Conflicting values and public decision: The Foz Côa case

This article considers public decision involving conflicting values and interests by presenting a case (Portugal, 1990s) where the construction of a dam already under way following an Environmental Impact Assessment procedure (EIA) was abandoned in order to preserve prehistoric rock engravings. The Foz Côa case illustrates the methodologies currently adopted under European Union law in the support of public decision concerning large infrastructures with significant impact on the environment and/or the cultural heritage, highlighting their limitations when confronted with the complexity and the plurality of values commonly at stake in such circumstances. We assume that the reasonableness of a public decision is meant to emerge from a process through which the various and conflicting reasons for acting are brought together, implying the opening of ends, and not only of means, to discussion and inquiry, a deliberative perspective which is put in contrast with the monistic methodologies supporting public decision-making under the EIA procedure. Some broader lessons may be drawn from the analysis of this case, we argue, regarding the conditions under which a regulatory system should tackle the diverse and conflicting values involved in public decision that affects today's highly-prized values like the environment or the cultural heritage.