This paper evaluates a new form of public participation in evironmental monitoring and regulation advanced through local “bucket brigades”, which allow community members to sample air emissions near indutrial facilities. These community brigades represent a new form of community environmental policing, in which residents participate in collecting, analyzing, and deploying environmental information, and more importantly, in an array of public policy dialogues. Use of this sampling technology has had marked effects on local residents’ perceptions and participation in emergency response and citizens’ right to know. However, when viewed through the lens of the more developed literature on community policing, the bucket brigades are currently limited in their ability to encourage “co-production” of environmental protection between citizens and the state. Means are examined to strengthen the bucket brigades and to more breadly support community participation in environmental regulation.

http://rendiciondecuentas.org.mx/data/arch_docu/pdf0096.pdf