Securing the Environmental Water Requirements of Seasonally Ponding Wetlands: Partnering Science and Management Through Benefit Sharing

Although environmental flow regime assessments are becoming increasingly holistic, they rarely provoke water managers to enact the adaptive water reallocation mechanisms required to secure environmental water for wetlands. The conditions that cause science-based environmental flow assessments to succeed or fail in informing the management of environmental water requirements remain unclear. To begin to resolve these conditions, we used process tracing to deconstruct the sequence of activities required to manage environmental water in four case studies of seasonally ponding wetlands in Mediterranean and Mesoamerican watersheds. We hypothesized that, when the flexibility and equitability of the socioeconomic system do not match the complexity of the biophysical system, this leads to a failure of managers to integrate scientific guidance in their allocation of environmental water. Diagnostic evidence gathered indicates that science-management partnerships are essential to align institutional flexibility and socioeconomic equitability with the system’s ecohydrological complexity, and thus move from determination to reallocation of environmental water. These results confirm that institutions e.g., river basin organizations need to be supplemented by motivated actors with experience and skill to negotiate allocation and adaptive management of environmental water. These institutional-actor synergies are likely to be especially important in water scarce regions when the need to accommodate extreme hydrological conditions is not met by national governance capacity. We conclude by focusing on benefit sharing as a means to better describe the conditions for successful science-based environmental flow assessments that realize productive efficiency in environmental water allocation i.e., recognition of multiple values for both people and ecosystems.

Cities in Developing Countries (CiDC)

This chapter addresses cities in developing countries that suffer from lack of economic resources and limited capabilities of the society. The chapter provides a definition of an economically productive city and the supports it needs from the national central government. Governance issues related to the local government are described, such as low citizen engagement, necessary legislative/regulatory changes, managing increasing citizen expectations, and community planning issues. It also touches on the issues of transparency and open government, operational inefficiencies, and ever-increasing urbanization movement. An important part of this chapter is touching on preparing for partial transformation and identifying opportunities and threats. It also provides guidelines for a general roadmap of actions that are based on planning a smart city, partnerships, and policies. Finally, transformation guidelines are discussed such as challenges for smart city transformation, alignment with national e-governance, capacity building, and change management.

Smart Sustainable City Roadmap as a Tool for Addressing Sustainability Challenges and Building Governance Capacity

Building smart sustainable cities initiatives requires governance capacity, which is constantly challenged by a diversity of actors and the transformation towards a digital society; however, the process of identifying the conditions for building a smart sustainable city (SSC) is not straightforward. As an attempt to map the key governance conditions, the goal of this study is to suggest guidelines for the development of SSC initiatives in the format of a generic roadmap. This research applies design science research methodology and builds the roadmap based on identified antecedents that may hinder or facilitate the development of SSC initiatives from a systematic literature review and the analysis of key governance aspects from 12 smart city initiatives in Europe and Latin America. This paper builds its results through a four-step approach including: (1) defining the main concepts and dimensions within the smart sustainable city context; (2) identifying sustainability challenges for the development of smart sustainable city initiatives; (3) analysing key governance aspects from smart sustainable city initiatives; and (4) designing an actionable research-based roadmap and practical recommendations. The resulting roadmap contains 11 key governance conditions for developing strategies for smart sustainable city initiatives that were classified into three main phases: (1) planning; (2) implementing; and (3) adopting, monitoring, and evaluating. In terms of contribution, this research provides a tool to support the development of initiatives, addressing sustainability challenges and strengthening governance capacity to ensure the long-term impacts of smart sustainable cities.

Staatliche Governance-Kapazität für Nachhaltigkeit: Konzeptualisierung und Anwendung eines Messinstruments in Schweizer Kantonen

Regierungen und Verwaltungen richten ihr Handeln vermehrt auf Nachhaltigkeit aus. Doch wie erfolgreich sind sie dabei? Wir stellen ein Instrument zur Messung nachhaltigkeitsbezogener interner Governance-Kapazität vor. Die Anwendung auf Schweizer Kantone offenbart deutliche Kapazitätsunterschiede und zeigt Möglichkeiten zur Stärkung staatlicher Governance-Kapazität auf.Sustainability has become an important guiding principle that has not only found its way into numerous policies, but also into the “engine rooms” of governance. Governments and administrations have established diverse governance arrangements orienting state actions towards sustainability. How does this integration of sustainability into governmental and administrative activity succeed? This paper proposes an instrument for the measurement and comparison of sustainability-oriented internal governance capacity and operationalizes it in the context of Swiss cantons. The application of the measurement tool documents the diversity of governance arrangements and their different capacities. It shows where, and how, the sustainability governance of governments and administrations can be further strengthened.

China’s “Embedded Neoliberal” Home-Based Elderly Care? A State-Organised System of Neighbourhood Governance

Embedding the program of elderly care into community-based service system seems to imply that China is reorganising capacities of neighbourhood governance. The program, created by transformation of neighbourhood governance, represented the state government’s frustration with the institutional embodiment of neoliberalism. However, stimulating neighbourhood organisations in elderly care service through involvement of market instruments demonstrated the neoliberal approach. In this study, we provided a research framework in the context of embedded neoliberalism to explore the dilemma of neighbourhood governance in China. By interviewing 100 elderly people in five neighbourhoods in Nanjing, China, we examined the home-based elderly care (HEC) model to analyse the changes in socio-spatial relationships of neighbourhoods. We argued that the state-organised system of market instruments as a form of neighbourhood system weaken the spontaneity of elderly residents in developing social capitals. Moreover, the emerging program is struggling to operate because the devolution of conservative governance capacity from the state to the neighbourhood does not provide resources, leading to the restrained market provision. Thus, this transformation of neighbourhood governance can only be effective if there is a clear complementarity relationship between the role of state and market instruments. The attention of further studies on neighbourhood governance needs to re-examine the reciprocal relationships in the context of declining neoliberalism.

Does large-scale digital collaboration contribute to crisis management? An analysis of projects from the #WirVsVirus hackathon implemented in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic (online first)

In recent years, collaborative approaches to crisis management involving citizens have gained increasing attention. One example is the #WirVsVirus hackathon, which was conducted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and had over 28,000 participants. Because research on large-scale, digital collaboration in crisis situations is scarce, consequences of their use in crisis management remain unclear. This article relies on the open governance paradigm as a lens for studying two projects emerging from the hackathon. Based on nine qualitative expert interviews, we ask how digital open governance affects governance capacity and legitimacy in crisis management. Our findings suggest that digital open governance can contribute to governance capacity and legitimacy, as it mobilises large, diverse groups of citizens to quickly develop citizen-centric, ready-to-use solutions for crisis-related problems. However, we also identified potential problems, including risks regarding legitimacy and accountability, difficulties with scalable solutions, and questionable long-term impacts.

Sustainable Transformation of Resettled Communities for Landless Peasants: Generation Logic of Spatial Conflicts

Urbanization in China has resulted in serious conflicts. Landless peasants are resettled between urban and rural areas in transitional communities. where their rural lifestyles often lead to spatial conflicts. We proposed a conceptual model to provide theoretical guidance for the governance of spatial conflicts and the sustainable transformation of resettled communities. Using field observations and semi-structured interviews, we examined 10 resettled communities in Hangzhou, China. The use of grounded theory to code the interview texts yielded 71 initial concepts and 22 categories that we then refined into six main categories: community physical environment (e.g., quality of private housing), community communication environment (e.g., heterogeneity of community population), landless peasants’ risk perceptions (e.g., impacts on social psychology), community governance capacity (e.g., trust in community’s self-governing organizations), residents’ space perceptions (e.g., awareness of space rights), and space competition behavior (e.g., fighting for public space). Finally, we applied social combustion theory to construct a logical relationship between the core category and main categories. The results show that changes in the physical and communication environments are the root elements (“combustion substances”) of spatial conflicts; the driving factors are landless peasants’ risk perceptions and community governance capabilities; direct elements (“ignition temperature”) are residents’ space perceptions and space competition behavior. Strategies for sustained transformation in resettled communities should prioritize gradual transitions of community space, improve support mechanisms for landless peasants, optimize community governance mechanisms, and cultivate awareness of community rules. This study aids the understanding of the inner mechanism for the sustainable development of resettled communities and has implications for other countries and regions in similar contexts.

The Practice Path of Government Governance Modernization

At the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, China clearly put forward the overall goal of comprehensively deepening reform, which can be summarized as “improving and developing the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and promoting the modernization of national governance capacity and governance system.” For the modernization of national governance, the modernization of government governance is undoubtedly a key link. The practical paths to achieve the modernization of government governance mainly include: First, realize the servitization of government governance; Second, realize the legalization in government governance; Third, realize the cheapness of government governance; Fourth, implement the responsibility of government governance.

Grassroot Democracy is an Important Element in the Modernization of Grassroot Governance

The modernization of grassroot governance cannot be separated from the effective participation of the local people. In the process of modernizing grassroot governance, there is still a long way to go to achieve community level democracy and expand effective citizens’ participation. The lack of grassroot governance capacity, problems such as “going through the motions” in local elections and the government crisis of trust stem from the lack of grassroot democracy in grassroot governance. In order to modernize grassroot governance, we must deepen reform of grassroot governance, improve systems, and provide citizens’ awareness of “democracy.”