Five years of building capacity for nature-based transformation in cities

The program Innovation in Governance for Urban Nature-Based Solutions has been running for five consecutive years, 2020-2025 and has engaged public administration professionals in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, focusing on nature-based solutions to meet future challenges embodied by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Strengthening participants’ transformative leadership skills for innovation and sustainable urban governance in these regions has been at the core of the program. It has been developed and implemented as part of the commissioned education offered by Lund University and has built on collaboration between LUCE (former Lund University Commissioned Education), LUSEM (School of Economics and Management) and IIIEE. It has also involved practitioners from cities in Skåne, mainly Lund and Malmö, as well as researchers from other parts of Europe. As it has come to an end, it is relevant to summarize some of the program outputs and reflect on how it has benefited both program participants and IIIEE and Lund University.

Program in brief 

The program focuses on governance and leadership innovation in the field of nature-based solutions (NBS) for improved urban environments. Although various technical innovations for NBS have been implemented for decades, they are not yet mainstream in urban development processes. This is mainly because NBS require new ways of doing things, which in turn requires increased capacity for individuals and organizations to innovate for change — and change comes from new forms of collaboration and exchange of experiences between administrations and between academia and practice. The aim of the program is to strengthen the capacity for innovation and sustainable governance among public administrations in urban contexts. The specific goal is to build transformative capacity through practices of innovation management and transformative leadership. One of the key elements of the year-long program is participants’ work with change processes, partly by developing their own real-life NBS change projects. This is achieved through interactive online and onsite workshops and study visits, individual and group assignments, during which they learn from practitioners’ and each other’s experience. 

Aiming for transformative leadership to spur change in governance

By strengthening individual participants’ knowledge, the program is expected to have long-term effects at intra/inter-organizational and societal levels. 

“Sustainable change is hard to achieve without the unique and diverse skills of each individual in their teams,” says Björn Wickenberg, lecturer in the program. “Individuals must challenge and transform their ways of being and thinking, relating and collaborating, as well as acting and leading.”

This is especially true for the NBS projects that participants have developed, which are connected to real local implementation contexts and involve multi-stakeholder collaboration across different levels and actors.

Transformative leadership is a relational process that builds up leadership skills within and between individuals and organizations to form a community of change makers who collaboratively address complex sustainability challenges. It requires transparent communication, trust building, alignment of interests and accountability, and a shared learning experience. "We conclude our workshops with reflection sessions, where we often hear feedback from participants that this is how the world should be, even though it’s not their current reality,” says Bernadett Kiss, lecturer in the program. 

Bridging the gap between course and reality involves transformative skill building, empowering participants to challenge existing structures and views, stand up for their values, and take decisive actions. 

A central starting point for the program has been that successful capacity building is only achieved if multiple individuals drive change together and by developing strong local partnerships. Here, the participants act as ambassadors for a new way of working within innovative multi-stakeholder projects. Through national alumni networks that the program has built over time, participants can continue their learning processes, maintain their knowledge and capacity and exchange experiences of project implementation, which is seen as essential for the program to achieve long-term results.

What have participants learned?

Implementing innovative NBS solutions requires an innovative approach. The entire NBS program is based on developing a new governance and leadership style among participants, founded on collaboration and participation, which can support successful NBS initiatives. During the program, participants have been discussing best practices for identifying, engaging, and collaborating with stakeholders in NBS processes, as well as practicing understanding different stakeholder perspectives for a more collective leadership approach. The theme of transformative leadership has therefore also been in focus, with reflections on what it means in the NBS context. For one of the course assignments, participants involved their organization in analysing its “innovation readiness.” This aimed to strengthen the organizational connection and anchor participants’ change projects.

An important part of the program is the onsite Sweden week, which includes study visits to relevant sites to place the program themes into a practitioner perspective, as well as creative interaction and social events and team building. The aim is to summarize, contextualize and strengthen knowledge, experience and tools from the different parts of the program into a comprehensive whole, by integrating them into the participants’ projects and administrations. The aim is also to reflect on the future, on learnings and on the environment in which participants operate.

The program has been continuously evaluated during and after the program. The participants feel that the program has strengthened their knowledge, tools, and ability to drive innovation and change by working on NBS projects within their organizations. When asked to what extent participation in the program has enhanced their ability to drive change, 89% answer “to a large extent” or “to a very large extent.” In addition, many participants say that they, as a result of the program, have expanded their professional network for continued knowledge sharing and collaboration. 

The share of participants who have been very satisfied with the program has varied minimally over the years. Overall, 89% of the participants found participating in the training program worth the time, money, and effort that they and their organizations invested in it.

One participant said, “Participating in the program was a highly valuable experience that offered practical tools, fresh perspectives, and a collaborative learning environment. I particularly appreciated the human-centred and systems thinking approaches, which are directly applicable to the governance challenges we face in implementing urban nature-based solutions. The diversity of participants and international case studies enriched the dialogue and helped reframe familiar issues in new ways.”

A participant said “The program was a great learning experience. I appreciated the mix of people from different sectors and the focus on real examples and teamwork. I especially liked the hands-on approach and experience [of the] study visits.” 

The third task: impact beyond the walls of the university

Lund University has an important mission in communicating research findings and ensuring that knowledge is embedded in real-world contexts, as well as engaging in life-long learning in society. With the NBS program, IIIEE has had the opportunity to share its research expertise and experience in multi-level governance for sustainability and international projects and collaborations. One example is two international research projects: NATURVATION and NATURSCAPES, which IIIEE runs and where key expertise has been linked to the program. The research projects focus on increasing knowledge about (i) how NBS can contribute to sustainable and resilient cities while also generating multiple societal benefits, (ii) how innovation in this area occurs, and (iii) where it can be most effectively supported. Here, knowledge from the research projects and from the capacity development program itself has benefited the program, and the participating institutions and participants have also been able to take advantage of each other’s practical and theoretical knowledge through the built-in peer exchange. This is particularly relevant within innovation dynamics in urban environments and where local dynamics are more similar in the participating post-Soviet countries. This, in turn, has contributed to spreading knowledge and understanding of the systemic challenges that must be addressed to create conditions for successful system-level integration of NBS. 

The program implementation has also helped maintain and establish new useful contacts with practitioners in the field (mainly in Lund and Malmö), as well as within NBS as a research field. The accumulated experiences from both the program and the research projects have also contributed to the development of the content and format for a new special area studies course in NBS at Lund University. Other spinoffs from the program include collaboratively developed workshops, for example “Sharing insights on NBS for policy development,” held at Khazar University in Baku, Azerbaijan, or “Cities on the path of resilient and sustainable post-war recovery” which was conducted online. Other collaborative projects include EUCATION, to enhance Ukraine’s integration with the EU and an upcoming visit of urban professionals from Armenia to explore NBS possibilities for a more sustainable development of Gavar City.