ABSTRACT
Environmental governance plays a crucial role in contemporary urban management, delivering environmental, ecological, and economic benefits. However, the role of community participation within China's environmental governance remains insufficiently explored. Guangzhou offers an illustrative case: Over several phases of stream restoration, governments, local communities, and civil society organizations have developed various forms of partnerships. Taking Sima Stream in Guangzhou as an example, this chapter employs policy analysis, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire surveys to unpack the evolving community participation since 2010. The analysis identifies four stages of engagement: Formation of community willingness, bottom-up community cooperation, empowered community participation, and institutionalized social collaboration. Long-term community participation in environmental governance helps to enhance governance transparency through multi-channel feedback mechanisms. However, challenges persist: Participation channels remain limited, and social participation is largely confined to supervisory functions with minimal influence on policy decision-making, thereby constraining the effectiveness of collaborative governance.
