The promise of the region? City-regional collaboration and its contribution to transformative biodiversity governance

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2024-08-24
Language
en
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Given the current rate and speed of biodiversity loss and its disastrous effects on nature and nature’s contributions to people, transformative change is imperative. Collaborative governance at the city-regional level has been argued to support transformative change through transformative governance. The current thesis explores this hypothesis in a qualitative case study of the biodiversity policy arrangement in the Arnhem-Nijmegen region in the Netherlands, where a new collaborative structure called the Green Metropolitan Region (GMR) was established in 2021. The findings show that the GMR has contributed to the transformative governance capacity of the policy arrangement in a limited but positive way. It has led to an increased attention for aspects such as infill development and agenda-setting for nature, as well as the institutionalisation of transformative governance approaches like integrative governance. However, the transformative governance capacity was stabilised as the GMR has little power relative to its institutional context. Important explanatory factors included the GMR’s intermediate position, internal governance structure, the influence of the institutional and societal developments and values. This research thus shows that while its effect is restrained depending on its given position and context, city-regional collaboration can add a promising level of influence for transformative change.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen