Exploring Coordinative Mechanisms for Environmental Governance in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area: An Ecology of Games Framework

Abstract

To solve regional environmental problems, there is a trend of establishing urban agglomerations and formulating cooperative policy institutions in China. The extant studies on policy institutions largely focus on the coordinative mechanisms of multiple actors within one single institution. Only a few studies have tried to understand how different policy institutions are interlinked and mutually affected to influence actors’ decisions and problem resolutions. This article applies a network-based analytical approach and adopts the Ecology of Games Framework to explore how regional environmental governance is coordinated in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. It was found that coordinative mechanisms in regional environmental governance can happen around three elements: policy institutions, policy actors, and policy issues. Policy institutions tend to serve as an umbrella for many diverse and interdependent activities and actors within individual institutions. Additionally, positive externalities emerging between different policy institutions perform as coordinators across institutions. For actors, state-level actors usually play as facilitators of policy institutions while they are not active in participating in policy games in later phases; it is regional actors, particularly from Guangdong, that are active in the operation of policy institutions. For policy issues, they emerge because they are often tied with each other, and some of them play as the common ground for seemly separating policy institutions.

Spatial Pattern Analysis of the Ecosystem Services in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Imagery Based on Deep Learning Method

“…Therefore, interregional cooperation of the multiple cities in the GBA from the perspective of ecological conservation is encouraged. With the growing coordination development of various aspects like economic development, public services, infrastructure construction, and environmental protection in the GBA [37,38], spatial fairness of ecosystem services at the city and local scale should be improved by putting forward multi-city ecological protection and coordinated development policies. Our spatial pattern analysis can provide essential information for further regional development plans without administrative constraints.…”

The Origins of Conflict in Polycentric Governance Systems

“…Young () refers to these interactions as institutional interplay—decisions made in one policy forum can impose positive or negative institutional externalities on other policy forums. One way policy forums are linked is when the same actor participates in two different forums (McGinnis ); the experiences that an actor has in one forum can affect his or her strategies and payoffs in the other forum (Bednar and Page ; Mewhirter and Berardo ; Zhao and Mu ). This interplay can be analyzed from a network perspective—policy forums with many different joint actors are more embedded in the network of institutions that exists in the system.…”

“…The preceding anecdotes illustrate the main question of this article: why do stakeholders perceive different levels of conflict and cooperation in polycentric governance systems? Many public administration, policy, and political science researchers now agree that polycentricity-"many centers of decision making which are formally independent of each other but functionally interdependent" (Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren 1961, 831)-is an inherent feature of most governance systems (Aligica and Tarko 2012;Carlisle and Gruby 2017;McGinnis and Ostrom 2012;Zhou and Mu 2019). Morrison et al (2019, 1) modernize the definition of polycentric governance as comprising "multiple governing authorities at different scales which do not stand in hierarchical relationship to each other but are engaged in self-organization and mutual adjustment."…”

Exploring the Characteristics of Solid Waste Management Policy in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area

“…Additionally, collaborative governance lies at the heart of waste management in GBA. While previous literature has primarily focused on collaborative governance within ecological and environmental governance [26,27] and atmospheric environment management [28,29], research in this field remains scarce. Some researchers have delved into waste management in specific cities within the GBA.…”