Participation and Justice In Marine Governance

The article combines literature from political science, development theory and social psychology to discuss the relevance of procedural justice to the achievement of sustainable development goals.  Participatory environmental governance is framed as contributing to the fulfilment of the equity ambitions of sustainable development. However, there is a tendency within environmental governance to depoliticize environmental issues and decision-making, for example by making participation conditional and by linking strategies of sustainability with the perceived neutrality of bureaucratic regulation. A depoliticized governance process can create situations where controversial issues of ethics and justice are obscured or even avoided; watering down basic functions of democracy, such as representation, dialogue, and accountability. Scholars argue that marine governance has been severely neglected by the social sciences and has not been exposed to sufficient reflection regarding its social purpose, process and implications. The focus of this paper, democratic aspects of governance of the Baltic Sea, is especially understudied.

The theoretical discussion in this article is illustrated by drawing on empirical material from two case studies of marine nature reserves establishment in Sweden and a case study of ENGO participation in regional marine environmental governance platforms managing the Baltic Sea.  Interviews with different actors address how procedural justice affects legitimacy of decisions made on the back of this processes. Furthermore, based on the material, unequal distribution of various resources affects the perceived balance of justice between actors in favors of more resourceful actors as participants and agenda setters. The findings show that actors’ ability to act upon opportunities given by society seems highly dependent on the actors’ access to different kinds of resources/capacities. Weaker actors may risk getting ignored, neglected, manipulated or even abused.