Learning in collaborative Nature-Based Solutions in the city of Rotterdam

Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been acknowledged as a promising new avenue for building sustainable, healthy and inclusive cities. NBS interventions have the potential to contribute to climate resilience, sustainable urban water management, urban biodiversity, improved air quality, urban regeneration among other. At the same time, collaboration governance and learning are put forward as highly important for such projects. However, empirical research on this topic is limited. Moreover, learning, although put forward as a valuable outcome of collaborative governance, has not sufficiently been researched as such. This thesis contributes to these three bodies of literature by exploring how different conditions of collaborative governance impact learning in such projects. By using Ansell & Gash’s prominent framework for collaborative governance, the research looks into how trust building, face-to-face communication, facilitative leadership and commitment to the process impact cognitive, normative and relation learning. Additionally, stakeholder diversity was also analysed as an important condition of the collaborative process. The study adapted a qualitative research strategy and a multiple case study design. Three collaborative nature-based solutions projects in the city of Rotterdam were selected for this purpose. Rotterdam is a particularly well-suited city for this research because of the high attention that has been given to urban sustainability, but also collaboration with citizens. Data was predominantly collected through semi-structured interviews. The results showed that all five conditions have a positive impact on learning. Face-to-face communication and commitment were the two conditions which had a strong positive impact on all types of learning. Trust building was important for relational and normative learning but was not essential for cognitive learning. Facilitative leadership played an important role, especially through bringing different actors together and stimulating knowledge and idea exchange. Conflict mediation – another facilitative leadership activity did not prove to be of high relevance, contrary to what theory suggested. Finally, diversity had a positive impact on cognitive learning. Its potential negative effect on relational and normative learning were countered by the effect of trust building, commitment and face-to-face communication.