Participatory Environmental Governance: Civil Society, Citizen Engagement, and Participatory Policy Expertise

In search of a more practical approach to environmental democracy, the theory and practice of participatory governance are presented as an alternative that can incorporate key elements of environmental deliberative democracy but at the same time speaks more specifically to ongoing political practices. The chapter first surveys the rise of governance and its emergence in environmental politics. It then examines the claims for governance, in particular a more democratic form of governance, participatory governance. Several concrete examples from Brazil (participatory budgeting), India (people’s planning), and Nepal (community forestry) are briefly sketched, including new models of participatory expertise that have emerged with them. Grounded in real-world political struggles against hierarchy and injustice, participatory governance is seen to address the sorts of conflicts that climate change will increasingly usher in.