Collaborative governance and environmental authority for adaptive flood risk: recreating sustainable coastal cities: Theme 3: pathways towards urban modes that support regenerative sustainability

Abstract

This paper explores the conceptual and practical linkages between climate change governance, diversity of authority and regenerative sustainability. It empirically explains such linkages in the context of adaptive flood risk management in the delta cities of Rotterdam and Hong Kong which are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It addresses three questions: 1) if what is being witnessed is a transition to more inclusive, engaging, empowering, place-sensitive modes of urban climate governance gaining authority to deliver climate policy, how should these transitions be conceptualized and analysed? 2) how do transitions towards collaborative governance and regenerative sustainability and the deployment of authority in these transitions serve manage the risk of flooding in places with different cultural and climatic settings? 3) what do different cases demonstrate in terms of the practical pathways and examples of implementation of regenerative sustainability? Conceptual and empirical understandings are needed to assess whether these new, flexible forms of governance might ultimately challenge state-centred authority in the policy responses to climate change. This paper reveals that new governance systems are diluting, not supplanting, state authority.