Power and Justice in Collaborative Governance for Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) in Cities

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly promoted as strategies for addressing the impacts of climate change and achieving urban adaptation goals. They help cities tackle challenges such as heat stress and flooding while also improving biodiversity and the quality of urban life. The European Commission (2015, p. 24) defines NbS as “solutions inspired and supported by nature (…) that simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits.” Because of this multifunctional character, NbS require collaboration between diverse actors. Although collaboration is widely recognised as essential for successful NbS implementation, little is known about how these NbS governance arrangements are structured and how they function in practice. Additionally, recent research has highlighted issues of justice in NbS. Still, most attention has focused on distributive justice, who benefits and who bears the costs, for instance, in cases of green gentrification. Less attention has been given to procedural justice: who participates, how decisions are taken, whose voices and knowledge are valued and which actors hold influence. These questions matter because the organisation of collaboration in just ways influences both the legitimacy and outcomes of NbS. Collaborative governance frameworks, such as those proposed by Ansell and Gash (2008) and Emerson et al. (2012), acknowledge issues such as power asymmetry and the need for principled engagement among participants. However, justice, particularly procedural and recognition justice, remains less systematically integrated as an analytical dimension. In this study, justice is understood as emerging through the ways power and inclusion are organised within NbS governance arrangements. This study examines how justice is embedded within NbS governance arrangements by analysing how power and inclusion are distributed and negotiated among actors. It distinguishes between two types of governance arrangements, city-wide and project-based (Van Dorsselaer et al., 2025). We study how these function in Ghent, Rotterdam and Tallinn, three cities participating in the JUSTGREEN project. We use document analysis, semi-structured interviews and observations, to investigate how decisions are taken, which actors and forms of knowledge gain influence and which are sidelined or even excluded. Analysing these dynamics through a justice lens deepens understanding of how collaboration unfolds in practice and how power relations shape the governance and outcomes of NbS in cities. The study contributes to collaborative and network governance literature by explicitly integrating questions of justice and power into the analysis of collaborative processes and extending their relevance to urban NbS governance. Ansell, C., & Gash, A. (2007). Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(4), 543–571. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mum032 Emerson, K., Nabatchi, T., & Balogh, S. (2012). An Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 22(1), 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mur011 European Commission (2015). Towards an EU research and innovation policy agenda for nature-based solutions & re-naturing cities: final report of the Horizon 2020 expert group on 'Nature-based solutions and re-naturing cities', Publications Office, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/479582 Van Dorsselaer, E., Voets, J., & Dupont, C. (2025). Implementing Nature‐Based Solutions in Cities: Testing and Refining the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance. Environmental Policy and Governance, 35(4), 761–774. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.70000