Participation for Effective Environmental Governance: Evidence from the European Water Framework Directive Implementation

摘要

This book is a timely contribution to the debate within academic and policy circles on the value of participatory processes for environmental decision-making. In this debate, opinions are sharply divided between proponents of participation, who make strong claims about benefits, and skeptics who dismiss participatory processes as ineffective and unrealistic. With each side drawing on individual cases, largely to substantiate their respective line of thinking, it has been hard to find reliable evidence based on a systematic, non-biased study. This is the principal contribution of this well-conceived volume. It provides a thorough and original analysis of the effectiveness of participation, based on the comparison of a relatively large number of in-depth case studies. Although written by several authors, the collaborative project from which the research emerged and the common framework developed to analyze the empirical work have ensured that the result is a well-structured, closely argued but readily accessible appraisal of participation in environmental governance.