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Abstract Over the past two decades, urban actors have sought to foster long-lasting change towards sustainability through reflexive governance. Related activities, including transition labs, arenas, experiments, and roadmaps, have been problematised for disparities between using a discourse of transformation and radicality while failing to materialise radical action and succumbing to ‘projectification’ – meaning that the impact of an intervention tends to evaporate after the initial experiment impulse. Enabling a transformative legacy of such interventions requires institutionalising reflexive governance arrangements, i.e. a process of integrating these arrangements as part of the existing institutional set-ups while maintaining ‘radical’ elements. Particularly as the focus in certain urban transitions shifts from emerging and supporting niche practices towards institutionalising new ways of working and breaking down regime structures, it becomes paramount to better understand such processes. Based on a comparative empirical analysis of six European cities, we explore how these cities attempt to institutionalise reflexive governance and take stock of the tensions encountered, particularly to what extent cities manage to safeguard their radical ambitions, or whether these become ‘captured’ in the process. Other highlighted tensions are a focus on internal dynamics, a struggle around voluntary structures and accountability, and a challenge of keeping momentum with new actor constellations while trying to address complexity and uncertainty. We conclude by putting forward three recommendations for how reflexive governance processes may increase their impact: through prioritising institutional embeddedness in and outside of the local authority; creating transparency around how governance arrangements are adjusted and modified throughout the process for accountability; and renewing commitment periodically to ensure continuity and commitment from actors involved.

On 10 August 2023, representatives of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and the governments of the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Canada signed the Western Arctic–Tariuq (Offshore) Accord.1 The Accord establishes a system for the shared management and regulation of offshore petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle, west of Nunavut to the limit of Canada’s jurisdiction in the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Ocean and the equitable sharing of benefits. Upon the consent of all Parties, implementing legislation will be introduced to establish the Accord and will, among other things, amend or replace relevant federal legislation. The Accord is a step towards Canada’s implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.2 It is also part of a quest for meaningful participation dating back to the initial activities concerning oil and gas in the region that fuelled negotiations leading to the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. This contribution situates the Accord in the context of these developments to illuminate its potential significance.

Over the past two decades, urban actors have sought to foster long-lasting change towards sustainability through reflexive governance. Related activities, including transition labs, arenas, experiments, and roadmaps, have been problematised for disparities between using a discourse of transformation and radicality while failing to materialise radical action and succumbing to 'projectification' – meaning that the impact of an intervention tends to evaporate after the initial experiment impulse. Enabling a transformative legacy of such interventions requires institutionalising reflexive governance arrangements, i.e. a process of integrating these arrangements as part of the existing institutional set-ups while maintaining 'radical' elements. Particularly as the focus in certain urban transitions shifts from emerging and supporting niche practices towards institutionalising new ways of working and breaking down regime structures, it becomes paramount to better understand such processes. Based on a comparative empirical analysis of six European cities, we explore how these cities attempt to institutionalise reflexive governance and take stock of the tensions encountered, particularly to what extent cities manage to safeguard their radical ambitions, or whether these become 'captured' in the process. Other highlighted tensions are a focus on internal dynamics, a struggle around voluntary structures and accountability, and a challenge of keeping momentum with new actor constellations while trying to address complexity and uncertainty. We conclude by putting forward three recommendations for how reflexive governance processes may increase their impact: through prioritising institutional embeddedness in and outside of the local authority; creating transparency around how governance arrangements are adjusted and modified throughout the process for accountability; and renewing commitment periodically to ensure continuity and commitment from actors involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A governance perspective that connects actors at multiple levels in forest restoration is largely missing and much needed to expedite the translation of national restoration targets into long‐lasting outcomes. An explicit focus on the interactions across governance levels, and how these influence ecological processes at different spatial levels, can overcome the general tendency to focus on forest restoration either from the top‐down or bottom‐up and help improve the quality of forest restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article explores governance arrangements’ conditions to attend socio-environmental demands from local communities in the context of megaprojects. Specifically, we investigate how the causal conditions “social participation effectiveness,” “political entrepreneurs,” “governmental coordination,” “public budget,” “political priority,” and “administrative capacity” are mobilized in sustainable territorial development plans - governance arrangements to attend socio-environmental demands - in the context of infrastructure megaprojects in the Brazilian Amazon. We applied Mill’s method of difference to compare the role of these conditions in processing five socio-environmental demands claimed in the context of the implementation of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant and paving BR-163. The results indicate that the relevance of these conditions depends on context, and only the condition “social participation effectiveness” was shared by all the successful cases.

Leaders' perceptions of the effectiveness of their organization's collaborations are critical as they determine current and future collaboration. This article examines perceived collaboration effectiveness—the extent to which targeted goals are achieved—based on an organization's role in that collaboration's governance arrangements (initiation, funding, coordination, and decision-making). Findings suggest that governance arrangements have modest association with perceived effectiveness of collaborations between nonprofits and local governments in Lebanon. Perceived effectiveness increases when an organization is directly engaged in coordinating the collaboration's work, activities, resources, and partners, but decreases when an organization has the responsibility for decision-making. Perceived effectiveness also appears to be related to trust, relationship effectiveness, service category, and the organization's sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article problematises European Union governance arrangements in times of crisis. The debate is built by arguing for a conceptual link between policy learning and indirect governance in the EU. These two frameworks are seen as fundamental theoretical pieces for understanding the EU's learning journey and the resulting governance mechanisms during and after these major events. Yet, the article shows that none of these two approaches can explain on its own how EU governance evolves because of crises. It is rather by looking at the intersection between indirect governance and policy learning that we get a more complete picture of the EU governance landscape in times of crisis. This theoretical debate builds on recent EU crises and scrutinises the policy-politics link by concluding on the preferred forms of EU indirect governance in times of crisis, while adding insights from the literature on policy learning and entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nature-based solutions have gained popularity as an approach to reduce the impacts of climate and environmental change, providing multi-fold and multi-sectoral benefits especially in cities. Yet there has been growing concern about their utility for cities of the Global South, a concern fuelled by the paucity of studies, including scientific peer reviewed and gray literature. In this paper, we contribute to this knowledge gap, based on an analysis of 120 case studies of NBS in Global South cities, documented in two databases (Urban Natural Atlas and Oppla). These cases fall largely under categories of blue and green infrastructure, with a few cases also focusing on grey infrastructure (in buildings or campuses). While most cases are in Asia, several have also been documented in Africa and Central/South America. Two-third of documented NBS cases are aligned towards either national, or lower-level (regional and local) policies indicating the importance of policy mechanisms for driving their implementation. Institutional arrangements are usually non-government, government or collaborative arrangements, with the goal of climate resilience, biodiversity support and ecosystem restoration—along with social goals of creating public spaces. However, when private players take on the mandate for NBS, they focus primarily on grey infrastructure (in buildings and campuses), primarily meant for private or employee benefits, and not for the public. In cases where public engagement is a stated priority, we find tokenistic approaches deployed, primarily seeking engagement through information dissemination and consultation predominate. Despite the stated importance for participation and engagement, only a few cases focused on empowerment and co-creation of NBS with local communities. We suggest that there is a greater need for documentation regarding the modes of participation especially on roles and levels of actors involved, to enrich our understanding of the impact of NBS on values of justice and equity in the cities of the global South.

On 10 August 2023, representatives of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and the governments of the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Canada signed the Western Arctic-Tariuq (Offshore) Accord.1 The Accord establishes a system for the shared management and regulation of offshore petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle, west of Nunavut to the limit of Canada's jurisdiction in the Beaufort Sea and Arctic Ocean and the equitable sharing of benefits. Upon the consent of all Parties, implementing legislation will be introduced to establish the Accord and will, among other things, amend or replace relevant federal legislation. The Accord is a step towards Canada's implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.2 It is also part of a quest for meaningful participation dating back to the initial activities concerning oil and gas in the region that fuelled negotiations leading to the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. This contribution situates the Accord in the context of these developments to illuminate its potential significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new CAP implementation model requires each Member State to design a CAP Strategic Plan (CSP) to deliver operational actions under the two CAP pillars. Each CSP must be built from an evidence-based needs assessment that undergoes rigorous prioritisation to plan comprehensive and achievable interventions. In Italy, the institutional context requires all the Regions and Autonomous Provinces to express their preferences and to discuss the CSP collectively, both as regards identifying territorial needs and their prioritisation. In this framework, it became pertinent to introduce a specific instrument to facilitate participation in this process. The Italian Ministry, in collaboration with the National Rural Network, developed a participatory route to assess the prioritisation of the identified needs, to support the decision-making process in CSP drafting process. The process is primarily based on a voting aggregation technique called the Constrained Cumulative Voting method. The process identified makes it possible, on the one hand, to formulate a shared consensus on the level of importance of each need; on the other one, via the definition of natural breaks, to determine homogeneous groups of needs by importance of intervention. This process is in line with the European Commission's legislative proposals requiring a sound and well-founded logic of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shareholders are the residual claimants on the assets of a corporation. Creditors are fixed claimants whose interest lies in the solvency of the borrower. Consequently, shareholders are usually thought to have optimal incentives to maximise the value of the corporation. The article challenges this common wisdom and proposes to reform bank governance granting (some) ex-ante governance rights to bank creditors. This aims at fine-tuning bank governance and incumbent substantive regulation, in particular the resolution framework for distressed banks, and enhances the quality of bank decision-making in terms of risk-taking. At the same time, the proposed reform should increase the ex-ante credibility of resolution. The second part of the article operationalises this construct focusing on the specific case of the European Banking Union and discusses the design of the governance status of bail-inable creditors. The analysis demonstrates how bail-inable creditors can correct for shareholders' perverse incentives and make debt governance work in banking. The policy proposal advanced in the paper would complement substantive regulation and prudential oversight. The governance role of creditors has the potential to be particularly helpful in preventing disproportionate risk-taking decisions in good times, when regulatory and supervisory standards are lax and systemic risk piles-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, the political framework for development and cooperation has undergone significant changes that have forced international cooperation for development (ICD) partners to redefine their objectives, roles, and strategies. This article is the result of a qualitative and inductive research project that examined these modifications and gathered empirical data that, on the one hand, suggests the emergence of new trends in the way the ICD is managed, such as flexibility and networking; on the other hand, shows the persistence in the propensity to follow the development model based on the theory of modernization and the predominance of asymmetries between its partners. From the perspective of the theoretical approach to governance, this text explains how these trends aff ect the interactions between the different actors of development and international cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses three different cases of assisted marine restoration in Europe to understand how governance and legal aspects enable or constrain marine restoration in practice. The aim of this article is to enhance understanding of the enabling and constraining conditions of the governance of marine ecological restoration. To understand the governance of marine restoration, we use the concepts of governance arrangement and institutionalization. A marine restoration governance arrangement consists of different coalitions of public and private actors, who—through their different ways of conceptualizing and understanding the problem (discourses)—try to influence and design the marine restoration activities and initiatives, the managing of often shared, limited resources, and defining rules of the game (on different levels). Institutionalization refers to the production and reproduction of governance arrangements. This article gives insight in the governance arrangements of three cases: artificial habitat as in the Rigs‐to‐Reefs debate, in the context of North Sea oil and gas decommissioning, and restoration of key sedimentary and hard natural habitats of the fan mussel (Pinna nobilis) and red coral (Corallium rubrum) cases in the Mediterranean. The analysis shows how discourses shape the arrangements that currently govern the decommissioning of obsolete oil and gas structures in the North Sea, and the protection and management of two emblematic and endangered species in the Mediterranean. Based on the analysis we formulated enabling and constraining conditions for the institutionalization of "active restoration" governance arrangements, resulting in recommendations for how to strengthen restoration in policies and legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Understanding governance arrangements contributes to improving stakeholder engagement. • Decision-making mechanisms behind arrangements are examined within a National Park. • Four arrangements are identified based on stakeholders' responsibility and influence. • Formal and informal mechanisms are supportive in upholding participation. • Our framework guides participation delineation for enhancing inclusive conservation. The active participation of local stakeholders in governing protected areas is increasingly recognized in biodiversity conservation. While progress has been made in countries to facilitate inclusivity in conservation decision-making, there is limited practical guidance of participatory mechanisms enabling stakeholder engagement. Disentangling formal and informal governance arrangements within protected areas illuminates how stakeholder participation in decision-making is shaped and potentially improved. Here, we provide an analytical framework characterising governance arrangements to examine the formal and informal mechanisms guiding stakeholder participation conservation decision-making in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park (Spain). We conducted 76 semi-structured interviews and field observations with local stakeholders, and reviewed Park policy documents. Our findings reveal governance arrangements are contingent upon stakeholders' responsibility (shared vs. concentrated) and influence (equal vs. unequal), regardless of the (in)formality of decision making. We found four types of arrangements that characterise governance of Sierra de Guadarrama National Park—cooperative, consultative, informative, and prescriptive—and identified the mutually supportive role formal and informal mechanisms play in shaping participation. We argue stakeholders' responsibility and influence are key analytical axes to delineate participatory mechanisms in order to identify challenges and opportunities for more inclusive conservation. Our study provides analytical guidance that could be adapted and scaled up to other protected areas for understanding participation in conservation decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on two national surveys of Japanese faculty members, the purpose of this study is to analyze whether changes had occurred in key aspects of governance arrangements in both national and private universities in Japan from 1992 to 2017. This study focuses on the changing relationships between national universities and the central government and the internal governance and management style at institutional level, due to the application of new public management theory and market mechanisms to universities in Japan. The main findings show: (1) the changing trends of governance arrangements in Japanese universities did not seem to be more managerially-oriented and centralized in general between 1992 and 2017; (2) actual changes did not occur in some aspects of governance arrangements in Japanese universities; (3) changes in governance arrangements in private universities present a sharp contrast to those occurring in national universities. This research has important implications that the current governance patterns in Japanese universities should be improved, and top administrators should provide more competent leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptive management is a structured approach for people who must act despite uncertainty and complexity about what they are managing and the impacts of their actions. It is learning‐by‐doing through deliberate cycles of experimentation, review, and synthesis. However, understanding the processes of learning and how they relate to achieving resource management goals is in its infancy. Reflexive learning—a process of identifying and critically examining assumptions, values, and actions that frame knowledge—is critical to the effectiveness of adaptive management. It involves adaptive feedbacks between stakeholders as they examine assumptions, values, and actions. Adaptive management has been applied to environmental flows because it offers a system for making decisions about tradeoffs. In the Murray Darling Basin (MDB), Australia, adaptive management is applied as a cycle of plan, do, monitor, and learn, facilitated by short‐ and long‐term learning among stakeholders. An alternative conceptualization of adaptive management as an integration of single‐, double‐, and triple‐loop learning across multiple levels of governance is presented. This is applied to environmental flows in the MDB to map adaptive feedbacks of reflexive learning. At the lowest level of governance (Water Resource Planning Area), goals are assessed as Thresholds of Potential Concern related to flow‐ecology responses, which are reviewed every 3–6 years. At the second level of governance (Basin‐States), Water Management Targets are the key goals; reviewed and reframed every 6–10 years. The highest level of governance (the MDB) is concerned with policy targets, with review and reframing over 8–15 years. Feedbacks that generate reflexive learning are complex and require commitment to move through the modes of single‐, double‐, and triple‐loop learning. Effective adaptive management of environmental water requires practitioners to situate themselves within a matrix of information flow across modes of learning, levels of governance, and components of a social‐ecological system, where reflexive learning drives the achievement of management goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on transboundary issues contributes to highlighting how new governance modes can emerge from increasing interdependence and complexity in public policies. This article analyzes food waste as a transboundary issue that cuts across different policy subsystems (PSs), intersects multiple levels of government, and calls into question consolidated policy making for new modes of governance. The analytical framework provides a multidimensional approach and a new typology of governance arrangements to be used in empirical research. Evidence from an Italian case study and an empirical investigation of 20 regional food waste programs shows that regions can adopt different driving ideas and can activate a variety of governance arrangements and differentiated, as well as viable, modes of integration between consolidated PSs. The article argues that different tool mixes combined with different levels of governance complexity may lead to a variety of governance arrangements and a differentiated likelihood of policy integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on climate adaptation has so far conceptualized it as a domestic issue, to be governed somewhere between the local and the national scale. By contrast, scholars have shown little interest in exploring the case of cross-boundary adaptation spillovers, where adaptation by one country affects other countries. Two decades of the economic literature on climate mitigation may contribute to bridge this research gap because the problem structure of climate mitigation resembles that of adaptation with cross-boundary spillovers. With this in mind, we ask the following research question: Are there lessons to be learned by applying a mitigation perspective to the governance of adaptation with cross-boundary spillovers? After reviewing the relevant adaptation and mitigation literature, the paper applies mitigation insights to an adaptation case with cross-boundary spillovers: climate change-induced eutrophication in the Baltic Sea. Insights on coalition structures, side-payments, issue-linkage, and trade sanctions provide novel perspectives on the governance structures in place. To improve cooperation on providing adaptation as a public good, smaller regional governance arrangements could be more effective, European subsidies for pollution control might be redirected, and progress on eutrophication could be made a precondition for cooperation on other areas. These perspectives depart both from the way the Baltic Sea eutrophication problem is addressed at present, and from the way public goods are addressed in the adaptation literature. They show that some lessons can indeed be learned, calling for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the discourses and practices of central and local governments, as related to the issues of urban governance and diversity, and the emergence of new governance arrangements in different fields of Istanbul's diversity. The paper claims that current diversity discourses and policies in Turkey are being increasingly used as a rhetorical device to promote the economic development of the city, and to circumvent the different demands of people of diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. In such processes of politicising diversity, governance initiatives undertake an important mission in coming up with pragmatic and non-discriminatory solutions to diversity-related issues. Through an examination of recent changes in the diversity policies of Istanbul and the emerging governance arrangements, this paper uncovers the conflicts and the mismatches that exist between the highly politicised discourses, policies and practices, and explores how different types of governance arrangements bring new arenas of expression to the diverse groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The formation of citizen initiatives remains an unguided and unpredictable process. • Citizens are open to becoming involved in natural hazard management. • Initiatives compensate for perceived injustice and institutional gaps. • Existing social and personal capabilities support formation of initiatives. • Initiatives may trigger reorientation in power sharing. Abstract In the face of increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events due to climate change, merely top-down governance approaches are increasingly found inadequate and ineffective. Recent climate change adaptation policy strives to promote bottom-up, citizen-driven initiatives to improve local resilience. How and under what conditions citizens may engage in collective action remains unclear, however. We employ a mixed-methods approach in Eastern Tyrol, Austria, combining stakeholder workshops with a survey of 216 citizens at risk. Results show that bottom-up citizen initiatives can provide multiple benefits, such as increasing risk awareness and local adaptive capacities. While citizens are open-minded to assuming a broad range of activities and responsibilities, local stakeholders in natural hazard management prefer to limit civic engagement to support roles, mostly during recovery from a natural hazard event. Citizen initiatives tend to emerge in communities with weak institutional capital. This may lead to conflicts with existing institutions over allocation of competences and power. Contrastingly, social and human forms of capital support the formation of initiatives; however, low willingness of citizens to assume leadership positions may be a bottleneck for sustained initiatives. Public administration and emergency organisations should address current institutional barriers. They should empower and allow citizens to act autonomously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning and implementation of regional climate change adaptation requires new, integrated governance arrangements that often involve public and private actors. Although entrepreneurship is widely considered an important part of such arrangements, little is known about the conditions that enable it, and its actual role is under-researched. Through an in-depth case study of an ecosystem-based adaptation project in the Netherlands, we have analyzed how the variegated actors in a governance network shape six conditions for entrepreneurial success, established in the entrepreneurship literature. Through a framing analysis, we found that all six conditions, i.e., prior career experience, altruistic motivations, financial motives, social networks, financial capital availability, and policies and regulations, were the object of constant negotiations. Their salience varied during the project as a result of variegated framing practices. In the early stages, issue, identity, and relationship frames were used to create a network of people with a range of relevant experience, connected by altruistic motivations. However, as the project progressed, distrust frames and different spatial- and temporal-scale frames created tensions between public and private actors. Accordingly, process frames, financial motivations, and capital availability became increasingly salient, reflecting the need to consolidate rules, roles, and responsibilities. The findings suggest that approaches to climate change adaptation imply ongoing struggles over the conditions that enable entrepreneurial success. We thereby add an important new dimension to the study of adaptation governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Have institutional reforms been successful in reducing persistent gender gaps in economic and political participation? This paper argues that, at the roots of current gender inequalities, there are traditional patriarchal social structures in which power is unequally distributed, with men traditionally holding authority over women. The power imbalance is manifested in governance arrangements, of which we consider discriminatory formal laws and informal normative systems that perpetuate gender inequality. We review the evidence on the effectiveness of reforms addressing gender inequality and applied via formal law changes. Given the possibility of endogeneity issues as reforms may have been adopted in countries where attitudes toward women had already been improving, we focus on micro-empirical studies that tackle this challenge. The evidence suggests that some reforms have been successful in reducing inequalities. Power and norms can shift and sometimes temporary interventions can deliver long-term results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Sectoral coordination in urban infrastructure development and service provision plays an important role in determining the urban economic and physical development and has indispensable role in the livelihood of urban dwellers, efficiency and effectiveness of service providers and development of any country. However, Ethiopian cities/town administrations and policy makers pay meagre attention to the interdependencies among infrastructure systems, the urban functions to be served and to the sustainability of the facilities in their strategy and urban development policy. This article looks into the process of urban infrastructure development and service provision in the Addis Ababa to identify the root causes for the poor level of inter sectoral coordination among infrastructure sectors of Addis Ababa. In doing so, the study focus on the four main infrastructure sectors of Addis Ababa; Water and sewerage, Electricity, Telecommunication, and Road sectors. Based on the overall analysis and results of the study, it is concluded that the current governance arrangements in terms of institutional arrangement, financial arrangements and regulatory frameworks were found to be less effective and unsuitable for a multi actor system, in this case, coordination among interdependent infrastructure sectors of Addis Ababa. These factors; institutional, regulatory and financial arrangements, were found to have strong relationships and significant influence on the process of infrastructure development and service provision as well as level of inter-sectoral coordination indicating an urge and need for the current governance arrangement to be made more effective and compatible for the existing infrastructure needs and requirements. Highlights • Incompatibilities in institutional arrangements affect sectoral coordination. • Weak regulatory frameworks and enforcements weaken sectoral coordination. • Differences in financial arrangements create inconsistencies in plans of sectors. • Poor communication is the most critical factor for poor coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency food poverty relief is one of the possible entry points to understanding food poverty in affluent societies, whereas the visibility of food poverty relief initiatives has evolved, together with large-scale food recovery organizations and networks aiming at reducing and valorising surplus in food systems. There is a substantial diversity of actors and resources involved, resulting in differently shaped initiatives and programs. It can be described as a continuum encompassing third sector initiatives, large and small businesses, and institutional intervention programs: by bringing together institutions, companies, organisations and civil society, public-private food assistance addresses food poverty in a way that is not viable by any of these actors alone and by adopting context specific governance arrangements. This paper contributes to this debate with the analysis of governance relations in food assistance initiatives across different European countries (Italy, The Netherlands and Ireland). By approaching food assistance from a systems perspective, we further the understanding of these initiatives and their modes of governance. The case studies offer a mapping of food assistance by identifying functions and outcomes, actors and resources involved, and the links the initiatives have to those elements, thus highlighting where collaborative food poverty reduction takes place that goes beyond traditional boundaries. Food assistance initiatives are a civil initiated response shaped by and complementing the social welfare and food systems in which they are embedded. The interpretation of food assistance functions leads to challenging the boundaries of food assistance and potentially triggering innovative approaches to improving food and nutrition security. Discussions show that while they have managed to find innovative and collaborative governance solutions to address the very immediate issues rather effectively, they do not negate the need for food system transformation to address the ultimate reasons for food poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Formal and traditional governance arrangements are interwoven in rice farming systems. • Governance arrangements influence adaptive decision-making in rice farming. • Hydro-climatic information can improve adaptive decision-making in rice farming systems. Abstract Climate variability has consequences on water availability in rice farming systems. In Ghana, rice farmers in the Northern Savannah are amongst the most vulnerable to long periods of drought and erratic rainfall conditions. Within the Kumbungu district, farmers engaged in both rain-fed and irrigated rice farming are no exception. Coping with uncertain water availability conditions requires adaptive decision-making for sustained productivity in rice cropping. From an adaptive governance perspective, the extent to which formal and traditional governance arrangements enable adaptive decisions amongst rice farmers remains a key question. Using an exploratory research design, the study investigates three key questions; what water-dependent decisions rice farmers take and how these are adaptive to changing water availability conditions; what formal and informal governance arrangements rice cropping decisions are embedded in; and how existing governance arrangements enable or constrain adaptive decision-making. Rice farmers in twelve communities around the Bontanga Irrigation Scheme in the Kumbungu District in the Northern region were engaged through individual interviews and focus group discussions. The study reveals that farmers take six major water-dependent decisions throughout the cropping season; decision to or not to plant rice, land preparation, planting, weed control, fertilizer application and harvesting. Farmer decisions are most adaptive to water availability conditions during planting and fertilizer application. Both formal and traditional governance arrangements influence the extent to which farmers are able to adapt to changes in water availability conditions. The paper also reflects on the potential of hydro-climatic information and the place of Environmental Virtual Observatories (EVOs) in adaptive governance and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Floodplain areas across the world have always played an attractive role for residential and non-residential developments. The Alpine regions have a strong pressure to develop new residential and non-residential buildings in hazard areas due to lack of other areas suitable for development. Consequently, the number of elements at risk and vulnerability to flood hazards increased. In order to reduce the vulnerability, the focus of mitigation flood hazards was for decades on structural engineering measures with the problem of spatial misfits between the threat and management strategy. Since the late 1990s/early 2000s, Austrian policy makers have been trying to overcome this spatial misfit with the implementation of an inter-local co-operation approach with the use of so-called ‘new spatial planning’ (Heley, 2013) in the planning process. Therefore, the paper examines what the actors and stakeholders are doing in practice and how the concept of fuzziness helps. Although a partnership approach may be seen as a promising solution, in practice there are many limitations and barriers in establishing these collaborations and making them effective (especially in the long term). Rhetoric may not be matched by reality and a ‘partnership’ agenda may bring more problems (i.e. high transactions costs, high risk of failure, uncertainty in the long term) than it solves.

Regulatory, commercial and governance arrangements form an integral part of any power system. They ensure that the underlying physical system fulfils the critical public function of electricity supply within agreed social and environmental constraints. If either the physical system or societal expectations change, the regulatory, commercial and institutional framework will need to adapt in response. This is necessary to ensure continued good outcomes for consumers at a reasonable cost. Power systems in many countries are going through rapid and substantial change, as a result of the twin pressures of decarbonisation and technological innovation. The power system is moving from one dominated by large-scale, transmission-connected, flexible thermal power stations serving passive demand, to an integrated smart system connecting increasingly distributed and intermittent energy resources integrated with an active demand side. As a result, there is a need for far-reaching reforms of institutions, charging arrangements, market structures and regulations. Fundamental notions, such as security of supply and the universal service obligation need to be revisited. This is a challenge for policy makers and regulators wherever these changes are taking place.

Conventional piped drainage systems are currently being challenged by climate change and urbanization, leading to pluvial flooding, with negative consequences for people's properties and lives. Sustainable stormwater management has been suggested as an alternative, but implementation of its infrastructures is often limited to demonstration zones. Governance factors are among the main reasons for the slow pace. A literature review analyzing 44 peer-reviewed papers was conducted to examine the challenges from a governance perspective. The challenges identified were summarized based on actors, resources, rules of the game, and discourses. Challenges such as unclear leadership and responsibilities, lack of funding, lack of cost data on sustainable stormwater management solutions, lack of space and knowledge, lack of uniform guidelines, and lack of stakeholder participation were found to be the most prominent reasons. Suggested solutions to overcoming these challenges include e.g., researchers acting as knowledge brokers, the involvement of social capital among local stakeholders, re-using vacant land, establishing uniform guidelines, and increasing market incentives to engage stakeholders. The governance structures of stormwater management were categorized as hierarchical, closed and open co-governance arrangements, while open co-governance arrangement was suggested as a useful governance structure. The difference is that the latter structure engages stakeholders, which is of benefits to increased sustainable stormwater management implementation. More research on social-economical aspects is suggested. These findings can improve understanding among decision makers and other relevant actors of challenges related to implementing sustainable stormwater management as a primary solution to the current climate and urbanization challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although policymakers and scientists are increasingly embracing the food system perspective, it has been poorly reflected in institutional terms. We aim to fill this gap by addressing the question as to what forms of governance are most appropriate to govern food systems in a more holistic way. The article presents a diagnostic framework consisting of five principles: 1) system-based problem framing to deal with interlinked issues, drivers and feedback loops; 2) connectivity across boundaries to span siloed governance structures and include non-state actors; 3) adaptability to flexibly respond to inherent uncertainties and volatility; 4) inclusiveness to facilitate support and legitimacy; and 5) transformative capacity to overcome path dependencies and create adequate conditions to foster structural change. This framework is used to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of three food governance arrangements in South Africa, each of which deliberately aimed to embrace a holistic perspective. Although promising on paper, the outcomes are disappointing because of a reversion to a technical onedimensional problem framing during the implementation, the dominance of single departments, the limited attention to monitoring and flexible responses and the exclusion of those most affected by food insecurity. We conclude that the tensions between the ambitious objectives of the arrangements and the institutional constraints of implementing them can persist because of inadequate resources to facilitate transformative change. Finally, we propose an agenda to further elaborate the framework and improve its practical usefulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning and implementation of regional climate change adaptation requires new, integrated governance arrangements that often involve public and private actors. Although entrepreneurship is widely considered an important part of such arrangements, little is known about the conditions that enable it, and its actual role is under-researched. Through an in-depth case study of an ecosystem-based adaptation project in the Netherlands, we have analyzed how the variegated actors in a governance network shape six conditions for entrepreneurial success, established in the entrepreneurship literature. Through a framing analysis, we found that all six conditions, i.e., prior career experience, altruistic motivations, financial motives, social networks, financial capital availability, and policies and regulations, were the object of constant negotiations. Their salience varied during the project as a result of variegated framing practices. In the early stages, issue, identity, and relationship frames were used to create a network of people with a range of relevant experience, connected by altruistic motivations. However, as the project progressed, distrust frames and different spatial- and temporal-scale frames created tensions between public and private actors. Accordingly, process frames, financial motivations, and capital availability became increasingly salient, reflecting the need to consolidate rules, roles, and responsibilities. The findings suggest that approaches to climate change adaptation imply ongoing struggles over the conditions that enable entrepreneurial success. We thereby add an important new dimension to the study of adaptation governance.

Floodplain areas across the world have always played an attractive role for residential and non-residential developments. The Alpine regions have a strong pressure to develop new residential and non-residential buildings in hazard areas due to lack of other areas suitable for development. Consequently, the number of elements at risk and vulnerability to flood hazards increased. In order to reduce the vulnerability, the focus of mitigation flood hazards was for decades on structural engineering measures with the problem of spatial misfits between the threat and management strategy. Since the late 1990s/early 2000s, Austrian policy makers have been trying to overcome this spatial misfit with the implementation of an inter-local co-operation approach with the use of so-called ‘new spatial planning’ (Heley, 2013) in the planning process. Therefore, the paper examines what the actors and stakeholders are doing in practice and how the concept of fuzziness helps. Although a partnership approach may be seen as a promising solution, in practice there are many limitations and barriers in establishing these collaborations and making them effective (especially in the long term). Rhetoric may not be matched by reality and a ‘partnership’ agenda may bring more problems (i.e. high transactions costs, high risk of failure, uncertainty in the long term) than it solves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governance continues to be a challenge in the management and conservation of natural resources. It is difficult to strategically address governance challenges without understanding the dynamics, capacities, and knowledge application of institutions within such governance systems. This article examines the use of Governance Systems Analysis (GSA) to compare, evaluate, and benchmark governance arrangements for regional natural resource management (NRM) planning. It is applied in two Australian regional NRM case studies in Cape York and the Wet Tropics. Our analysis of governance arrangements for NRM planning in the two regions finds that while they are structurally and functionally similar, they have different capacities for decision making about planning. The article concludes with a discussion of the usefulness and implications of using the GSA as an evaluative framework to analyze governance in regional NRM planning systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of Corridor VII for tourism development in spatial planning and sector planning for tourism has been presented. The key tourism assets, primarily Danube and natural and cultural heritage assets along its coastal area are identified. Based on the FAS methodology (UNWTO) the attractiveness of identified key tourism assets is evaluated. The results of this evaluation indicate there is still more factors than attractors, the least developed are the man-made attractors, while the natural attractors are underdeveloped. Based on identified tourism assets and their attractiveness the differentiation of Danube and its coastal area into three highly valuable zones are proposed. Bearing in mind that potential tourism attractiveness of identified factors and attractors has not yet been realized, necessary actions for activating and sustainable development of three proposed tourism zones are suggested. Therefore the criteria for nautical infrastructure prioritization, as well as criteria for urban and rural tourism centers differentiation at Danube coastal area are defined. The paper indicates the priority actions for sustainable tourism development, namely the upgrading of tourist presentation and interpretation in order to achieve the potential attractiveness of tourism assets, supported with their better accessibility, as well as development of tourism products, integration and diversification of tourism offer at Danube and along its coastal area. One of the key problems for achieving sustainable tourism development are insufficient institutional arrangements that need to be changed and improved for Danube primary tourism destination management in Serbia.

Adaptive co-management and learning are paramount for integrated flood risk management. Relevant literature focuses on adaptation at the level of physical and societal systems. The level of projects and programmes is largely overlooked, but they comprise interventions that adapt our physical systems and they provide opportunities for learning to contribute to transitions of societal systems. This paper aims to increase understanding on how learning takes place and can be stimulated within a programme. The mixed-method case study of Room for the River, a €2.3 billion programme for flood risk management, shows that a programme can be organised using various governance arrangements to stimulate learning and be a means for adaptive co-management to deliver upon environmental objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although not a recent phenomenon, megaproject building is currently enjoying renewed popularity in large cities across the world. Policy-makers are undertaking major investments in the form of large-scale urban development projects to position their metropolitan cities on a global scale and to scale-up urban infrastructure to meet basic needs of housing and transportation. The aim of this special issue, of which this article is the introduction, is to examine this trend, with a focus on four cities: Cape Town, Durban, Delhi, and Lima. On the basis of empirical case material, the articles analyse the challenges that megaprojects throw up for urban sustainability and discuss the peculiar issues facing cities characterized by extreme social inequalities, limited mobilisation of community groups and growing pressure on governments to implement neoliberal urban development policies. They illustrate how institutional contexts and specific policy instruments in conjunction with territorially grounded social dynamics give rise to distinct patterns of megaproject development. The articles engage critically with recent literature that has postulated the emergence of a new paradigm of megaproject building. The research is an outcome of work conducted in the framework of the “Chance2Sustain” project, funded under the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]