2022 Volume 22 Pages 100-112
The knowledge that should be utilized in policy making includes not only the scientific knowledge of academic experts, but also the local knowledge of stakeholders. It is normatively and strategically important to utilize diverse local knowledge, as decisions that do not take stakeholders’ knowledge and interests into account tend to be less legitimate and acceptable. This study examines ways to utilize stakeholder knowledge and, based on the results, attempts a critical consideration of radioactive waste management in Japan.
Integrating stakeholders’ local knowledge, which is often held as tacit knowledge, with scientific knowledge is difficult. This is because there is often a lack of interactional expertise to bridge different types of expertise. In order to accumulate interactional expertise and integrate difterent knowledge,it is necessary for stakeholders and academic experts to go through a process of reconciling their knowledge through active participation and open, bottom-up dialogue that is oriented toward the coproduction of knowledge.
Stakeholder involvement is essential in radioactive waste management, however in Japan, only passive participation and closed dialogues are used, and it is difficult to utilize stakeholders’ knowledge and improve legitimacy and acceptability through this process. To address the high-level radioactive waste disposal as a wicked problem, a reconsidering of the decision-making process is required.
