ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights several basic features of deliberative democracy that could support decision-making strategies on environmental issues and around environmental law enforcement. It evaluates whether deliberative democracy could inspire strategies appropriate to improve the enforcement of environmental law, making it more effective: especially when competing interests are simultaneously relevant and the regulation needs a deep evaluation to balance the protection of natural resources and other values. Considering several comments on the definition proposed the most representative feature of deliberative democracy as already outlined is citizens' participation. As the scope is to solve problems which have a social impact, deliberation requires the commitment of the whole community to address a particular situation and to offer a feasible solution. At its heart, the reasoning not only constitutes the basic rule of the decision-making procedure according to a deliberative approach, but also confers the epistemic justification to such a process.
