Abstract:

The paper aims to analyze the role of multi-stakeholders in inclusive eco-planning and point out that they could promote the paradigm shift of social governance. Eco-planning is an important part of China’s ongoing territory spatial planning and a bridge between the natural and social ecosystems, and promoting social governance at local level through the eco-planning process is the key to achieving territory spatial planning. Based on research and practice since 2000, the paper analyzed the role of the local governments and their departments, the public, planners, and other social forces in the interactive cooperation in formulating, implementing, monitoring and evaluating of eco-planning. And the paper compared the two social governance paradigms which eco-planning faces. The research pointed out that the inclusive and cooperative governance paradigm in eco-planning had the ability to promote paradigm shift of social governance. Through the description of the inclusive eco-planning process, it indicated that the way of coordinating the relationship between stakeholders in its specific process could help transform social governance into a multi-stakeholders’ cooperative governance system and a multiple consultation platform in which multi-stakeholders participate.

Key words: ecological planning, local social governance, paradigm shift, inclusive planning, stakeholders