Discursive Governance and the Marginalization of Local Community Voices in Green Development Projects: A Critical Discourse Analysis

• Sunday Sunday

  Ladoke Akintola University of Technology

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Green development projects increasingly rely on discursive governance mechanisms—the strategic use of sustainability language, performative commitments, and technocratic framing—to legitimize interventions in local communities. While scholarship has examined corporate sustainability discourse and community participation separately, little attention has been paid to how the discursive architecture of green development projects systematically excludes local voices. This study addresses that gap by conducting a critical discourse analysis of 47 green development project documents across 12 projects in sub-Saharan Africa, complemented by semi-structured interviews with 38 community stakeholders and 14 project administrators. Using a Foucauldian governmentality framework and the performative purpose alignment theory of discursive governance, the analysis identifies three mechanisms of marginalization: semantic exclusion (community concerns absent from 89.4% of project framing documents), temporal displacement (local knowledge subordinated to technocratic timelines in 78.7% of cases), and evaluative closure (community input solicited only after key decisions were finalized in 84.2% of projects). The findings demonstrate that discursive governance operates not through overt exclusion but through the production of what counts as legitimate environmental knowledge and legitimate speakers. The study contributes a replicable analytical framework for diagnosing discursive marginalization and offers practical indicators for administrators and policymakers seeking to democratize green development governance.

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