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The purpose of this article is to evaluate public participation as a driver of sustainable urban governance. This study deals at a theoretical level with a relational view of urban sustainability, conceived as a multidimensional process determined by the socio-ecological interconnections that modify the local environment. It observes these interconnections in the practice of urban governance, presenting an ethnographic investigation of the case of theIguaçu Project, in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region. The analysis provides two levels of results: the micro-level (the participatory process) and the macro-level (the public environmental policy). At the micro-level, the research shows the capacity of participatory arenas to enhance relations between citizens and the environment. At the macro-level, it highlights the existence of concurrent policy mechanisms in the same local environment, which undermines the results of public participation. The conclusion stresses apoliticised organisationof the public engagement process so that local environmental governance achieves sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to reflect upon the motivations and the outcomes of the socio-political conflicts which attempted to challenge the rationality of conservation in the Galápagos Islands, in light of recent inquiries into the post-political condition. Protected areas, we argue, are paradigmatic examples of post-political spaces where universal moral imperatives and the overwhelming role of scientific knowledge reduce the possibility for disagreement, and make traditional political means useless. In order to sustain this argument, we discuss the idea of a post-political condition in relation to the debates about biodiversity, social justice and the political ecology of protected areas in the Global South. We will see how the alliance between conservation science, the State and the tourism industry strongly influenced the territorialisation of the Galápagos Islands and what the political implications are. Such alliances became the object of violent confrontations during the 1990s, which favoured the adoption of reforms inspired by the principles of sustainability and environmental governance. The idea of a post-political condition, in our opinion, can help to understand the outcome of these conflicts and, more generally, the difficulties in reconciling environmentalism with social justice in protected areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]