Abstract: Regional environmental collaborative governance is an effective organizational form in China’s regional practice and environmental policy. The analysis of its connotation, characteristics and limits will help to clarify the essence of the problem and promote the modernization of China’s environmental governance system and capacity. The related concepts of regional environmental collaborative governance have both relevance and differences, which are rooted in the richness and polysemy of the concept of “governance”. Regional environmental collaborative governance has characteristics of openness and dynamism, nonlinearity and evolution, complexity and adaptability, and periodicity and iterativeness, while its intrinsic requirements are democratization, legalization, scientization and professionalization. In general, collaborative governance is a suitable model to deal with the dilemma of failed regional environmental collaborative governance, however, collaborative governance is not a panacea, and its effectiveness has boundaries and limits.