Participation Under Constraint: Governing Risk, Knowledge, and Authority in a UNESCO Global Geopark

UNESCO Global Geoparks are promoted as governance spaces that integrate geoheritage conservation,
education, and sustainable development through community engagement. However, participation in many
geopark settings can remain procedurally visible while institutionally constrained, raising questions about
how participation design shapes governance outcomes, especially in hazard-prone landscapes. This study
conceptualizes participation as an institutional system rather than an engagement activity and examines how
authority structures, communication practices, and knowledge hierarchies interact to influence governance
and risk management. Using an in-depth qualitative case study of the Dieng Plateau UNESCO Global
Geopark in Central Java, Indonesia, where persistent volcanic-geothermal hazards coincide with expanding
energy development, the study analyzes interviews, observations, and documentary materials to examine
participation under centralized authority and epistemic asymmetry. The findings show that participatory
interfaces are widespread but uneven in decisional influence; risk communication is inconsistent across
channels and periods of uncertainty; and local experiential knowledge is frequently acknowledged yet rarely
translated into decision-relevant inputs. To advance theory, the paper introduces the Participatory Geopark
System (PGS) as an analytical framework comprising interdependent components: authority structures,
participation interfaces, communication-and-trust infrastructure, and epistemic integration mechanisms.
The study reframes participation as institutional design, links participation constraints to risk-governance
vulnerabilities, and offers a practical lens for evaluating epistemically inclusive collaboration under realworld constraints.
Keywords: UNESCO global geoparks, participatory governance, risk governance, epistemic justice,
Indigenous knowledge, geothermal hazards