Pro-Environmental Municipal Governance Developments in Latvia: Sustainability and Integration Principles in the Practice

Abstract

Studies being presented here have been done as initial part of wider research-and-developemnt (R&D) programme, aiming to investigate preconditions and all instruments set necessary for environmental governance adequate integration into legally required societal (sustainable) development governance/planning framework and municipal governance practice. This have been done studying governance by its triple complementary dimensions of governance content, governance process and governance stakeholders and approaching municipality as a complex and interactive socio-ecological system. Accordingly, pilot investigations have been done as various thematical case studies in preselected model municipalities – six studies/pilot studies, based on the integrated case study research methodology, including and complementary applying document studies, interviews, surveys, observations and focus groups. Existing development planning and other instruments combined with municipal planning capacities are neither sufficient nor effective, and, since step-wise developmental process for sustainability principle integration seems to be not perspective as quite similar also with integration principle as for complex planning process and also as for thematical meaning of integrations of environmental governance into develoment one. Since environmental sector planning documents are not mandatory anymore at local municipalities, environmental sector planning process and content in the development planning practice is often limited, but few ad hoc available and used formal environmental planning instruments are neither sufficient or used just temporaly. There is to be seen necessity to develop innovative methodologies and tools as done during this research-and-development project.

Environmental investment governance in Latvia: planning process and decision-making framework development

“…Investments of the EU funds and structural funds, namely, investments of the Cohesion Fund and the European Regional and Development Fund in 2014-2020 and 2021-2027 programming periods in Latvia are analysed in this article. The environmental investment governance process is analysed applying management (policy/planning) process cycle model, particularly, using "5P stages" environmental governance process cycle model (Ernsteins, et al, 2017), tested for long in previous environmental, coastal, climate change, communication etc. governance studies.…”

“…Planning capacity and efficiency is also closely linked to setting up an appropriate institutional framework and cooperation between different sectors (Baltina and Muravska, 2017). This relates to the importance of stakeholder involvement from all five stakeholder groups (state institutions, residents, municipalities, enterprises, as well as mediators) to ensure adaptive environmental governance (Karpouzoglou et al, 2016;Ernsteins et al, 2017). This includes the organizational aspects of the interactions and participatory principles according to criterions of efficiency and effectiveness.…”

“…It is elaborated based on problem analysis, detected development gaps and needs (including the ones identified in the sectoral planning documents), and the priorities set. This also requires assessing the need for the use of whole set of environmental governance instruments, i.e., policy and legislative, planning, economic and financial, institutional, and administrative, infrastructure as well as communication (Ernsteins, et al, 2014;Ernsteins, et al, 2017) to guide the development of the field into desired direction. Once the appropriate instruments have been identified, specific proposals for supported actions are prepared, also evaluating which of potential support actions that will have the greatest impact of the identified sectorial and investment objectives and goals.…”

Municipal coastal governance system development: Triple governance dimensions principle

“…Within the present study the coastal governance in the target municipality was assessed through three basic environmental governance dimensions: (1) Coastal governance sectors (resources); (2) Coastal governance segments (stakeholders); (3) Coastal governance process and instruments (Ernsteins, 2017c).…”

Municipal integrated coastal governance approach: complimentary disciplinary instruments and collaboration pre-conditions

“…Further on, observation studies were organized along the coast approaching main institutional, infrastructure and utilities and services management related territories, objects. To complement mentioned studies done, there were realized 5 semi-structured interviews with experts on ICM in Latvia in general and Jurmala case especially, but the main emphasis was laid on altogether 37 deep semi-structured interviews being conducted with representatives of all main local interest groups and locally-based national/regional stakeholders, which were grouped and studied also by five governance segments (Ernsteins et al, 2017a), including:…”