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A critical assessment of employing democratic and deliberative ideals in the environmental planning process in Bangladesh

In the 6th (2011–15) and 7th (2016–20) Five Year Plans (FYP), Bangladesh's policy makers have set ambitious national environmental targets and goals to move the country towards more a sustainable economy and society. The goals were dictated by the economic, social and political interests of the political elites. This has resulted in limited stakeholder participation in environmental policy formulation. The 6th FYP aimed at achieving Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7: ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’. It failed due to shortcomings in local implementation and due to a lack of community participation. The 7th FYP is based on the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13, 14, 15. The obvious paradox within Bangladesh's environmental planning is the big gap between central government's policy making and community participation and local government involvement. This paper examines environmental policy formulation, implementation and monitoring in the last two FYPs in Bangladesh. Contemporary deliberative democratic theory provides important theoretical and applied insights that are often unexamined in the environmental planning literature. A theoretical framework is developed to analyse to what degree environmental planning arrangements incorporated deliberative elements and how they contribute to decision-making. A case study of the environmental planning process tests its effectiveness in explaining observed outcomes. Elsewhere, deliberative democratic approaches have been central to the success of the environmental planning process. The central government's failure to apply this approach produced a policy gap. Plan targets cannot be met unless local participation is ensured through the deliberative framework.