Public participation: A tool for water conservation and environmental management

Abstract

Nowadays society water represents both, an opportunity and a threat, the greatest strength and the greatest wealth of society. Water is the key for conservation and environmental management. Different tools support sustainable management and conservation of natural resources. A possible way is to implement active and collaborative public participation, a key mechanism that effectively makes possible the implementation of what legislation requires. This paper intends to illustrate two processes developed in Portugal that have contributed to the management of “water”, with the integration of the participatory dimension: (1) the analysis of an active public participation process that took place within the scope of the MARGov Project-Collaborative Governance of Marine Protected Areas. This will contribute to bring up better knowledge of such processes while guaranteeing the articulation among stakeholders in a collaborative way with increasing gains for long-term co-management. Results indicate that active public participation contributes to societal change that passes through the valorization of the knowledge of each citizen, a relevant contribution for governance models design providing added value for the natural systems; (2) Ardila river basin searching for definition of rehabilitation proposals for water quality improvement from a cross-sectional perspective. Results revealed the lack of institutionalized tradition of participation and the need to reinforce the information and qualification of stakeholders, through the adoption of participative methodologies in the processes. Both cases will allow the authors to reflect the role of active participation to the societal transformation and its contribution to better forms of water governance.