Decentralized Environmental Governance under State Capacity Constraints: Institutional Challenges and Policy Innovations in Zamboanga City, Philippines

Decentralization reforms assign extensive environmental governance responsibilities to local governments across the Global South, yet environmental outcomes remain uneven. This article examines how state capacity constraints shape decentralized environmental governance in Zamboanga City, a highly urbanized coastal city in the southern Philippines. The study situates the Philippine Local Government Code within broader debates on decentralization, multilevel governance, and local state capacity. Using qualitative process tracing supported by administrative, fiscal, and enforcement data from 2015–2023, the article analyzes three policy domains: solid waste management, coastal resource management, and urban watershed protection. Findings show that formal authority decentralizes faster than administrative capacity, fiscal autonomy, and enforcement power. Political incentives, intergovernmental fragmentation, and uneven technical capacity produce sectoral variation in governance performance. The study identifies policy innovations that emerge under constraint, including interlocal cooperation, hybrid enforcement arrangements, and civil society co-production. The article contributes to environmental governance scholarship by demonstrating how decentralized systems operate under persistent capacity gaps and by offering a framework for assessing policy performance in constrained local states.