France's ‘Grenelle de l'environnement’: openings and closures in ecological democracy

Abstract

Since 2007 France has been systematically renovating government policy under the banner of sustainable development. This process, called the Grenelle de l'environnement, extends the official role given to environmental associations in certain of the State's advisory bodies. The institutional roots of the Grenelle are located in various precedents for consultative environmental practice in French administration. The role of Nicolas Hulot's 2006 Hulot, N. and le Comité de Veille Écologique. 2006. Pour un pacte écologique, Paris: Calmann-Lévy. [Google Scholar] ecological pact in making democratised environmental policy a higher presidential priority is then reviewed. At a procedural level, the Grenelle is shown to take France's meso-corporatist practices in the direction of deliberative democracy. Its newly adopted Energy-Climate tax shows how environmental groups can use discursive power to shape environmental legislation.