Authors

Miriam Pollock¹;  ¹ University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UK

Discussion

The literature on urban sustainability and sustainable development tends to champion collaborative governance approaches, especially multi-stakeholder partnerships, as necessary for sustainability. Business is treated as a core component of such partnerships, representing an opportunity for advancing sustainability rather than a cause for concern. In contrast, work on collaborative governance at large has noted the need to consider the way power asymmetries can distort the collaborative process, resulting in undesirable outcomes. Business, given its disproportionate financial resources, is likely to hold more power than local governments. As such, scholars of collaborative governance have increasingly called for more studies on business power.


This paper argues that the concerns presented by scholars of collaborative governance relating to power asymmetries and the role of business ought to be integrated into research on urban sustainability. This conceptual contribution is complemented by an empirical section examining the distorting influence of Nornickel, the largest metallurgical company in Russia and one of the largest in the world, on collaborative governance efforts intended to advance sustainability.


Nornickel is based in Norilsk, Russia, considered one of the “least sustainable” cities in the world (Laruelle 2020). Despite this unfortunate epithet, the city has invested in a robust collaborative governance approach, working closely with Nornickel on sustainability projects. If such an approach were as universally effective as the literature claims, we would expect the city to have a much better record on sustainability than it does. As such, this case study illustrates some of the potential flaws with an uncritical promotion of collaborative governance for urban sustainability. Namely, such approaches fail to consider the role of power asymmetries, especially where business is concerned. The case of Norilsk illustrates how powerful corporations might manipulate collaborative governance mechanisms to have an outsized influence on sustainability initiatives, ultimately leading to worse sustainability outcomes.