Participatory governance and sustainability

This chapter, which critically assesses the potential of participatory and reflexive governance in realizing sustainability goals, discusses the condition along with favorable reflexive and participatory mechanisms needed to realize local knowledge, collective learning, and environmental goals. It presents the findings of a meta-analysis of many studies on the collective environmental decision-making processes, focusing on examples of public participation initiated to agree on relevant public decisions. The samples required for the meta-analysis are taken from a database of 200 case studies of collaborative environmental management in Western countries. The sample cases are selected according to the comprehensiveness of available information derived from North America, demonstrating the significance of participatory governance in the United States and Canada