Potentialities and Limitations of Participation and Change Processes Based on Bottom-up Approach - Evidence from the Project Catalise in Portugal

New grassroots experiments based in new values, new strategic orientations and continual locally based learning are taking shape in different territories all over the world. Concepts like “(Re)localization”, “Transition Towns/Initiative”, "Permaculture", "Degrowth", "Gift Economy", and many others, embody practices, projects and local movements, of rural and urban base, anchored on principles of bottom-up participation in local governance, innovation, cooperation and community resilience. The "bottom-up" action principle refers to an inductive logic of enhancement and building of the knowledge base (community-based) and to the closeness of context, in small scale, in order to determine more general guidelines for medium/large scale. However, not always the relationship between these two levels of knowledge and action are carried out properly in order to build a real change of practices, of social and political conceptions. Differences of scale in analysis and also difficulties in accessing and understanding information and knowledge (whatever is general or locally based), frequently puts into question inter-knowledge and participation processes which are essential for local governance, as a potentiator for greater social justice and environmental, economic and cultural sustainability. In what concerns to the grassroots initiatives, constraints of different order (as the lack of resources like time, people, money, commons) seems to constrain possibilities of a wider and more continued participation on local processes of change, and also to respond to several dimensions of action (environmental, social, economic, political, cultural and others). Due to the CATALISE project was possible to identify the difficulties of coordination between the various agents in the local context and between the local and the macro scale, as well as outlining recommendations and proposals - which will be presented and discussed in this communication - designed to minimize such difficulties and to increase the potential of bottom-up governance.