Governance Innovations for Nature-based Solutions from Translocal Networks

Environmental governance innovation, especially nature-based solutions (NbS), is gaining scholarly attention over the past years due to issues including urban expansion and climate change. Most existing studies of such innovation focus on national, provincial or single city level, while few explore the translocal interactions among urban agglomeration levels. This paper illustrates the process of emergence and adoption of environmental governance innovations in the context of NbS. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the contributing factors of the innovation processes with particular focus on the role of translocal governance networks that involves the center and local governments, urban agglomeration networks and non-governmental actors.

Event history analysis is used to understand the sources and processes of environmental innovation generation and adoption. Environmental innovation event history is established via obtaining policy documents published on government portals across the country and case reports published by mainstream media from 2011 to 2021. Then, we use the pooled regression model to explain the probability of innovation being generated or adopted to analyze the contributing factors of environmental governance innovation in urban agglomeration. Vertical, horizontal, internal and external interactions are measured and used to explain the processes with other explanatory variables including political factors, economic factors, and other socioeconomic covariates. The following results are expected. First, environmental governance innovations mostly originate from external factors, such as breakthrough of environmental technology and global environmental alliances, and are generated from both central and provincial government. Second, the probability of innovation adoption is positively correlated with interactions across and within urban agglomeration, and the frequencies of vertical, internal and external interactions, and significantly negatively correlated with horizontal interaction factors. Third, economic and educational factors are expected to have the most significant influence on the probability of innovation generation; among social factors, population density could be negatively correlated with the probability of innovation generation. The findings of this study can further optimize relationship between local actors and governance structure to promote environmental governance innovation.