Effective public involvement is an essential component and legal requirement of the decision-making structures for environmental governance generally and water management in particular (National Water Act, Catchment Management Strategies. The change in governmental processes to incorporate the public in decision-making meant that formations within civil society had to be empowered to share the responsibility for governance. This also means that developmental problems addressed in the decision-making processes should be defined and explained so that members of the community can understand it.

The process requires that government officials must identify the interested and affected communities. They must then establish the communal knowledge, insight, training and experience that the identified community can contribute to the decision-making process. The government officials must then apply their knowledge, insight, training and experience to mould the contributions of the members of the community into decisions that add value to and fairly reflect the will of the community concerned.

In order to achieve this aim, the parties involved in the making of a decision, namely the government officials adjudicating on an application, the applicant and all interested and affected parties, should join in a debating process that has the aim to reach substantial consensus. Public involvement is seldom focused on the settling of detail. It is rather focused on determining the principles that should guide the project. The final decision should be substantially beneficial to the broad community.

Public participation involves communities more than individuals. A community is a group of people joined together on the strength of a shared interest. In section 1(1)(vi) of the National Environmental Management Act, a community is defined as "…any group of persons or a part of such a group who share common interests, and who regard themselves as a community…" It can include affected parties, being those parties that will be affected by decisions and interested parties that are not affected but who would like to involve themselves in the matter. Interested parties participate in order to make a contribution, to obtain a benefit or to be an observer. Their contribution frequently either protects or promotes something.

For a successful public participation process, notice should be given of the proposal to all interested and affected parties. The notice should be reasonable under the circumstances.

Related legislation links:
Conservation of Agricultural Resources Act