Community and institutional capability: sharing a social contract on environmental issue in the South of Italy

This paper is based on several Action-Research (AR) projects managed in a rural area of Salento (Lecce-Italy) related to environmental issue. Starting from AR experiences shaped after several case studies, we can affirm that participative evaluation/planning in environmental issues have enabled both collaborative/cooperative learning processes and improved community empowerment promoting solutions to achieve a shared vision on an environmental issue negotiating with local authorities and the client company. Community education as a goal of ecojustice think, considers citizens as co-responsible protagonists in deciding on environmental and territorial changes. AR has involved the social actors in sharing knowledge/decisions/actions aimed to define together a set of indicators both for monitoring the social investment and for evaluating the social risk related to the likely opening of a biomass energy station in that area of Salento. AR in a systemic and no-dialectic perspective permits a mediation between both top-down decision-making processes and the risk of bottom-up protests thanks to the improvement of initiatives of participative democracy. This process of social/institutional capability is aimed both to inform multilevel policies related to environmental issue and to carry on initiatives of governance of common goods.