Social Participation in Management Councils of Protected Areas: Normative advances and the perspective of ICMBio Environmental officers

Abstract Management councils of Protected Areas are an important tool to the exercise of social participation of individuals and groups struggling for social-environmental causes in Brazil’s democracy. This paper aims to integrate the main regulations guiding the social participation in Management Councils of Protected Areas in Brazil and the perception of managers and technicians in order to understand the process of elaboration of the rules, the behind the scenes, and negotiations. Our findings highlight that social participation has been formally ensured in many aspects, revealing democratic advancements in the field of Protected Areas management in Brazil. However, despite remarkable progress, many challenges remain, including aspects of representation, independency, level of influence, and sharing power in decision-making processes. The outcomes of participation are ongoing processes of learning and negotiation, which are reflected in the improvement of the legal arrangements analyzed.