Conference Agenda

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are proposed as a comprehensive approach to addressing a wide range of social, economic, and ecological problems in cities, featuring in international policy and in national and sub-national discourses. Not only is nature billed as a solution to some of the most vexing environmental challenges, they are presented as an opportunity to amerliorate all manner of governance crises, with the ambition to provide socially just, democratic, and locally tailored solutions that are “co-produced” and “co-designed” with stakeholders. NBS also offer a new way to frame urban greening efforts; one that is economically efficient and politically palatable. This presentation provides results from Urban GreenUP, a 6-year transdisciplinary demonstration project, to plan, implement, and monitor the impact of NBS in three European cities and in a network of 'follower cities' in South America, Asia, and Europe. After an overview of the social, economic, and biophysical impacts of the interventions and an introduction to the data dashboard providing these results, the presentation compares these modest results to the promises in policy and the grey and academic literature. These are used to draw out key areas where more attention needs to be paid if the promise of NBS as a concept is to be realised, particularly in urban areas. These include the extent to which NBS offer a 'transformative' alternative to addressing sustainability crises in urban areas, whether they offer more democratic and inclusive solutions to such crises, and whether the global ambitions and standards of NBS are achievable in cities. This analysis reveals a mismatch between the ways NBS are framed as potential solutions to both material and existential sustainability challenges, and the reality of how NBS are implemented in practice. The ways in which NBS are seen as technical solutions with measurable physical impacts, rather than as a new way to plan and develop cities, is found to stultify progress in using NBS to address society’s greatest challenges. Ultimately, this analysis of monitoring and action research data finds that the transformative potential of NBS requires that cities be treated not just as living laboratories where new ideas can be tested, but that these new ideas need to be more than engineering advancements or novel demonstration projects. A more ambitious scope for NBS implementation would push the boundaries of how decisions are made, require a re-consideration of patterns of development, and significantly increase the scale of greening interventions.

Cities are an increasingly important place for experiments connecting climate action with challenges around food, energy, biodiversity and social justice. The European Commission promotes nature-based solutions (NBS) as innovative strategy for urban sustainable transformations, balancing environmental and socio-economic outcomes of climate and biodiversity actions. However, NBS have been criticised for reproducing power-imbalances and producing negative justice impacts, including gentrification and exclusion of marginalized groups.

Previous studies show that quality and structure of NBS governance processes are crucial for just transformation processes. To enhance distributional, procedural and recognition justice, hybrid or multi-level governance processes have been suggested, aiming to balance top-down decision making with bottom-up perspectives, to foster cross-scale interactions between places and practices, recognize plural socio-cultural values of nature and use different modes of knowledge co-production to achieve outcome-oriented and process goal.

Based on case studies in three major European cities, we explore whether and how hybrid governance approaches, such as mosaic governance, may contribute to sustainable and just cities through fostering long-term collaborations between local governments, local communities, and grassroots initiatives in the co-development and co-management of NBS. Based on previous studies into urban governance, empowerment of local communities, and environmental justice, we investigate six possible pathways for mosaic governance to increase the environmental justice impacts of NBS in cities: greening the neighbourhood, diversifying values and practices, empowering people, bridging across communities, linking to institutions, and scaling inclusive discourses and practices. Despite the diversity of environmental justice outcomes across our empirical cases, analysis suggests that mosaic governance particularly contributes to recognition justice through diversifying NBS practices in alignment with community values and aspirations. Moreover, especially in marginalised communities, collaborations between civil society and local governments holds much potential to advance social justice by enabling empowering, bridging, and linking pathways across diverse communities and NBS. However, contributions to distributional and procedural justice are limited, also because the wider context of NBS policies, planning and management is hardly impacted by civil society actions. To advance our understanding of justice impacts of NBS and urban transformations, we suggest to look beyond distributional, procedural and recognition justice, and develop a wider framing of justice in the development and implementation of NBS, sensitive to social, cultural, economic and political inequities as well as to possible pathways to enhance not only environmental but also social justice.

Governance of earth systems comprises dealing with disasters. Previous research has shown the importance to discuss justice (i.e. fairness) in the management of disasters and disaster risks. In the context of resilience-building and sustainable development, several dimensions of justice must be taken into consideration. The here presented framework called risk justice includes procedural, distributive, and corrective justice under four sustainable dimensions that overlap: social justice (the fairness between different groups of people) ecological justice (the fairness between humans and non-humans as well as between different non-human entities), spatial justice (the fairness between entities present in different geographical areas), and temporal justice (the fairness between entities living at different moments in time). Indeed, sustainable development has to happen for everyone, including both human and natural systems, and the actions taken on one territory at a specific moment in time should not hinder sustainability in the future and in other territories. Hence the importance to consider justice for social and ecological issues, within different spatial-temporal scales. The risk justice concept is an innovative framework that can be used by decision-makers and risk managers as a proactive tool to discuss the issues raised by potential future strategies, and by evaluators and researchers as a retrospective tool to judge the fairness of current and past risk management strategies that are already implemented. After the conceptual elaboration, this paper applies the risk justice framework in a document analysis to pinpoint how justice is (or not) considered in international disaster risk management guidelines, naming the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 and the European Floods Directive. These two documents are barely quoting justice (nor synonyms), yet several elements are related to it, without naming it. These elements highlight aspects of social and spatial justice, mostly related to the distribution of the management impacts (distributive justice), as well as to how the decisions are taken (procedural justice). Elements of corrective and ecological justice are less present, but they appear indirectly in the European Floods Directive. Temporal issues are mentioned in the Sendai Framework. What the guidelines insist on (or not) gives indications on the aspects of sustainable development that the international community explicitly focuses on. Yet, all sustainability-related dimensions of justice are essential to consider for society to become more sustainable, even though tradeoffs are unavoidable. Accordingly, the risk justice framework can facilitate transparent discussions on justice to promote disaster risk governance’s contribution to sustainable development.

Green and Natural Infrastructure (NI) offer Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss in urban areas by actively managing ecosystems and their services. Decision makers are now challenged to connect infrastructure, ecosystems, sustainability and the implications of climate change. Therefore, swift transitions are needed in professional education and practices that build capacity and introduce new capabilities in NI to combine management of municipal built and natural assets, and related ecosystems. However, determining the most effective learning interventions is complicated by the diffuse and emerging nature of NI in practice, professional norms excluding NI in problem definitions and solutions, and the interconnectedness and extensive collaboration required by ecosystem management. Following the focus on ecosystems in NI, we apply the ecosystem concept to frame both practice and learning, building on the literature surrounding learning ecosystems. In framing a learning ecosystem that addresses NI planning, design, development and maintenance, we consider what elements make up NI learning opportunities and professional practice. This paper describes a guiding framework to enable NI practices, addressing the multi-disciplinary educational system by A) identifying the existing NI practice and learning ecosystem, B) discussing how this system reflects consideration of NbS through NI and C) suggesting transdisciplinary knowledge exchange, including with Indigenous worldviews. The NI learning ecosystem (NILE) was first defined through a survey and a virtual Challenge Dialogue workshop to explore and respond to a proposed set of NI norms, identify core competencies, and explore user needs related to NI training. Because NI is an emerging practice with few aligned credentials, research sought to understand what organisations and roles influence such practices to identify additional capacities and capabilities most central to NI in practice. Actors were identified in three Canadian Prairie provinces and their network illustrated using KUMU software. Validation interviews including NI practitioners and educators informed the NILE framework. We found that aligned professions such as engineering and planning had no specific NI credentials or designation; and that government departments and professional consultancies are significant actors, although municipalities are central to implementing NI. The NILE frame offers some structure to guide efforts to support NI practices through learning opportunities in higher education institutions, professional continuing education and workplaces. Because NI is not well understood by communities and professions alike, applying and mobilizing the NILE can inform the social processes needed for a stronger social license respecting shared Indigenous and Western connections to the land.

Becoming climate neutral and tackling the adverse impacts of climate change requires profound societal transformations. In recent years, there has been growing recognition in research and policy that a so-called ‘just transition’ – striving for an equitable distribution of costs and benefits and ensuring that vulnerable groups do not face additional burdens – is needed to make this transformation a success. The concept has thus become part of international agreements and policy frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the “Solidarity and Just Transitions Silesia Declaration” of the COP24 meeting in 2018. The European Commission has declared the motto “to leave no one behind” central to the European Green Deal, and devised the Just Transition Mechanism to provide financial support to particularly vulnerable European regions.

Despite the political commitment, achieving a ‘just transition’ in the European Union will be complex and many questions remain. The concept is still unfamiliar to many, especially since existing decarbonization efforts have focused on implementing ‘clean and efficient’ technologies, and less on the more complex distributional and social aspects of sustainability transformations. Conceptions of what a ‘just transition’ entails also vary. Historically, the concept has evolved in a narrow sense as protecting and compensating workers in regions highly dependent on fossil fuel extraction. Aspects of fairness in future renewable energy systems, or sectors beyond the energy systems have not been considered. This narrow framing has been implemented in the European Just Transition Mechanism, but does not align well with the European Green Deal’s overarching goal of “leaving no one behind” and the broader ambition to shape a transformation to climate neutrality that is socially just.

From the perspective of policy-makers, there is a particular need for assessment frameworks to evaluate aspects of justice as part of the transformation to climate neutrality, and monitor them over time. This paper presents a critical review of existing proposals to assess and monitor the European ‘just transition’, considering proposals brought forth by the EU institutions and third sector organizations. It is part of a larger project to develop an assessment framework for the European ‘just transition’. The framework will integrate existing academic work in environmental, climate, energy, and transport justice and align with existing EU indicators systems.