Collaborations across municipalities with common challenges
To overcome challenges with lack of resources, time, or expertise to apply NBS, municipalities with common challenges should utilise existing arenas for collaboration.
Specific Advice
Collaboration across municipal borders on a specific challenge is a way of overcoming barriers for NBS in individual municipalities. This can make more effective use of resources and expertise, helping the municipalities achieve more as a collective than alone. Basing the collaboration on existing networks and structures, such as river basin districts, is often easier and more long-lasting than starting up new networks for NBS.
Looking across municipal borders can be useful when working with nature-based solutions (photo: Caroline G. Enge)
Good to Know
Dedicating one person in a position as coordinator for a specific topic or action can increase effectiveness and communication. This is often challenging for each municipality to finance alone, but with pooled resources it may be possible to hire a person that can dedicate time and focus on the challenge at hand.
Consider if there are existing networks, structures or other commonalities that can be widened to collaborate more on NBS. For example, municipalities may be part of the same river basin district, share a national park, a coastline or similar. These often work with challenges that relate to NBS, such as water quality, climate change adaptation and nature protection.
Having a common plan or strategy for several municipalities may increase accountability, because the municipalities have to answer to the other partner municipalities if they don’t follow up.
With intermunicipal collaboration it can be become more challenging to involve all stakeholders in the process. Taking many different viewpoints and considerations into account may increase the risk of decisions taking long, or that strategies become less specific and “watered down”. Careful planning of stakeholder engagement is therefore especially important.
Even if municipalities share a common resource or area, they don’t necessarily have the same interests in protecting it. For example, municipalities located downstream of a river may have different views and interests than the ones upstream. In such cases, there may be a need for more central coordination through for example legislative measures or funding to support collaboration.
It is important to be mindful of the time and resources of the participating municipalities. For succeeding with collaborations like these, each municipality need to not only have time to attend the meetings, but also to follow through in practice within their municipality.
Context
Municipalities have an important role in solving societal challenges such as climate change adaptation and nature protection locally. However, an often-identified barrier is that especially smaller municipalities lack the necessary resources and knowledge to consider and apply NBS.
Nordic municipalities have many tasks and requirements decided by national authorities and not all have the capacity to prioritize staff and time for measures such as NBS that can be seen as unconventional and more demanding than more familiar measures. Collaborating across the municipal borders can reduce some of these uncertainties and gaps.
Networks for collaboration take time to build and their continuing existence often depends on the engagement of individuals. But municipalities are usually collaborating with their neighbours already. It is therefore recommended to expand existing collaborations and build on common challenges, rather than creating new networks specifically for NBS. This increases the chance that the collaboration continues and is prioritised over time.
Examples and Cases
Nordic examples of collaboration across municipalities with common challenges:
#NORWAY – An intermunicipal plan for biodiversity
The four municipalities Aurskog-Høland, Marker, Aremark and Halden are all part of the river basin Haldenvassdraget in south-east of Norway. They have experienced that strategic intermunicipal collaboration can effectively save time, resources and build competences. Based on existing structures for collaboration within the river basin, the municipalities decided to develop an intermunicipal plan for biodiversity. The idea was that a common plan could ensure that the municipalities implement similar measures and strategies for different species and nature-types. This may improve larger, connected nature areas through a more comprehensive approach than if the municipalities decided on such plans and strategies individually. The municipalities could also save time and resources by developing one common plan instead of four different ones. The plan considers protection of nature, sustainable use of natural resources and recreational aspects, with several aims and strategies related to nature-based solutions. In the development of the plan, the citizens of all the four municipalities were invited to meetings to give their inputs to the plan in the spring of 2024. The plan is not yet finalized and adopted (in November 2024).
- Interkommunal plan for naturmangfold i kommunene langs Haldenvassdraget (Intermunicipal plan for biodiversity in the municipalities along the Halden river)
- Østfold, Norway
- Related policy: Norwegian municipalities are not required to develop separate plans for biodiversity, but they have a key role, and the environmental agency therefore supports the development of such plans.
More information about the intermunicipal plan can be found here:
Draft of the plan for biodiversity: https://www.halden.kommune.no/_f/p1/i7458c2a5-efe4-466f-8431-3a837faca5c4/naturmangfoldsplan.pdf
News article from one of the municipalities: https://www.aurskog-holand.kommune.no/nyheter2/si-din-mening-naturmangfold/
Video: https://youtu.be/FUju-FKeNr8
#DENMARK – A water mangement capacity plan for ten municipalities
Under the headline “ten municipalities – one water course”, the municipalities that are part of the catchment of the Harrestrup river have created a common climate adaptation capacity plan. The Harrestrup river is a heavily regulated, open water course through the western part of the capital area in outer Copenhagen. The river system is a recipient of rainwater from all the municipalities and thereby an important part of the infrastructure for handling the effects of more extreme weather events due to climate change.
The intermunicipal collaboration started in 2014, with the capacity plan for Harrestrup adopted in 2018. The aim is to increase capacity for diverting stormwater and reduce damages from extreme weather events. Since it is more expensive to handle water from the stream in dense urban areas, this provides an opportunity to implement solutions upstream in less populated areas. The ten municipalities and their wastewater companies are part of the collaboration, which makes it one of the largest climate adaptation projects in Denmark. The plan aims toward a holistic approach to climate adaptation. It includes several “subprojects” that also focus on biodiversity protection and recreation. A declaration states the framework for the cooperation, the different phases, and how these phases will be funded. The collaboration is evaluated every third year.
- Kapacitetsprojektet for Harrestrup Å (the capacity project for Harrestrup river)
- Copenhagen, Denmark
More information about the (name of the example) can be found here:
Harrestrup Å project website: https://harrestrupaa.dk/
Harrestrup Å project management handbook: https://harrestrupaa.dk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/projekthaandbog_projektledermanual.pdf
Harrestrup Å capacity plan 2018: https://harrestrupaa.dk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/kapacitetsplan-2018.pdf
#ICELAND – A regional park for nature protection and economic development
In 2014, the five municipalities on the Snæfellsnes peninsula established the Snæfellsnes Regional Park to work together to meet the common challenges they faced, promoting economic development while protecting the vulnerable nature of the area. In parallel, the municipalities put forth a joint, inter-municipal regional plan for Snæfellsnes peninsula, Andi Snæfellsness, for 2014-2026. The regional plan sets forth a joint strategy and future vision to strengthen collaboration, pooling local resources to create synergies. The regional plan is extensive and touches upon a wide field of subjects that the municipalities could strengthen their work through collaboration, including sustainable development, the preservation of biodiversity, and sustainable use of resources. This inter-municipal cooperation has proven very successful and has allowed the municipalities in Snæfellsnes, all with a population under 2000 and with limited capacity by themselves, to work on sustainable regional development in the area. This has also led to even further collaboration between the municipalities, who have recently set up a joint department of environment and planning with two staff members.
More information about the Snæfellsnes Regional Park and Andi Snæfellsness regional plan can be found here:
Snæfellsnes Regional Park website: https://www.snaefellsnes.is/english
#FINLAND – 6Aika, the Six City Strategy
6Aika (2014-2020) was an urban development programme between six largest Finnish cities: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Tampere, Turku and Oulu. The cities had unique characteristic aspects but sharing similarities in climate objectives such as climate neutrality. 6Aika served an in important platform for testing and innovation of products and services. Approximately 60 projects mainly targeting business and research and development organisations were initiated as a part of 6Aika strategy which focused on a range of topics including health and wellbeing, circular economy and energy efficiency. All pilot projects included representatives from at least two cities which ensured flow of information and no overlapping developments.
In 2021, the six cities were joined in a network which is currently continuing it work within the network project Strategic Management of SDGs in Cities that aims to support the implementation of Agenda 2030 SDGs on the local level via long-term sustainable management and close collaboration with local stakeholders. With funding from the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Kuntaliitto) and the six cities, the network project continues in 2024-2025.
More information about 6Aika and the network of six Finland’s largest cities can be found here:
6Aika – Suomen suurimpien kaupunkien yhteistyöstrategia: https://forumvirium.fi/projektit/suomen-suurimpien-kaupunkien-yhteistyostrategia
Six City Strategy’s results publication Era of Cities:https://fvh.io/eraofcities
The network project Strategic Management of SDGs in Cities: https://www.localfinland.fi/network-strategic-management-sdgs-cities
Learn more
Harnessing the Power of Collaboration for Nature-Based Solutions
is a report published by the European Commission that provides insights and practical examples for local decision-makers on how to effectively implement NBS through collaborative approaches: https://www.ecologic.eu/sites/default/files/publication/2023/33001-harnessing-the-power-of-collaboration-for-nbs.pdfGuidance to intermunicipal collaboration in Norway
(published by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development): https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dokumenter/veileder-om-interkommunalt-samarbeid/id2998121/?ch=2International Obligations
Sustainable development goal 17
Partnerships for the goals. “The SDGs can only be realized with strong global partnerships and cooperation”.