Review of scientific production on social participation in municipal environmental management

Abstract

Social participation deals with the attempts to include society in public policies, seeking to meet a desire of the population itself and representative sectors to integrate decision-making processes, leading directly to the government their demands in various areas that concern and are related to it. to the common good, such as the environmental issue. In this context, this research aimed to systematically review the literature on social participation in municipal environmental management. Through a systemic search of the theme in journals indexed in the Web Of Science - WOS database and the use of VOSViewer software, it was possible to analyze the bibliographic data of 56 articles published from 2008 to 2018, selected because they deal with some aspect of social participation in the journal. municipal environmental management. There was a relative growth of research on this topic, showing a high growth in 2017, and that this research has focused on the evaluation and development of this participation in issues and thematic areas, such as: regarding the solid waste problem, the issue water resources, protected area management, environmental management development and society, and a small presence on climate change and renewable energy. The theme that grew the most in the analyzed scientific productions was in relation to social participation focused on the environmental problem of solid waste worldwide. Research into scientific production has revealed a growing field of study from 2015; however, still in a fragmented way and without co-authoring networks between institutions and countries. There seems to be consensus on the importance of the role of social participation in municipal environmental management; However, few studies are presented. Future research may extend investigations to other databases such as Scopus.