Turning the tide in estuary governance through collaboration? A systematic review, meta-synthesis, and conceptual framework

Estuaries are contested spaces and subject to highly variable environmental conditions and increasing human and climate change impacts. This leads to socio-economic and environmental conflicts and raises the question of how to achieve effective estuary governance that is capable of dealing with existing and future challenges. This article presents a systematic literature review and meta-synthesis of estuary governance using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 protocol. The review shows that, starting in 2010, research on estuary governance has slowly developed since then in various scientific disciplines, such as the environmental sciences, social sciences, and studies dealing with environmental governance. In recent years, this research has gained momentum, although it continues to exhibit notable terminological and conceptual ambiguity. In the context of this ambiguity, collaborative governance, a theory-based approach, provides both a conceptual foundation and an analytical lens to address and structure key aspects identified in the review. Conceptually seen, collaborative governance presents an approach in which state and non-state stakeholders work together to balance competing interests and try to achieve a common goal. Although some aspects, such as stakeholder engagement and knowledge integration, have—albeit mostly unintentionally—already been incorporated into the approach of estuary governance studies, there still exists a lack of studies applying collaborative governance in the field. To fill this gap, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for collaborative estuary governance informed by already existing approaches. We thus expand the “system context” of current approaches for estuarine realities by including concepts such as “environmental context” and “conflict context.” In brief, the paper suggests a structural re-conceptualization of estuary governance, as seen through a collaborative governance lens.