By Jens Newig

Many agree that participation and collaboration is relevant, if not indispensable, for environmentally sustainable governance outcomes. Others maintain that public government is best equipped to effectively address environmental problems. In our new paper from the ‘EDGE’ project we try to move the debate forward by looking precisely at the causal mechanisms through which participatory and collaborative forms of governance may improve (or deteriorate) environmental outcomes of public decision-making processes.

The paper is rather analytical in that we disentangle:

1. different dimensions of participation: Who participates? What decision-making power is delegated to participants? How do participants communicate and interact?
2. different dimensions of outcomes: Outputs on paper (plans, agreements, policies, etc.) versus the support of outputs and their actual implementation
3. the different mechanisms through which participation and collaboration likely work towards (or against) environmental outcomes,
4. different contextual factors such as the capacity of stakeholders, problem complexity or the degree of…