Deliberative Monetary Valuation (DMV) aims to make the process of environmental decision making more democratic than conventional economic methods of monetary valuation. This research assesses the limitations of DMV, in particular, the difficulty it has in allowing for the background social/cultural inequalities of participants and the differences in their communicative competence. The PhD makes an original contribution to the understanding of the conditions under which DMV can meet its democratic promise by taking a capability-based approach to address these limitations. The research involved a deliberative forum and a survey relating to a forest conservation issue in rural Colombia.