Abstract
Recent transitions in the governance of urban stormwater, specifically developments that leverage the environmental and social benefits of green infrastructure (GI) including infiltration and neighborhood stabilization, often require capacities beyond those of any single municipal- or regional-scale organization. In many cities, transitions toward green stormwater infrastructure have been shepherded by networks of individuals spanning a diversity of organizations from governments to NGOs. These networks are often informal, that is, not established by legal mandate, governing authority, or formal agreement, and are often striking for their lack of formal hierarchy or formal leadership. Previous scholarship has revealed the importance of leadership in the development and efficacy of these multiorganizational, cross-sector environmental governance networks, but research has yet to empirically investigate and characterize informal network leaders within the context of GI for stormwater mitigation. To address this gap, we designed and administered a social network analysis (SNA) survey to individuals in a regional network of GI stormwater management professionals in and around Cleveland, Ohio USA. We collected network data on individual relationships, including collaboration and trust, and tested the impact of these relationships on peer-recognition of leaders in the GI network. Our findings suggest that network size, frequency of collaboration, and individual position within the network—specifically, betweenness centrality and openness—defined and likely supported leaders in the stormwater governance network. Leaders in this non-hierarchical, multi-institution context were more likely to be women and brokerage roles within the network benefitted women, not men, which contrasts with previous findings from research on single-organization and corporate networks. The implications of this research suggest that informal environmental governance networks, such as the GI network investigated, differ substantially from the generally more hierarchical networks of organizations. This finding is useful for municipalities and regional authorities grappling with complex environmental challenges, including transitions in strategies to manage excess stormwater for the protection of municipal drinking water sources and urban freshwater ecosystems.
Highlights
A growing body of scholarship on environmental governance has identified charismatic leaders with diverse skill sets and high social and political capital as an essential ingredient for transitioning informal networks of governance actors past intractable conflict and toward governance approaches that recognize myriad competing human values, the inherent uncertainty of global change, and the complexity of social-ecological systems [1,2,3,4]
Previous research has demonstrated that informal, cross-sector networks are critical to successfully addressing complex environmental governance challenges such as those posed by urban stormwater, we know very little about the leaders that guide these networks [7]
We made a conscious methodological choice not to use the word “leader” in an attempt to avoid personal biases associated with a leadership prototype, and as a result, we identified the potentially greater role that network position plays fostering the leaders in informal environmental governance networks and in amplifying the critical skills and competencies of these emerging leaders
Summary
A growing body of scholarship on environmental governance has identified charismatic leaders with diverse skill sets and high social and political capital as an essential ingredient for transitioning informal networks of governance actors past intractable conflict and toward governance approaches that recognize myriad competing human values, the inherent uncertainty of global change, and the complexity of social-ecological systems [1,2,3,4]. The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD), which has a service area that includes the city of Cleveland, is under a court-enforced consent decree which requires that a percentage of stormwater abatement is achieved via GI approaches [14], an informal network of GI professionals has emerged outside of this legal framework to increase knowledge, implementation, and acceptance of GI strategies for stormwater management in the region [10,15] We asked this informal network of GI professionals who they identified as leaders critical for the success of GI projects and examined: (1) personal characteristics of these leaders, including gender, role, and organizational affiliation; (2) the characteristics of leaders’ individual networks; and (3) how specific network characteristics differentially affect individuals’ likelihood of leadership nomination by their peers. The resulting categories were: Community NGO, Environmental NGO/Land Trust, Federal Government, Local Government/Regional Authority, and University/Contractor
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