Towards an international peer learning hub on sustainability governance

Executive summary – too long, didn’t read?

When talking about the future of cities, there is one thing that is agreed upon by most – to achieve the transformation of our cities, we also need a transformative management system. We call this “Sustainability governance”. It takes the SDGs as the framework for our ambitions and proposes a system of processes and relationships that would help us build consensus, develop policies, and facilitate skills and enthusiasm to achieve our goals. Rethinking governance is not something that one city can do alone. This is why we are calling out to any interested parties – cities, academia, think tanks, experts etc. – to join forces and work together in elaborating the framework for how we govern the cities of the 21st century.

Background – where does the need arise from?

All the EU countries have endorsed the UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, and the EU Green Deal is considered as one of the cornerstones of the EU sustainability strategy. Also – the EU Urban Agenda recognises the crucial role of cities in achieving the SDGs. (And the Commission’s budget for 2021-2027 allocates a considerable amount to green investments and projects.)

All the SDGs include targets and indicators that have direct linkages with the responsibilities of cities. The OECD estimates that 65% of the 2030 Agenda targets can only be reached with the proper engagement of and coordination with local and regional governments, and various international and national strategies are urging regional and local governments to set ambitious sustainability and climate goals, yet the support to actually deliver on these goals is often fragmented and sectoral, failing to provide concrete tools and mechanisms to achieve policy coherence for sustainable development within and between government levels.

There is perhaps no other context in which transformations are as visible and necessary as in urban areas. With over 50 % of the world’s population located in cities (and over 70% in Europe), and with ecological footprints of urban areas extending far beyond the physical boundaries of cities, urban transformations are considered a prime focus for sustainability. This has not the least been demonstrated by the adoption of SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities – at the heart of the 2030 Agenda.

Issue to be tackled – what would improve?

The SDSN SDG Index for European Cities (2019) shows that no European capital city or large metropolitan area has yet fully achieved the SDGs.  Nordic European cities – Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen – are closest to the SDG targets but still face challenges in achieving the SDGs. What is more, EU’s overall progress on the SDGs has stalled since 2020 (SDSN, 2022). And this is despite the fact that the goals set with SDGs have actually been set by EU, its member states and/or by its cities in their respective policy documents in one way or another, long before the adoption of SDGs by UN. So there has been ample time for European governments and cities to work towards the goals. Yet, as Stockholm+50 [1] report states: “The ‘action gap’ is significant. We do not have a gap in policies and aspirations, rather in actions. Since 1972, only around one tenth‑ of the hundreds of global environment and sustainable development targets agreed by countries have been achieved or seen significant progress; it is not enough. The knowledge and the means of solving our problems are known and available; implementation is missing”.

This is also echoed by an EU Parliament ordered study from 2019 about the implementation of SDGs in EU member states: “The SDGs are a global agenda that sets a vision with goals and targets for the world in 2030. It is not very explicit about its theory of change and does not state how these goals should be achieved.”

This helps to understand why there is such an emphasize on sustainability now, although sustainability has been addressed by governments for years if not decades – despite having acted, we have not accomplished our goals. And we are running out of time.

There are two reasons for not having achieved the goals. First, the actions have not been sufficient and second (maybe even more important) – in parallel with the sustainable we have been continuing to do the “unsustainable”. As important as what we do, is what we don’t do, or in other words – what we should not do. We could argue that the issue lies not so much in the quality of planning but the quality of execution. There is an “execution gap” – a gap between what we have stated that we want to achieve vs. the actions that we are taking. In a recent report to the Club of Rome called “Earth for All” [2], the insufficiency of actions taken in the last 50 years with regards to sustainability is depicted in a future scenario called “Too little Too late”. The scenario is built on the assumption that the world’s economic system keeps operating in the same way as it has done for the past 50 years, in other words providing mainly incremental improvements to transformations like clean energy, social equality and sustainable food systems. As the title of the scenario indicates, continuing on the current path will not be enough to achieve the SDGs and transform our world in the next decades.

This is where we come to the topic of governance. Good governance, e.g., sustainability governance needs to put more focus on the relationship between the “what” (we want to achieve) and the “how” (do we achieve it). We claim that current governance frameworks are not sufficient to tackle this relationship when it comes to the most problematic issues. It is fine for providing clean water, making public transport go and schools function. It is fine for municipal things. It is fine even for promoting economic growth. But it is not enough to tackle so-called “wicked problems” involving environmental issues, social division and adapting to crises effectively – things that arise beyond what we usually call municipal, but what we must deal with nevertheless. The building blocks of good governance are (in many cases) already there – we have a democratic system (although it must not be taken for granted), we know how strategic planning and budgeting works, we have tried our hand in stakeholder engagement and fostering innovation, we are enabling civil servants to be more skilled, etc. Yet making these building blocks work together in a holistic way to achieve the best possible results does not work ideally.

[1] https://www.stockholm50.report/summary-for-policymakers.pdf

[2] https://www.earth4all.life/book

The scope of work – what’s (sustainability) governance?

To unravel what our emergent sustainability governance framework is, and especially what is the interplay between sustainability and governance, it helps to look at the theoretical concepts of sustainability and governance. First, sustainability refers to sustainable development as first defined by Brundtland Commission in 1987: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  It is widely recognized that sustainable development is based on three pillars – environmental, social and economic sustainability. With the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, five core dimensions – the ”5 Ps” – add to this picture by introducing Partnerships and Peace alongside People, Planet and Prosperity to depict sustainable development. To achieve sustainability, no single dimension can be prioritized on the cost of another – they are interdependent, just like the SDGs are interconnected and form an “indivisible whole”. There is a plethora of approaches as to how to describe these dimensions more precisely, but with the adoption of the SDGs by UN member states in 2015, we can’t go wrong if we take SDG-s as the most recognized and holistic approach. As the term “SDGs” implies, sustainability can be described through goals that depict a desirable future state and give a direction towards achieving it. In “sustainability governance”, the SDGs hence give us this framework of goals, targets or directions that our governance framework must work towards.

The term governance is much disputed, especially if we try to put it into the context of “urban”. We like UCL professor Mike Raco’s description[3]: “Urban governance is primarily concerned with the processes through which government is organized and delivered in towns and cities and the relationships between state agencies and civil society—a term that is used to include citizens, communities, private-sector actors, and voluntary organizations.” It helps to better understand this description, if we look at the key questions urban governance deals with as elaborated by prof. Raco:

  • Who is it that makes decisions about the organization and implementation of policy in urban areas?
  • How are these decisions made?
  • Who controls agendas and how?
  • What policymaking processes exist?
  • Which institutions/interests have the power and resources to shape policy agendas?
  • What control do local people and individual citizens have over the way their cities are governed?

The key concept to take from this, is that governance is about processes and relationships – how the organizational structure is created between the stakeholders of civic society and how decisions are made and implemented. Following prof. Meuleman, a broad definition of governance is “how public administration organisations and other stakeholders develop solutions and create opportunities for societal challenges”. Meuleman stresses that governance is all about the “how”, while policy is about “what” we do.

Thus, if sustainability gives us the goals we must adhere to when governing, governance describes the actors, their roles, interaction and decision-making processes to achieve the goals (while also adhering to principles). In essence there is nothing new about it – there have always been goals (and in a lot of cities the goals have been about sustainability long before the adoption of SDGs) and there’s always been a framework for governance (in the last 30 years often including different stakeholders of the civic society in the decision-making processes). So, the question is – why is there still a gap between goals and action and can we fill it with better governance?

[3] Raco, M. Governance, Urban. International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Second Edition), 2020, pages 253-258

The starting point – what will we iterate?

Keeping in mind the definition around processes and relationships provided above, governance for sustainability further means considering a “multi- or cross-sector dimension, a multi-actor dimension and a multi-level dimension” (Meuleman, 2023)[4]. The reason is that tackling “wicked problems” like key transformations for sustainability (e.g. circular economy, food- and energy systems, etc.) cannot be done by focusing on one problem, or level or aspect, of governance at a time – that would mean missing the holistic approach mentioned above.

We believe that cities need specific frameworks to capture how sustainability governance can be conceptualized and understood in order to improve their governance.

Borrowing from Meuleman (2023), who describes governance frameworks as “the totality of instruments, procedures and processes designed to tackle a societal problem”, adapted to the context of the problem, we suggest describing sustainability governance using four pillars: policy development, organizational development, multi-level governance and multi-actor governance (see the Figure).

The policy development pillar is placed on top of the other three in our draft framework, to illustrate that policy development is sometimes seen as conceptually distinct from governance processes; it is more about the “what” than the “how”.

We see this figure primarily as a “sense-making” framework, which helps us analyse the detailed, contextualised governance processes and models in a specific local government context.

 

To define the topics dealt with within the different pillars can be context-dependent. How each city tackles for example policy development and multi-actor governance vary, although common aspects can also be found, such as using the SDGs as a policy development tool, or engaging citizens through participatory processes like people’s assemblies.

Below are some preliminary framing of the scope of each pillar:

Policy Development refers to the question: where do we want to go and how do we get there? Basically, it is the process of setting goals, elaborating actions, carrying out ex-ante impact assessment, budgeting and monitoring. How to set-up a continuous and efficient policy management circle that creates consensus, provides relevant information to decision makers, engages stakeholders and uses best knowledge from both academia, other cities and private sector. It also involves developing capacity to learn from experimenting and piloting initiatives.

Organizational development refers to the questions “what is our purpose” and “who do we have to be” to reach the goals that we have set? This process deals with the development of organizations’ culture and values, human resources, (digital) tools, regulatory frameworks, leadership, both internal and external communication, knowledge transfer etc. Recent crises and fragmentation of society have put the neo-liberal approach to public administrations under serious doubt. The European Commissions’ mission-oriented policy approach is reinforcing the idea of a more capable public administration, that can guide the society towards holistic goals. We argue that this capability requires characteristics that aren’t necessarily considered to be the strengths of public administration – agility, humility and leadership. In addition, every civil servant needs capacity to have normative discussions about sustainability goals, which requires continuous learning and awareness-raising.

Multilevel governance refers to mechanisms that help the alignment and collaboration between different levels of government, from local to regional, national and EU levels. In the context of the SDGs and other global frameworks, the UN and other macro-regional forums can be considered a 5th The questions here relate to how “visible” are our actions in the multi-level governance landscape and how are our interests best promoted?

Multi-actor governance refers to the questions “who creates the city,” “what their role is” and “how do they work together”? It is the process on managing or facilitating partnerships and steering “city ecosystem leadership”, delegating tasks, communicating, co-creating etc. Although municipalities have a central role in managing a city, the city is created by a multitude of stakeholders starting from a single person and going to international organizations. The municipality can facilitate the relationships between these stakeholders, so that best skills, knowledge and resources are brought to the table while ensuring legitimacy of the policy elaboration process.

They could be for example:

Strategic planning

  • Integrating SDGs in urban strategies and reporting
  • Embedding impact assessment into different processes
  • Monitoring of progress towards goals and targets
  • Implementing activity based or phenomena-based budgeting to tackle complex sustainability challenges that span across traditional policy sectors
  • Experimenting with new innovations, embedding a ‘learning through doing’ approach

Organizational development

  • Incorporating values and principles into organizational development
  • Developing new leadership skills to deal with 21st century challenges, including strategic foresight
  • Fostering knowledge transfer
  • Developing capacity for having normative discussions about sustainability goals

Multilevel governance

  • Capacity to engage in multilevel policy dialogue
  • Leveraging on city networks to enhance visibility and city diplomacy

Multi-actor governance

  • Fostering co-creation processes and cross-sector collaboration
  • Building trust through participatory and democratic processes involving citizens and local residents
  • Setting up Public-Private-People Partnership (4P) frameworks Using Voluntary Local Reviews and an engagement and collaborative foresight tool

[4] Meuleman (2023), “A Metagovernance Approach To Multilevel Governance And Vertical Coordination For The SDGs”, p.72 in: Breuer, A., Malerba, D., Srigiri, S., & Balasubramanian, P. (2023). Governing the interlinkages between the SDGs: approaches, opportunities and challenges. (p.72) https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/62308/9781000788822.pdf?sequence=1#page=88

 

Steering governance systems towards sustainability: horizontal principles

The above section outlined the “sense-making” framework for understanding sustainability governance, based on our current understanding. Horizontal principles add to the picture by providing the “behavioural characteristics” behind governance processes, helping to analyse and understand why an action or process worked or not. Horizontal principles are rooted in an organisation’s values and should guide action across its whole governance system.

Together with Demos Helsinki, Tallinn has developed a preliminary set of four horizontal principles for sustainability governance, which are aligned with the organisation’s values (courage, openness, collaboration, goodness):

  1. Directionality: Defining clear long-term priorities and potential risks to guide current decision making and provide collective understanding of what is trying to be achieved.
  2. Experimentalism: Embedding a ‘learning through doing’ approach based on the capacity to change approach when harmful path dependencies, new knowledge, or a lack of knowledge are found. Through this, we learn what does and doesn’t work.
  3. Collaboration: Recognising and orchestrating actions based on the need to involve multiple actors, and understanding of their agencies, capacities, and synergies.
  4. Sincerity: Building legitimacy and trust by corresponding actions to goals, and being honest if they don’t yet correspond.

The horizontal principles should guide action across the full governance system, as illustrated below. They are designed to help make all decision-making compatible with sustainability.

Enacting the principles through Humble governance

Demos Helsinki has further proposed “humble governance” as an iterative process to “enact” horizontal sustainability governance principles in an organization. Starting from “thin consensus” around framework goals, the humble governance stipulates that transformative change takes place through devolved problem solving and peer learning, where the feedback loop and impact of actions are strengthened over time.  This iterative process is illustrated below.

In the case of Tallinn, among many other cities, the broad framework goals are given by the localised SDGs and the long-term strategy. We are currently testing this approach in the context of cross-sectoral policies like guidelines for defining street types in city planning.

Peer learning and co-creation – how could we work together?

As sustainability governance is such an broad topic, covering different aspects of strategic management, it cannot be defined based on one city’s experience. As part of the above framework development, we have been working on mapping some of the most crucial topics that cities are interested in the current moment or want to deal with in near future related to sustainability governance. We are looking to co-create the framework together with partner cities and other networks, like for example Eurocities, ICLEI, Energy Cities, UCLG and CEMR, and others.

As Tallinn is the European Green Capital 2023 we are committed to promoting discussions about new forms of governance. During that time, we work to elaborate longer-term forms of cooperation, including possible financing, but also already tackle actual topics presented by partner cities. In 2023, we already started collaborating with nine other cities through an URBACT network fully dedicated to advancing sustainability governance. This is one example of how we promote peer learning around the topic.

Read more about the work to set up our peer learning initiative here.

If you are interested in working with us, please don’t hesitate to contact us:

 

Triin Sakermaa
Sustainability Governance Advisor, framework and partnerships
Triin.Sakermaa@tallinnlv.ee

 

Stina Heikkilä
Sustainability Governance Advisor, network and peer learning
stina.heikkilä@tallinnlv.ee