Beyond the Green Façade: A Critical Analysis of Digital Participatory Budgeting for Climate Resilience and Governance in Lisbon

This article critically analyses Lisbon’s Green Participatory Budget (GPB), launched in 2020 within the symbolic context of the city’s designation as the European Green Capital. Rather than treating the GPB as a radical democratic innovation, the study situates it as a thematic and digital reconfiguration of Lisbon’s long-standing participatory budgeting process, which has been active since 2008 and already incorporated environmental dimensions. Drawing on critical urban studies, political ecology, and literature on participatory governance, the analysis explores the democratic and justice implications of digital participatory climate governance. The article identifies structural limitations in the design and implementation of the GPB, including technocratic gatekeeping, digital exclusion, restricted deliberation, and the significant involvement of private sector consultancies. Beyond these internal constraints, the article argues that the most critical limitation of Lisbon’s GPB lies in its lack of continuity. Despite the mobilization of financial resources and public expectations, the GPB was not renewed after 2021, nor were its outcomes systematically evaluated or integrated into long-term governance strategies. This discontinuation compromises the potential of participatory climate governance as a learning process and raises broader questions about symbolic policy-making, institutional memory, and democratic accountability in urban climate action. The study concludes by proposing a set of redistributive and justice-oriented principles to restructure participatory mechanisms toward genuine climate democracy.