Environmental Policy and Governance Env. Pol. Gov. 19, 99–114 (2009) Published online 1 March 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/eet.502 * Correspondence to: Stephen Tsang, Senior Project Officer, Kadoorie Institute, 8/F, T. T. Tsui Building, The University of Hong Kong. E-mail: stephen.t@hku.hk Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Trust, Public Participation and Environmental Governance in Hong Kong Stephen Tsang*, Margarett Burnett, Peter Hills, Richard Welford Kadoorie Institute, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of trust in environmental governance and its role in facilitat- ing collective action through public participation in making decisions on environmental policies in Hong Kong. Opinions from key stakeholders with regard to the environmental performance of the Hong Kong government and public participation in Hong Kong were collected. Their opinions help to explain the hypothesized ‘trust deficit’ in Hong Kong. A trust-based framework was used to identify the appropriate stakeholder participation strategy for environmental governance in Hong Kong. Given that the level of trust in experts, trust between stakeholders and trust in government decision-makers are all low, a deliberation strategy using professional facilitation is recommended in implementing public participation in Hong Kong to rebuild trust. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Received 25 August 2008; revised 2 January 2009; accepted 19 January 2009 Keywords: trust; public participation; public deliberation; environmental governance; Hong Kong Introduction T RUST IS A CONCEPT THAT HAS RECENTLY ACHIEVED PROMINENCE IN DISCOURSES SURROUNDING VARIOUS areas of public policy, including the environment. Of particular importance is the role of trust in facilitating collective action and providing legitimacy to institutions (in the public and private sectors, as well as civil society), to policies and to the instruments used to implement these, and to the role of stakeholders. In the environmental field, issues of trust have figured most prominently in discourse surrounding risk management and communication (e.g. in relation to potentially hazardous installations, radioactive waste disposal, genetically modified organisms) and the precautionary principle. However, issues surrounding trust are also central to more general processes of environmental reform in late industrial societies, and the institutional and social transforma- tions that both drive and are shaped by these reform processes. Previous research (Hills, 2005) on environmental reform processes in Hong Kong indicates that key stakehold- ers are concerned about overall policy effectiveness, the ability of the government to deliver on its sustainability agenda, and the responsiveness of the administration to stakeholder opinion. Important local environmental institutions are widely perceived to be underperforming. There is limited confidence in the efficacy of voluntary environmental agreements, which are widely used in regions such as Japan, the EU and the USA. This may be indicative of a broad-based ‘trust deficit’ involving relations between stakeholders and the government, as well as between certain stakeholder groups.