engleski

ANALYSIS OF CURRENT URBAN FOREST GOVERNANCE IN THE CITY OF ZAGREB

Urban forests and green space provide many benefits and are important for quality of life of urban population. Urban forest governance should enable these goals. However, it is rarely subject of comprehensive scientific inquiry. Effect of discourses on environmental governance has been widely documented, but it is not the case for urban forest governance. Goals of this dissertation are several. First global scientific discourses on urban forestry and governance will be identified and described based on literature review. Next local urban forest governance arrangement in the City of Zagreb will be explained. Furthermore, governance performance assessment according to interviewees will be addressed. In the end connection between global discourses and local practice presented by the case study of urban forest governance in the City of Zagreb will be discussed. For the purpose of achieving these goals comprehensive theoretical framework was used involving discourse and governance theory and the policy arrangement approach. Methods used include discourse analysis, in-depth interviews, and questionnaire for governance performance assessment. The results showed that there are several scientific urban forestry discourses present globally to a various extent, namely, the managerial discourse, the civic involvement, the ecosystem services, the biodiversity, the urban planning and the green infrastructure discourse. These discourses were described according to several elements: their rationale, topics addressed, major ideas and concepts, key problems, how problems are solved and by whom, their timeframe, events, publications and policy documents that supported particular discourse and whether the discourse is contested and by whom. Urban forest governance arrangement in the City of Zagreb is described and explored by taking discourse perspective. Four to some extent overlapping discourse coalitions in the Zagreb case, namely the spatial planning, the active urban forest management, the civic involvement and the green infrastructure discourse were identified and discussed along dimensions of actors, rules and resources. Urban forest governance in the City of Zagreb can be labelled as traditional ‘governance by government’ mode of governing. Furthermore, governance performance was assessed against several criteria and indicators. Concepts deemed important for assessment of urban forest governance were public participation and responsiveness, collaboration, cooperation and coordination, and effectiveness and efficiency. Based on in-depth interviews and governance performance assessment some guidelines for urban forest governance in the City of Zagreb were made. In the end, connection between global discourses and local governance arrangement were discussed. This dissertation adds to expanding urban forestry knowledge in terms of identifying urban forestry discourses and evidence base on how urban forest governance is addressed.

urban forestry; discourse analysis; urban forest governance; governance performance; the City of Zagreb; global-local nexus

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