Participative governance and integrated coastal management. An experiment of dialogue in an insular community at isle-aux-coudres (Quebec, Canada)

This paper is about an Integrated Coastal Management Project on an island, Isle-aux-Coudres, located in the St-Lawrence Estuary (Québec, Canada). It is based on data collected from 2003 to 2007 on the participatory aspects of the project such as: types of stakeholders, relationships between stakeholders, time dedicated to dialogue, consensus versus negotiation, and outcomes. We analyze the way concerns evolved into actions and the relationship between dialogue and actions during the project. We conclude that the difficulty is to join together the differences around various stakes, without forcing the consensus, or negating problems and conflicts.