this game has been successfully played outside Western culture in countries such as Japan and Korea, we could say that this game has a kind of universality, just as soccer is now played world-wide. Of course, any game has its origin in a particular culture, and sometimes when playing the game in another culture or society, we should adjust the rules of the game to the new environment, taking into consideration the available resources. In Japan, we changed the schedule of the CC for the two trial conferences, and this is only one example of adjustments that need to be considered. Using the term game to describe the characteristics of participatory TA methods may cause criticism that it is simply a replacement of words, namely, from method to game. But I believe that the word game clearly indicates the possibility of using a particular pta method in various environments. Concerning the Scenario Workshop method, as far as I know, there are only two examples outside Europe where this method has been used in many cities; one is the Lowell SW (8) and the other is our Sanbanze SW. Therefore, it is not still very clear whether this method can be applied in many countries, especially outside Europe. But, if we take this other participatory TA method as a game, we could assume that this method could also be applied in many cultures. Issues of designing pta methods In the Sanbanze SW, I, as a representative organizer, refrained from intervening in the discussion process, fearing that it might encroach upon the neutrality and fairness of the whole process. Here, by the word intervene, I mean the following. In some workshops, the organizers or the secretariat take the role of secretary to record the discussion results and to edit the results so that workshop participants can know how far their discussions have progressed and can continue to follow their assignments. This could possibly lead to criticism that the organizers tried to push the workshop to a certain direction. This is something which I have tried to avoid since I began to test 13

14 participatory methods. And up until this project, I have kept this policy since I believe that it is essential to ask society or the general public to trust pta methods and the attempt to introduce pta. But because of this policy, I am afraid that the workshop process became rather loose or discursive. In contrast to our design, the organizers of the Lowell SW, prepared a script which defined participants tasks and the processes to be followed. Furthermore, the secretariat intervened in the process by writing and editing the discussion results etc. (9) In most pta methods, the time allocated for participants activities is very limited. For example, in a SW, only 2 days are used (there are other designs using 1 day or 1 and a half days), and in a CC, 3 or 4 days are used for the main activities, with 2 prior weekends for preparation. Within these limitations, we have to ask participants to reach a consensus or to arrive at a conclusion. In order to prepare a discussion or deliberation forum for participants where they can accumulate knowledge, and interact so that they reach conclusions efficiently, we have to design a game so that meaningful interaction among participants occurs. From the experiences of the Sanbanze SW, I have come to think that we should prepare more detailed assignments and to intervene to help participants discuss and deliberate on the assigned theme more efficiently. In any pta method, we ask many participants from relevant sectors to join in the discussion and deliberation of a particular theme. And this inevitably leads to a workshop type activity, where facilitators play a key role. In the Sanbanze SW, we tried very hard and luckily found the necessary 6 professional (semi-professional) facilitators, although their styles of facilitation were not the same and we had some troubles in managing the workshop. Now in Japan, responding to a strong demand for facilitators from many participatory scenes, efforts to train facilitators has begun, and an association of facilitators was established in the summer of But it is still very difficult to find qualified facilitators. Therefore, we can not depend too much on the facilitators skills in managing a workshop. This clearly shows the need to design a precise and detailed workshop procedure, which leads participants and facilitators to work without confusion or perplexity. Of course this doesn t mean that we don t need the facilitators skills. And thus, if we could succeed in designing such a workshop procedure, a game or 14

15 workshop with this design could be played in many different situations. I should add one more point to the discussion for detailed workshop procedures. That is the participants experiences of workshop-type activities. There are many people, including professional players, who are experienced with sports and games. Though opportunities for participating in workshop-type activities are now increasing, we shouldn t take it for granted that our participants are accustomed to these types of activities. This is another reason why we need to prepare a detailed workshop procedure. Needless to say, organizers and the secretariat have to be very careful not to lead participants to a pre-determined conclusion or to be seen as behaving in that way. But a detailed procedure may also make participants very busy and could deprive them of time to discuss and deliberate on the theme. The aim of gathering participants is not to ask them simply to work on pre-determined tasks, but to ask them to think and talk about a certain topic together. Therefore, a detailed procedure has to be of help in completing this task. In designing a pta method, we have also to consider this aspect. A Perspective of pta in Japan After holding two experimental CCs, I was asked by many people, including STS researchers, what impact these conferences had on policy-making. This may show that people expected too much of these trials, but of course, it is crucial for pta to be connected with policy-making (10). To these questions, I had to answer that these trials were simply for testing and showing the potential of the method. Being asked this question so often, I have come to realize that it is very important to distinguish between the pta methods and the field or forum where pta methods are implemented. This realization has revealed two aspects of conducting pta. One is to grasp pta methods as games as discussed above. Another is to create a forum for pta (pta forum). First of all, our pta experiences have proven that it is possible to recruit participants from the general public to pta activities despite the common argument that we couldn t 15

16 have public participation in such activities. This, I believe, has already created a starting point for discussion on how pta could be institutionalized in Japan. And the goal of the project on which this presentation partly relies was to find a way to prepare the way for pta. Below is my vision for pta in Japan, without substantial evidence but with my general observations on the Japanese political system. In many European countries, TA institutions were created after long and persistent discussions. The Danish and Dutch TA institutions are independent (or quasi-independent), and other TA institutions are within or under the Parliament. One exception may be the Swiss institution which is within the Science Council of the Ministry of Interior. In Japan, I am afraid that above types of TA institutions wouldn t work. First of all, it would certainly take a long time in order to establish such an institution. Even if it were successfully established, a TA institution within the Government wouldn t easily be trusted by the general public, and a TA institution under the National Diet would be too affected by political power struggles to fulfill its task. The following is a rough image of the pta forum or institutionalization I envision for Japan. It should be established outside the Government, and various relevant actors should be invited to the forum. The governmental ministries and agencies should also be included in the forum as actors and very importantly as sponsors for the forum. In the forum, pta (and TA) should be executed by non-governmental organizations which have experience with pta methods. The Government should consult the forum and the outcomes from the forum should be utilized in government policy- and decision- making. The extent to which the Government should listen to the forum would be decided through political discussions. But at least, the connection between pta and policy-making should be provided through a kind of comprehensive law that requires government agencies to go through pta before making any new policies related to technology. Acknowledgment 16

17 I would like to express my gratitude to the members of the projects aiming at proposing pta institutionalization in Japan. Especially I would like to express my utmost thanks to Ms. Minako Kusafuka (Center for Technology and Society, AIST) who helped me in preparing this presentation and Mr. Shuichi Tsukahara (National Institute for Educational Policy Research) who kindly took time to comment on the draft of this presentation. This research is supported by RISTEX, Japan Science and Technology Agency. Notes and Bibliography 1. Although an act for EA began to be discussed in the national Diet in 1981, it failed to be enacted because of political complications. The movement toward EA was rather salient and successful in some local, regional levels, and some municipal governments began to make their own bylaws for EA. And quite recently (I should say), in 1997 the national EA law was enacted. Here, we also have to notice that the movement toward environmental assessment was not a direct offspring of the effort to introduce TA into Japan. 2. We can also find this type of discussion or counterarguments against TA in the European TA debates in the 1970 s and 80 s. Vig Norman J. & Herbert Paschen (ed.) (2000). Parliaments and Technology The Development of Technology Assessment in Europe. State University of New York Press. 3. Joss, Simon & Durant, John (ed.) (1995). Public participation in science the role of consensus conferences in Europe, Science Museum with the support of the European Commission Directorate General XII. The Danish Board of Technology s homepage works as a guide on participatory methods Wakamatsu, Y. (1999): A Citizens Conference on Gene Therapy in Japan: A Feasibility Study of the Consensus Conference Method in Japan, AI & Society 13: Wakamatsu, Yukio (1999): What our second attempt shows: citizens and experts can work together. A paper presented at Second EUROpTA workshop 1999: Evaluation of Participatory Technology Assessment Methods. October 4-5 in the Hague, the Netherlands. 17

18 6. Fleximodo Project gives you the methodology of the SW used in the European Awareness Scenario Workshop In the following, you can find almost all consensus conferences held world-wide Personal communication with Richard Sclove and an interview with Ida Andersen. 10. In the case of the GMO CC in 2000, the results were connected with policy-making, although it was limited within a very narrow project. 18