Multi-level finance impacts on participation, inclusion, and equity: Bricolage and Fuzziness in NextGenerationEU-funded renaturing projects

Abstract

We analyze a multi-level ad-hoc emergency fund (MAEF) – the European NextGenerationEU program – as an opportunity to advance ambitious municipal climate action. Presently, MAEF follow a vertical complex governance structure, including strict timelines, evaluations, and competencies spread across policy scales, which condition local aspirations for transformative governance in terms of participation, inclusion, and equity. Drawing on qualitative data (interviews with key actors, participant observations, and primary policy and planning documents), we examine the implementation of NextGenerationEU-funded naturalization projects in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, 2012 European Green Capital. We offer an empirical analysis of how MAEF requirements challenge locally formulated values of governance meant to advance civic participation, inclusion, and equity. Findings indicate that the municipal dependence on multi-level financing schemes represents a trade-off with local democratic governance, whereby the need for slow-er and finance-detached civic engagement processes clashes with EU requirements for rapid project execution. Here, civic contestation against the projects’ processes reveals some of the core emergency funds governance weaknesses: a) a bricolage approach at the expenses of democratic governance, to ensure successful applications for climate finance projects and b) a fuzzy process without transparent communication of project selection and implementation. However, findings also reveal that the municipality failed to build up participation, inclusion, and consideration of social equity goals upstream, before and outside the context of MAEF. This reality calls for local decision-makers to develop more transparent governance models that help build up civic support when projects are in their early conception stage. © 2024 The Authors