1 Introduction

In the face of the planetary socio-ecological crises,¹ sustainability and participation have become prominent concepts guiding decision-making and regulatory reforms,² constantly invoked by scholars and policymakers as the environmental panacea.³ Yet, the hope often associated with their effectiveness has been slipping away, indicating what appears to be a general insufficiency of their problem-solving power.

In the opinion of critical legal scholars, this inadequacy is rooted in their inherently anthropocentric matrix and features,⁴ which continue to aggravate the disconnect between the ecosystems and the human attempt to regulate them.⁵ In other words, as the rhetoric bedrocks of Western environmental law, sustainability and participation are concepts deeply embedded in the human centrality regarding questions of environmental significance,⁶ where humans are immediate if not the exclusive ambit of concern.⁷ In this framework, human interests take precedence and human responsibilities to non-human subjects are assessed based on the benefits that humans can derive from environmental protection.⁸ This human supremacy encoded in the Western ethics and legal orders is vividly expressed in the words of Louis Kotze and Duncan French: ‘In the Anthropocene, the anthropocentrism of law is considered to justify and promote ecological ravaging; aggravate the enclosure of the commons; justify and increase the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and other marginalised groups; perpetuate corporate neo-colonialism; and intensify the asymmetrically distributed patterns of advantage and disadvantage that prevail in society, while deepening inter- and intra-species hierarchies’.⁹

Consequently, in perpetuating the paradigm of domination and sovereignty of humans over nature,¹⁰ the attempts to achieve sustainability through participation within Western parameters are inadequate to address sustainability’s main dimensions (economic, social, and environmental).¹¹ Human supremacy over nature informs the regulatory framework of environmental law and is drawn by modern science.¹² This reflects what Boaventura de Sousa Santos defines as ‘the conversion of modern law into scientific statist law’, which is a conversion that mimics ‘the hegemonic rationality’ of science and its ‘central productive force’.¹³ As Western science is based on the dogma of mastery of nature, acquired through the objectification of knowledge and manipulation of natural laws,¹⁴ laws, similarly, manipulate social and ecological relations through categorisation of reality and the imposition of the sovereignty and dominion paradigms.¹⁵

Through a comprehensive mapping of the contributions in the book, I argue that sustainability and participation are over-exploited Western concepts that need to be rethought and re-cast in a hybridised scenario. To become effective factors of change in the socio-environmental crises of our time, Western legal paradigms must open up to pluralism, knowledge co-creation, and generally participatory approaches.¹⁶

Following a brief summary of the theme and scope of the book (section 2), the two interlaced concepts of sustainability through participation are analysed as a part of the multilevel or polycentric system of governance in which they are embedded (section 3). Three main features of polycentric governance (a plurality of actors, patterns of interaction, and overarching sets of rules) are regarded as the common threads in the chapters of this book. The analysis of the characteristics of polycentric governance provided in this chapter will show gaps and offer key insights for future research with the aim to improve the problem-solving power of the relationship between sustainability and participation (section 4)

2 Sustainability and Participation as Western Conceptualisations

Through the exploration and analysis of the different approaches to this book’s main foundational question of whether sustainability can be achieved through participation, an internal contradiction in the relational dimension of the two concepts may be revealed. This revelation would demonstrate the difficulty of reconciling such a relationship and translating it into implementable policies.¹⁷

Sustainable development and sustainability stem from and are deeply embedded in Western legal constructions. As observed by Carmen G. Gonzales: ‘Although its meaning is highly contested, sustainable development is widely recognized as one of the guiding principles of contemporary international law […]’.¹⁸ The Western origins of sustainable development appear problematic whereas ‘the definition [provided by the Brundtland Commission] appeared to reconcile economic development and environmental protection without fundamentally challenging the growth-oriented development paradigm’.¹⁹ As correctly pointed out by the author, the focus of the Brundtland Commission was to promote economic growth, in the first place, following the global North-Western model, as the solution to poverty and inequality, rather than effectively being concerned with ecological sustenance that came into consideration in its merely instrumental function of supporting economic growth: ‘Instead of encouraging the global North to reduce its ecological footprint in order to increase the living standards of the poor without exceeding biophysical limits, the Brundtland Commission extolled the benefits of international trade as the engine of economic growth and the solution to poverty and inequality’.²⁰

As Gilbert Rist observes, ‘[t]he main contradiction, then, in the Report of the Brundtland Commission is that the growth policy supposed to reduce poverty and stabilize the ecosystem hardly differs at all from the policy which historically opened the gulf between rich and poor and placed the environment in danger’.²¹ Instead of questioning the dominant development model that caused the major divide between the global north and the global south and provoked irreversible changes in the ecological system, sustainable development suggested upscaling the economic growth. Thus, sustainability and sustainable development served to promote the growth model that Heloise Weber defines as the ‘market episteme’,²² which gives priority to highly contested neoliberal policies, promoting free-market capitalism,²³ ‘implementing contentious policies which critics have shown to be highly exclusionary, unjust and therefore also not sustainable’²⁴ and ultimately causing those power asymmetries (exclusion, higher environmental risk, and disproportionate environmental exposures)²⁵ in environmental decision-making that participation tries to address.²⁶

Therefore, the relationship between sustainability and participation is controversial²⁷ and, as pointed out by legal scholars advocating for critical approaches to sustainability²⁸ and by the contributors to this book, difficult to conciliate. Sustaining human development and guaranteeing that everybody participates in this endeavor is an undertaking dense with epistemological and material contradictions and oxymorons.²⁹ For this reason, how to effectively interlink sustainability and participation in ways that improve the environmental outcomes of public decision-making (by achieving social equality while protecting the environment simultaneously) is still an open question. However, the drastic shortcut could be boiled down to the conclusion that, within Western knowledge, the essence of a highly exclusionary human sustainability based on market epistemological premises and hegemonic rationality, inevitably hijacks participation.

Starting from the premise that sustainability and participation form a dichotomy that cannot be solved within a purely Western-centric context, it already dispenses from demonstrating that their relationship is successful at any cost. Acknowledging such difficulty helps to gather the threads of the discourse on the multiple applications of sustainability through participation, and their points of convergence and divergence, as showcased by the rich pool of contributions that compose this book.

Therefore, drawing insights from the previous chapters, this contribution first attempts to reconstruct the scenario in which the sustainability-participation relationship seems to be taking place, in what hereinafter is interchangeably referred to as the multilevel or polycentric governance system.³⁰ This is accomplished by focusing on three main features in the sustainability-participation relationship, then formulating a way forward for the Western neoliberal hegemony, and suggesting conceptual and methodological corrections to the framework.

By applying polycentric approaches to environmental governance³¹ and suggesting improvements to the current relationship between sustainability and participation through decolonial and non-human centric approaches to law³² this chapter explores how a multilevel polycentric governance system could be enhanced through deliberate processes of integration and co-creation of diverse epistemologies and non-human centric approaches to law.

3 Sustainability through Participation in Multilevel or Polycentric Governance

This book spans studies of sustainability through participation, looking at the historical and epistemological backgrounds of the two concepts (respectively, in Birgit Peters, and Paola Villavicencio-Calzadilla and Louis Kotze’s analyses), through the national perspective level (Eva Julia Lohse, Daniele Brombal and Cristina Fraenkel-Haeberle), the EU thematic level (Matthias Valta, Julius Buckler, Giacomo Gattinara and Magnus Noll Ehlers) and the international thematic level (Federica Cittadino and Emma Mitrotta, Omondi R. Owino, Violeta Radovich, Michael Riegner, Angela Schwerdtfeger, Paolo Turrini, Matthias Uffer).

The result is a kaleidoscopic conceptual picture of the sustainability-participation relationship that in this section will be demonstrated via the filigree of the multilevel or polycentric³³ systems of governance³⁴ to identify common features, gaps, and possible solutions for strengthening the substrate in which sustainability and participation interact, thus, improving the relationship between the two.

As a premise to the analysis, the terms multilevel and polycentric encompass the complexity of layers and plurality of actors involved in environmental decision-making. In particular, the word ‘multilevel’ makes an explicit reference to the vertical or horizontal interactions between actors, while the adjective ‘polycentric’ emphasises the multiple centres of decision-making, each of them operating with some degree of autonomy, but hereinafter used interchangeably.³⁵

The scholars invited to provide an analysis of sustainability through participation in their fields of expertise touched upon some of the basic conceptual elements of the polycentric governance system in which the sustainability-participation relationship is embedded. They approached their research using diverse methods, tools, substantive environmental issues, and geographic locations.

The collective result is that the chapters offer reflections on nature and the functioning of sustainability through participation in multilevel governance. Therefore, rather than summarising each chapter independently, I will focus on some key elements of the multilevel governance that emerge from the synoptic analysis of the different contributions.

The leitmotif that emerges is that, despite the promising environmental outcomes that a highly polycentric governance system is likely to yield when compared to monocentric governance,³⁶ it still requires a sustained commitment to overcome the limitations of a Western and anthropocentric knowledge system. For example, the analysis of Cristina Fraenkel-Haeberle reveals how the different levels, actors, networks, and agendas follow a structure informed by the EU subsidiarity principle, and therefore the multilevel governance the author refers to is deeply embedded in the Western paradigm. Highlighting the critical challenges of the multilevel framework, and following the historical pathway of sustainability through participation, Birgit Peters reflects on the limited role played by the eco-centric episteme in molding environmental governance. Along the same lines, Paola VillavicencioCalzadilla and Louis Kotze’ develop their argumentation on the need to recenter the sustainability-participation narrative around nature, nature rights, and duties of guardianship. Also, Eva Julia Lohse emphasises the role that Indigenous peoples’ cosmovisions play in strengthening Earth law and ecocentric perspectives.

Nested in this Western anthropocentric context, the three characteristics of polycentric governance systems (a plurality of actors, patterns of interactions, and an overarching set of rules)³⁷ reveal the gaps in the system but also the large future potential of polycentric systems to enable a relationship sustainability-participation more functional to address socio-ecological challenges.

The present analysis will focus on characteristics, gaps, and possible solutions. In the analysis of characteristics and gaps, I will observe how challenging it is for certain actors to be included, how a network or web-shaped structure³⁸ still subsides and hegemonic actors prevail, and how the overarching systems of rules need to be strengthened with knowledge pluralism and tackled with knowledge co-production approaches. These insights into the gaps will help identify possible ways forward and suggest developing hybridised solutions and the standardisation of participatory mechanisms that can secure a sustainable future for all.

4 The Good and the Bad in the Three Characteristics of Polycentric Governance

The first characteristic of polycentric environmental governance, where sustainability intersects participation, is the existence of multiple centres of decision-making, following what the doctrine calls the approach of a multiple and shared agency.³⁹

A multiple and shared agency approach enhances the interaction in decision-making and, consequently, is expected to contribute to the development of complex adaptive social systems.⁴⁰ In this sense, a shared agency addresses the socio-ecological dimension of sustainability by improving the quality of the interactions and enriching the pool of environmental solutions that support social inclusion. In their study on social sustainability, Merlina Missimer et al point out how fostering complex adaptive social systems by broadening the spectrum of parties involved in decision-making, constitutes a strategic approach to sustainability by enhancing trust, common meaning, diversity, capacity for learning and capacity for self-organisation, and ultimately by leading to adaptive and resilient environmental outcomes.⁴¹ The participation of multiple actors in the design and implementation of environmental governance allows for greater complexity of understanding of socio-environmental issues, as well as for creating social cohesion and inclusion. As observed in the cited work of Kotze’ and French,⁴² often, because of social norms or lack of opportunities, the groups most affected by environmental impacts, such as women, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged groups, possess limited agency in decision-making.⁴³ Thus, collective actions for sustainability have the potential to enhance the ability of these groups to act in concerted ways by engaging with inequities, dynamics of exclusion, and power asymmetries.

The first example of potential benefits for the environment deriving from a broadened spectrum of actors in the environmental decision-making process is offered in Cittadino and Mitrotta’s chapter on the involvement of present and future generations in environmental justice (intergenerational justice). Supporting the need of broadening the spectrum of actors in polycentric governance, Radovich prospects the possibility of an expansion of actors in favour of Indigenous communities involved in a multi-actor environmental guardianship. In the same vein, Eva Julia Lohse underscores the need to decolonise sustainability through Indigenous participation; Villavicencio-Calzadilla and Kotzé consider that the system of nature rights and guardianship is the most meaningful way to facilitate effective environmental participation, Omondi R. Owino points out how the opening toward non-state actors in environmental decision-making had been encouraged also through Western-legal instruments, such as the Paris Agreement.

Moreover, Peters, Lohse, Schwerdtfeger, Gattinara and Nolls cite the 1998 Århus Convention (ÅC)⁴⁴ and 2018 Escazú Agreement (EA) for Latin America and the Caribbean,⁴⁵ as two legal milestones that contributed to the development of environmental participatory rights. Both conventions bring forward the discourse of a plurality of actors in environmental decision-making. For instance, the ÅC captures all the parties potentially affected by environmental decisions (and especially e-NGOS), while the EA promotes the environmental defenders, carriers of nature-centred views. Passing the baton of environmental decision-making to the carriers of nature-centred views (and especially Indigenous peoples and vulnerable groups), the EA has catalysed the gradual recognition of non-human-centred epistemologies at the global level.⁴⁶

The multi-actor feature of polycentric governance is not exempt from challenges. Already from the analysis of the different contributions, it is clear that, regardless of the new set of non-state actors, nation-states are still the key actors in climate governance.⁴⁷ Top-down approaches are still considered the most suitable forum for environmental and climate governance, based on the idea that only a cooperative effort between nation-states is the most appropriate way to tackle the global character of the socio-ecological crises.⁴⁸

Even though bottom-up approaches to environmental governance are attempting to go beyond the idea of centralisation, following the logic and principle of subsidiarity (as highlighted in the analysis of Fraenkel-Haeberle),⁴⁹ the focus is still on nation-states in the international arena. Subsequently, this means that while the diversity of actors and subsidiary policy levels are increasingly being recognised in global politics, top-down and bottom-up approaches ruled by state law are still dominant in informing policy and research in environmental governance.

Among the critics of the actors’ lack of diversity in environmental governance, Carmen G. Gonzalez points out how the expansion of actors, stemming from Western categories and institutions, is embedded in power relations and enables ‘northern states and transnational corporations to evade responsibility for their abuse of nature and of vulnerable states and peoples’.⁵⁰ The solution, in the eyes of the scholar, is to:

develop a non-Euro-centric […] project, amplify the voices of grassroots environmental justice activists to influence the interpretation of environmental human rights law, and develop legal theories that challenge the systemic […] violations of the global economic order rather than merely ameliorating its most egregious manifestations. […] The local, not the global, it needs to be emphasized, remains the crucial site of struggle for the enunciation, implementation, and enjoyment and exercise of human rights.⁵¹

The second characteristic of polycentric governance relates to the types of interactions and behaviours that can happen among actors which help clarify some of the fundamental mechanisms that produce outcomes in polycentric systems. From the contributions, it emerges how the structure of complex polycentric approaches varies across legal orders and macro-level political institutions.⁵² For example, the multi-actor interactions can range from conflict to cooperation, as respectively analysed in the studies of Buckler and Brombal, and might reveal a preference for anthropocentric approaches over eco-centric perspectives, as highlighted in Villavicencio-Calzadilla and Kotzé, Radovich, and Fraenkel-Haeberle’s chapters.

The studies in this book align with the argumentation that in global environmental governance, power flows are not neatly structured, and are simultaneously subject to forces of fragmentation and aggregation. James N. Rosenau defines this process as ‘governance of fragmentation’.⁵³ Martin Witte et al translate this concept into the vivid image of ‘patchwork-quilt arrangements’⁵⁴ to describe the way authority is exerted in polycentric settings, partly following vertical hierarchical directions, partly horizontal and partly oblique links among overlapping vertical and horizontal interactions.⁵⁵ In addition to the unidirectional decision-making processes, be they vertical, horizontal, and intersectional between the two, in global environmental governance, the patchwork of arrangements develops along multidirectional paths (networked cooperation, side by side and Möbius strip or web).⁵⁶ This complicated matrix involves transnational corporations, international non-governmental organisations, e-NGOS, states, epistemic and Indigenous communities (represented, in Lohse and Radovich’s works by the example of Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC)), transnational advocacy coalitions (as in the case of intergenerational justice movement analysed by Cittadino and Mitrotta).⁵⁷

On the positive side, this complex system has the potential to prevent conflicts and foster cooperation, eventually helping to overcome the challenge of the perduring hegemony of state actors in power dynamics, enhance collaboration and offer alternatives to the hierarchical scales of global environmental governance.⁵⁸ It has been widely argued that interdisciplinary and multilevel cooperation among actors constitutes the breeding ground for exchanging experiences and mutual learning, ultimately leading to environmentally beneficial decisions, thanks to the knowledge exchange and brokerage towards solution-oriented approaches.⁵⁹

Nevertheless, as in the case of the first characteristic, this complex matrix of power remains anchored in conventional political arenas and in the logic of nation-states’ sovereignty.⁶⁰ In this regard, Michael Riegner prospects how the participation of Indigenous peoples—outside the hierarchical system where only state actors and local public entities participate—offers the possibility of legal alternative visions to sustainability.⁶¹

From this analysis, it is clear that the first two characteristics of polycentric governance call for new approaches and perspectives. For instance, drawn from Indigenous epistemologies, Kyle Whyte proposes the ‘kincentric perspective’.⁶² According to this reconstruction, human and non-human actors, following values of mutual responsibility, consent, and reciprocity, have the ability to effectively contribute to a system of environmental governance infused with qualities that replicate the patterns of kin relationships.⁶³ Through kin-centric perspectives, the Western anthropocentric scaffoldings can give way to more receptive conceptions of alterity, nature-centred views, and epistemic plurality. As Simone Bignall, Steve Hemming and Daryle Rigney put it:

[T]hanks to the corresponding shift in ontology, posthuman justice is less concerned with securing rights for human subjects with full moral worth and more interested in advancing and protecting environmental diversity in communal life, as a constitutive source of human and nonhuman resilience and creativity.⁶⁴

Furthermore, the need to overcome Western predominance emerges from the analysis of the third characteristic of polycentric governance, relating to the overarching set of rules and formal legal frameworks–legal principles, laws, and regulatory mechanisms that support the interaction among the diverse actors.

As repeatedly pointed out in this chapter and confirmed by the other contributions, the common umbrella of rules where sustainability crosses participation in environmental governance is predominantly infused with Western environmental law concepts.⁶⁵

The Western constructs⁶⁶ inform sets of rules where examples and applications of sustainability through participation unfold under fragmented and often uncoordinated regulatory systems, representing self-contained regimes and thematic fields of law (climate change, biodiversity, environmental crises, air, and land pollution, state aid, finances, and competition),⁶⁷ thus, evoking the image of the governance of fragmentation.⁶⁸

A trend in research and policy-making to overcome such an impasse caused by the opposing forces of fragmentation and aggregation of Western rules suggests moving from conventional participatory rights and knowledge brokerage to environmental knowledge co-creation.⁶⁹

In the academic literature, knowledge co-creation is defined as an emerging process. For example, in the field of Western law, a plurality of actors attempt to solve a shared problem, challenge, or task through a constructive exchange of different knowledge sets, values, expertise and competencies.⁷⁰

Knowledge co-creation presents several advantages and ways forward to all the highlighted stalemates and open venues to consolidate sustainability and participation.

First, it captures the plurality of public and private actors aiming to solve public problems, challenges, and tasks. An innovative process emerges when a plurality of actors is collectively committed to solving shared problems by engaging in mutual, transformative learning, reciprocity and creativity, following kinship rather than market-oriented rules. Plural co-creation triggers a trust-building process where ‘interactions enable co-creators to engage with and support other co-creators processes, creating a continuous feedback loop of knowledge integration, and drive knowledge integration into a never-ending spiral’.⁷¹

Second, knowledge co-creation allows a crucial shift in the critical register, as it comprises both poles of the binary (state sovereignty over nature and human-nature interconnected views), with no predominance of one over the other, showing a critique that is richer and more capable of capturing the competing narratives of environmental governance.⁷²

Additionally, it provides an analytical framework that theorises how participation can effectively work in the decision-making processes of environmental governance, facilitating the exploration of how the law should allow the integration and co-evolution of Western and non-Western (e.g. Indigenous, local, traditional) views.⁷³

Lastly, an institutional opening towards multiple knowledge systems enables the reading of environmental governance through the lens of the pluralism of environmental governance, and the diversity of approaches to sustainability. As observed by Ronald Ralf Becerra:

legal pluralism favors the possibility to relax the concept of state sovereignty. […] enshrined into the mechanisms of transnational legal systems and organizations that curtail and transform current powers and the constitutional sovereignty.⁷⁴

In a dimension of legal pluralism, state sovereignty evolves according to the situation and social context, confirming how law and society are inseparable. The concept of evolving and dynamic sovereignty is crucial for environmental issues as it fosters the idea of adaptability to changes.⁷⁵ In this scenario, state sovereignty evolves into other concepts, such as stewardship and duty to protect, and is, thus, passed on to relevant actors to apply, create or orientate regulations, frameworks, and decision-making processes. These actors may include environmental organisations and Indigenous, traditional, and local communities.

The hybridisation of the polycentric governance scenario, in which the different applications of sustainability through participation are projected, shows the relevance of the commitment to developing integrated decision-making approaches. For instance, integrated decision-making enables integrated processes of co-designing policy and co-producing knowledge for addressing challenges for global sustainability and developing possible solutions.⁷⁶

In this renewed sense, polycentric governance can play a key role in addressing socio-ecological development challenges. Thus, it can not only strengthen the processes of participation (and therefore contribute to inclusion, transparency, and good administration) but can encourage knowledge integration, co-design and co-creation, subsequently, providing a better understanding of the multiple drivers, interdependencies, and complexities of global sustainability challenges. Through the polycentric governance scenario, it is possible to reflect on ways of knowledge co-creation that better contributes to the development of robust policy solutions and their effective, equitable implementation. Consequently, within this understanding, the process of knowledge co-creation involves stakeholders, decision-makers, and the researcher community in a problem-oriented approach, driven by contexts of application, and starting with the joint framing of socio-ecological challenges, policy topics, and research questions. Co-creation upholds scientific integrity in reflexive learning processes that bring together different actors and knowledge practices. It builds on and supplements, traditional processes of disciplinary research by encouraging decision-making platforms where plurality-level dynamics are involved. This includes vertical, horizontal, networked, all-encompassing polycentric actors from central and local policymakers and decision-makers, e-NGO s, epistemic communities of researchers, and knowledge-keepers.

Consequently, hinging on the main teachings of polycentric governance and critically looking into the most advanced achievements in the environmental regulatory framework, this contribution suggests developing co-created approaches that go beyond the Western approaches by suggesting enhancements of Indigenous epistemologies, kinship perspectives applied to participatory dynamics as well as nature-based approaches. Such a perspective is expected to institutionalise effective counter-balances to the expansive dominion of some societal systems over others, especially of Western approaches over Indigenous and local communities.

A co-created approach to law based on integration, participation, and inclusiveness provides a platform to explore the integration of legal approaches and methods in the field of environmental decision-making and environmental protection.

Most importantly, a co-created approach to environmental law allows human and non-human-related challenges to be understood via a lens of an integral concept of ecology and health, of rights of the planet and its inhabitants, and of collective duties to respect both.⁷⁷

5 Conclusions

The variety of styles, epistemologies, experiences and legal systems explored in this collective work reflects the plurality of possibilities where sustainability and participation can interact. However, as repeatedly pointed out in this chapter, the interaction is fraught with challenges. Therefore, it is crucial to identify mechanisms that craft specific institutional arrangements for a polycentric governance scenario where sustainability through participation is enhanced. These mechanisms include but are not limited to, approaches of knowledge co-creation via the establishment of more inclusive networks that improve participation and, ultimately environmental governance.

Drawing on the conclusions from the cited work of Benessia et al.,⁷⁸ a hybridised scenario for sustainability rooted in participatory research tools could represent the way forward to the complex sustainability challenges. Essentially, participatory research prioritises local perspectives, values, needs, and knowledge through collaboration with community members throughout the entirety of the research process.⁷⁹ In this approach, research is not conducted on community members, but rather with them.⁸⁰

Moreover, it is worth highlighting that the borders of such a community extend to include students and learners in general, researchers, and representatives of local and Indigenous communities.⁸¹

Hence, cooperation becomes a driver of change with methodological, relational, and environmental implications since academic and community co-researchers ‘implement the results in a way that will raise critical consciousness and promote change in the lives of those involved – changes that are in the direction and control of the participating group or community’.⁸²

The analysis of participatory research opens venues to discuss the use of such a framework in the field of environmental law, including its relevance to decolonising approaches and overcoming the marginalisation of voices relevant to the environmental discourse. As observed by Lopez and recalled by Denzin and Lincoln, ‘we are in the midst of a large-scale social movement of anticolonialism discourse’ that calls for decolonization of research and engagement with Indigenous legal research to find solutions to the challenges of our time’.⁸³

Consequently, research with (human) participants develops as a system of interactions where researchers become parts of interconnected circles and relations that are connected and accountable to the researchers.⁸⁴ Continuing along this path, Fulvio Mazzocchi observes how:

[…] it makes a big difference thinking of the world as made of ‘relatives or ‘peers’ rather than ‘resources’ or mere ‘experimental units’; and so, does the appreciation of nature as deserving respect, assuming that humans are (one of) their caretakers rather than the only owners or masters of the natural environment. By feeling that they belong to the earth and are part of it, people, subsequently, would treat it and behave accordingly. For instance, it would not make sense anymore to conceive nature as existing only to provide utility to humankind. Thus, rather than trying to dominate it or experiencing alienation, people would attempt to live in consonance with nature and the overall surrounding. Finally, it would be more easily recognized that nature plays an important role even in human well-being: environmental and social health are closely interlinked, that is, if one changes, the other does as well. Overall, the Indigenous view may lead us to recognize that a prerequisite for a more sustainable world is rebuilding an ecosophic awareness.⁸⁵

Participated spaces for sustainability in a hybridised scenario could be one possible answer to the quest for a common future for all.

In revisiting David Suzuki’s metaphor, cited in the incipit of this work, the hybridised scenario could help us realise how striking the resemblance is between sustainability and the trajectory of the car we are in, heading towards the brick wall, as well as between participation and the vain fight for the best place to sit:

I used to say it’s as if we’re in a car heading toward a brick wall at 100 kilometres per hour, and everyone is arguing about where they want to sit rather than looking ahead, putting on the brakes and turning the wheel. I don’t say that anymore because we’re more like a Road Runner cartoon. Road Runner approaches the edge of a cliff, then stops suddenly or turns to avoid it. But Wile E. Coyote keeps charging straight ahead and goes over the edge. Wile E. has that moment of realization when he’s suspended in air, looks down and sees he’s gone too far, then plunges to the canyon bottom.⁸⁶

Or, more cynically, the metaphor helps us realise that any scholarly attempt to square the circle and grant a common future for all comes down to one image: a considerable amount of chatter nicely put together to distract us from the iconic Wile E. Coyote’s moment of realisation.