PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

141
investments in Central Europe. 33
Bankwatch's mission is “to prevent environmentally
and socially harmful impacts of international development finance, and to promote
alternative solutions and public participation” (see www.bankwatch.org). While pursuing
typical environmentalist aims like “stopping environmentally and socially destructive
policies and projects of International Financial Institutions in Central and Eastern Europe,
and promot[ing] alternatives,” Bankwatch also stresses goals such as the following (ibid):
To create public awareness about International Financial Institutions activities in
Central and Eastern European countries and their social and environmental impacts.
To promote public participation in the decision making process about policies and
projects of International Financial Institutions, on the local, national and regional
levels.
To help non-governmental environmental organisations and citizen groups to monitor
what the International Financial Institutions are doing in the Central and Eastern
Europe.
Transparency and democracy in decision-making thus represent concepts of the
communicative rationality approach that resonate with practitioners far beyond the
confines of communicative theorizing. In Europe, the UN ECE Aarhus Convention and
the EU White Paper on European Governance remain the most important official policy
documents recognizing the importance of access to information on the environment and
public participation.
4.4.2 Communicative Rationality as a Framework for EU Transport Policy
As noted above, the literature on communicative rationality as a framework for
transport policy is still somewhat inchoate. One explicit attempt to “contribute to the
expanding literature on communicative and rhetorical practices by connecting these
33
See especially the “Billions for Sustainability?” Briefings on EU pre-accession funding which
Bankwatch now puts out annually together with Friends of the Earth Europe (all three existing reports
downloadable under http://www.bankwatch.org/publications/index.html).