The Public Interest in Environmental Decision-Making: A Pragmatist Turn

Abstract This study is concerned with a central question in administrative law, as well as environmental law; that is, how to conceptualise and determine the public interest in complex contexts where decisions concern collective action problems, involve multiple actors, cross-temporal and spatial scales, and occur under conditions of knowledge uncertainty. Here, it is argued against the use of trade-offs in the determination of the public interest in these contexts because trade-offs involve epistemological simplifications and de-contextualise interests dismissing the nature of knowledge as a situated and dynamic collective practice. To concretise the critique, the EU Habitats Directive’s site protection management provisions are relied on as an example where decisions in the public interest are underpinned by a problematic trade-off logic. To move beyond trade-offs, the article introduces Dewey’s thought. More precisely, it is argued that Dewey’s deliberative pragmatism presents a cogent conceptualisation of the public interest, and thereby constitutes a first intellectual step to overcome the key limitations of a trade-off logic in determining the public interest in environmental decision-making.