Multilevel governance and Coproduction in urban Flood-risk management - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 134

the more structural causes of vulnerability and inequality, and meet future
climate-risk challenges (Bulkeley 2013; O'Brian 2012; IPCC 2012). In Dar
es Salaam, the current structures and functions of the multilevel governance
systems act as major barriers to effective governance and constructive dialogue
between officials and citizens, and coproduction in flood-risk management and
sustainable development. The multilevel governance context, as well as other
institutional barriers, will need to change radically if the goal is to enable more
active participation in local planning and local capacity to act on climate risks.
Hence, there are limitations to resilience as an analytical concept, both as
utilized in the academic literature (Welsh 2013) as well as a policy goal for
'resilient cities' as promoted by UNISDR (2014). The Ten Essentials provide
limited guidance for cities on how more precisely to govern the resilience
agenda, for example whether to embark upon a vertical approach and a few
sectors, or employ a broad-based horizontal approach (Roberts and O'Donoghue
2013). Nor does resilience offer guidance on how to deal with political and
key institutional factors that often intervene to condition government and
governance responses. Resilience focuses more on 'what' needs to change or
adapt, and is less developed in terms of understanding governance and the
interplay of state and non-state actors.
The concept of coproduction (in multilevel governance) can provide a fruitful
framework for analysing the governance context and understanding how
to go about managing climate risks and related service production and local
development. Coproduction has in particular been utilized to understand
vertical relationships, like how public officials interact with the people, but also
conditions for horizontal coordination. 'Coproduction is one way that synergy
between what a government does and what citizens do can occur' (Ostrom
1996:1080; see also Cleaver 2012; Tendler 1997).
Coproduction here is closely related to the emphasis in New Public
Governance (NPG) on public-private and civic collaboration through networks
and partnerships and social innovation in the public sector (Sorensen and
Torfing 2014). NPG moves beyond the New Public Management literature
to focus on how collaboration between, for example, government and non-
government actors - defined as 'the constructive management of differences'
- can drive public innovation and change in relationships. In Dar es Salaam,
despite some encouragement among street-level bureaucrats to mobilize people
in emergency situations, the overall workings of the state-municipal system in
planning and flood-risk management generally discourage local contributions to
flood-risk management, or collaboration and coproduction in service delivery.
In conclusion, compared to the debate on multilevel governance in Western
democracies, which tends to emphasize constraints related to knowledge sharing
and horizontal coordination among key state and non-state actors for tackling
'wicked problems', we find in Dar es Salaam more deep-rooted structural issues
to effective governing of climate risks, related to vertical steering and coordination
issues. These issues reflect a broader 'institutional crisis' in public service delivery