| 1. |
- Chausson, Alexandre, et al.
(författare)
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Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation
- 2020
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : WILEY. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 26:11, s. 6134-6155
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nature-based solutions (NbS) to climate change currently have considerable political traction. However, national intentions to deploy NbS have yet to be fully translated into evidence-based targets and action on the ground. To enable NbS policy and practice to be better informed by science, we produced the first global systematic map of evidence on the effectiveness of nature-based interventions for addressing the impacts of climate change and hydrometeorological hazards on people. Most of the interventions in natural or semi-natural ecosystems were reported to have ameliorated adverse climate impacts. Conversely, interventions involving created ecosystems (e.g., afforestation) were associated with trade-offs; such studies primarily reported reduced soil erosion or increased vegetation cover but lower water availability, although this evidence was geographically restricted. Overall, studies reported more synergies than trade-offs between reduced climate impacts and broader ecological, social, and climate change mitigation outcomes. In addition, nature-based interventions were most often shown to be as effective or more so than alternative interventions for addressing climate impacts. However, there were substantial gaps in the evidence base. Notably, there were few studies of the cost-effectiveness of interventions compared to alternatives and few integrated assessments considering broader social and ecological outcomes. There was also a bias in evidence toward the Global North, despite communities in the Global South being generally more vulnerable to climate impacts. To build resilience to climate change worldwide, it is imperative that we protect and harness the benefits that nature can provide, which can only be done effectively if informed by a strengthened evidence base.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Turner, Beth, et al.
(författare)
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The Role of Nature-Based Solutions in Supporting Social-Ecological Resilience for Climate Change Adaptation
- 2022
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Ingår i: Annual Review Environment and Resources. - : ANNUAL REVIEWS. - 1543-5938 .- 1545-2050. ; 47, s. 123-148
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Social-ecological systems underpinning nature-based solutions (NbS) must be resilient to changing conditions if they are to contribute to long-term climate change adaptation. We develop a two-part conceptual framework linking social-ecological resilience to adaptation outcomes in NbS. Part one determines the potential of NbS to support resilience based on assessing whether NbS affect key mechanisms known to enable resilience. Examples include social-ecological diversity, connectivity, and inclusive decision-making. Part two includes adaptation outcomes that building social-ecological resilience can sustain, known as nature's contributions to adaptation (NCAs). We apply the framework to a global dataset of NbS in forests. We find evidence that NbS may be supporting resilience by influencing many enabling mechanisms. NbS also deliver many NCAs such as flood and drought mitigation. However, there is less evidence for some mechanisms and NCAs critical for resilience to long-term uncertainty. We present future research questions to ensure NbS can continue to support people and nature in a changing world.
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| 5. |
- West, Simon, et al.
(författare)
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A relational turn for sustainability science? Relational thinking, leverage points and transformations
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecosystems and People. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2639-5908 .- 2639-5916. ; 16:1, s. 304-325
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In sustainability science, revising the paradigms that separate humans from nature is considered a powerful ‘leverage point’ in pursuit of transformations. The coupled social-ecological and human-environment systems perspectives at the heart of sustainability science have, in many ways, enhanced recognition across academic, civil, policy and business spheres that humans and nature are inextricably connected. However, in retaining substantialist assumptions where ‘social’ and ‘ecological’ refer to different classes of entity that interact, coupled systems perspectives insist on the inextricability of humans and nature in theory, while requiring researchers to extricate them in practice – thus inadvertently reproducing the separation they seek to repair. Consequently, sustainability researchers are increasingly drawing on scholarship from the ‘relational turn’ in the humanities and the social sciences to propose a paradigm shift for sustainability science: away from focusing on interactions between entities, towards emphasizing continually unfolding processes and relations. Yet there remains widespread uncertainty about the origins, promises and challenges of using relational approaches. In this paper, we identify four themes in relational thinking – continually unfolding processes; embodied experience; reconstructing language and concepts; and ethics/practices of care – and highlight the ways in which these are being drawn on in sustainability science. We conclude by critically discussing how relational approaches might contribute to (i) a paradigm shift in sustainability science, and (ii) transformations towards sustainability. Relational approaches foster more dynamic, holistic accounts of human-nature connectedness; more situated and diverse knowledges for decision-making; and new domains and methods of intervention that nurture relationships in place and practice.
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| 6. |
- West, Simon, et al.
(författare)
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Putting relational thinking to work in sustainability science–reply to Raymond et al.
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecosystems and People. - : Informa UK Limited. - 2639-5908 .- 2639-5916. ; 17:1, s. 108-113
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We welcome Raymond et al.’s invitation to further discuss the ‘pragmatics’ of relational thinking in sustainability science. We clarify that relational approaches provide distinct theoretical and methodological resources that may be adopted on their own, or used to enrich other approaches, including systems research. We situate Raymond et al.’s characterization of relational thinking in a broader landscape of differing approaches to mobilizing ‘relationality’ in sustainability science. A key contribution of relational thinking in the process-relational, pragmatist and post-structural traditions is the focus on the generation and use of concepts. This focus is proving methodologically useful for sustainability scientists. We caution against viewing the generation of concepts purely in terms of ‘applying the knife’ to ‘divide components.’ Relational thinking offers alternatives more congruent with complexity: away from an ‘external’ actor cutting away at the world with an ‘either/or’ logic, towards an ‘immersed’ actor contributing generatively within it using a ‘both/and not only’ logic. The pragmatics of relational thinking will vary according to purposes. We describe two possible pathways for using relational thinking in research practice–(i) working forwards from relations, and (ii) working backwards from existing concepts–and discuss how relational thinking can contribute to complexity-oriented visions of ‘solutions-oriented sustainability science.’.
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| 7. |
- Woroniecki, Stephen
(författare)
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Confronting the ecology of crisis : The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation and empowerment
- 2020. - 1
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Nature-based solutions (NBS) focus on the material functioning of ecosystems as part of a transformative response to societal challenges. NBS represent a growing response to climate change with a range of interventions emerging across the world to address the causes and effects of climate change. The adoption of NBS is claimed to address a range of Sustainable Development Goals, including empowerment of marginalised people (Goals 10 and 15). In this thesis, I investigate these claims within the context of climate change adaptation. More specifically, I ask if and how ecosystem-based approaches (EBA) to climate change adaptation, as a type of NBS, empower vulnerable and marginalised groups. Four papers are presented that draw respectively on systematic review, conceptual synthesis, empirical, and comparative study. The empirical findings are from two sites in Sri Lanka with a range of climate vulnerabilities. Paper I systematically reviews adaptation case studies to show how empowerment can arise in an adaptation context amidst broader power relations. Paper II demonstrates theoretically the bounded and overlapping roles of EBA and empowerment. In Paper III, I show that EBA have the potential to support people’s empowered adaptive strategies amidst broader transformation of social-ecological relations, but this potential is presently constrained. In the studied cases, the dominant mode of EBA action as intervention limited the ability to support people’s empowered adaptive strategies. Across these papers, I demonstrate that frames embedded in EBA shape the institutional and material dimensions of these actions, becoming central to their capacity to support empowerment. Frames are discursive dimensions of power, or dominant modes of expression, that prefigure outcomes for who is empowered or disempowered through EBA initiatives. In Paper IV, I find that frames of EBA appear to reinforce assumptions of the passive dependency of marginalised people on Ecosystem Services. Further, the way that EBA is framed in biophysical terms may empower external experts and interventions, and lend authority to the knowledge claims of natural scientists. The papers collectively show that current frames of EBA do not make visible the social processes of adaptation or the predominant manner in which EBA is implemented as an intervention. These blind spots have consequences for empowerment since these frames hide people’s diverse and situated social-ecological knowledge, subjectivities, and agencies – aspects which better represent the ways in which people and ecologies emerge in co-evolutionary processes, including through responses to climate change. Confronting the issue of people being left out of the picture in NBS to climate change will entail a sizeable shift in the science and practice of these approaches. This turn would be facilitated by sustainability scientists acknowledging their position in power relations, confronting governance and equity issues in nominally benign solutions, and letting go of problematic assumptions about the relationships between people and nature.
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| 8. |
- Woroniecki, Stephen, et al.
(författare)
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Contributions of nature-based solutions to reducing peoples vulnerabilities to climate change across the rural Global South
- 2023
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Ingår i: Climate and Development. - : Taylor & Francis Ltd. - 1756-5529 .- 1756-5537. ; 15:7, s. 590-607
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nature-based solutions (NbS); working with and enhancing nature to address societal challenges, increasingly feature in climate change adaptation strategies. Despite growing evidence that NbS can reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts in general, understanding of the mechanisms through which this is achieved, particularly in the Global South, is lacking. To address this, we analyse 85 nature-based interventions across the rural Global South, and factors mediating their effectiveness, based on a systematic map of peer-reviewed studies encompassing a wide diversity of ecosystems, climate impacts, and intervention types. We apply an analytical framework of peoples social-ecological vulnerability to climate change, in terms of six pathways of vulnerability reduction: social and ecological exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Most cases (95%) report a reduction in vulnerability, primarily by lowering ecosystem sensitivity to climate impacts (73% of interventions), followed by reducing social sensitivity (52%), reducing ecological exposure (36%), increasing social adaptive capacity (31%), increasing ecological adaptive capacity (19%) and/or reducing social exposure (14%). Our analysis shows that social dimensions of NBS are important mediating factors for equity and effectiveness. This study highlights how understanding the distinct social and ecological pathways by which vulnerability to climate change is reduced can help harness the multiple benefits of working with nature in a warming world.
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| 9. |
- Woroniecki, Stephen, et al.
(författare)
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Dethroning the Planetary Perspective: Dealing with Actually-Occurring Transformations Using Dialogical Sense-Making and Critical Phenomenology
- 2022
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Ingår i: Preprints. - : MDPI.
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Transformation studies lean towards the more practical aspects of change processes and are not yet dealing adequately with their personal and political dimensions. They are arguably constrained in doing so in their current stances, either fixated on systems and how to control them or on individualistic values and behaviours. In this study we show the range of actually-occurring societal transformations that people face can be usefully approached through a combination of dialogical sense-making and critical phenomenology. While distinct, these approaches share a concern with experience and meaning-making, concerns which are often neglected when societal transformation becomes abstracted and alienated from people’s lives. The two approaches reveal how societal transformational change is situated, shared, embodied and laden with diverse meanings. Dialogical sense-making expands the theorisation of the experiential, personal and political dimensions of transformation and shows how the practical dimension of change is always personal and political. Critical phenomenology addresses how the experience of transformation help shape subjectivity, as a lived relation to the world, and sheds light on taken-forgranted, lived norms about bodies and transformative change. Drawing together the three spheres of transformation – the practical, personal, and political - allows a fuller grasp of the complexity in which new worlds may emerge. Through a discussion of insights from these approaches, we develop a language and framework to understand how people interact with change processes. This development allows new questions about transformative change, based on a reframing of transformations that brings them closer to people’s lives. Together these approaches broaden and deepen social-science and humanities contributions to transformation studies and sustainability science.
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| 10. |
- Woroniecki, Stephen
(författare)
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Enabling environments? Examining social co-benefits of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change in Sri Lanka
- 2019
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Ingår i: Sustainability (Switzerland). - : MDPI AG. - 2071-1050. ; 11:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change vulnerability and social marginalisation are often interrelated in and through environments. Variations in climate change adaptation practice and research account for such social-ecological relations to varying degrees. Advocates of ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation (EbA) claim that it delivers social co-benefits to marginalised groups, although scant empirical evidence supports such claims. I investigate these claims in two EbA interventions in Sri Lanka, interpreting social benefits through an empowerment lens. I use qualitative methods such as focus groups and narrative interviews to study the conduct and context of the interventions. In both cases, marginalised people's own empowered adaptive strategies reflect how power relations and vulnerabilities relate to dynamic ecologies. The findings show that EbA enabled social benefits for marginalised groups, especially through support to common-pool resource management institutions and the gendered practices of home gardens. Such conduct was embedded within, but mostly peripheral to, broader and deeper contestations of power. Nevertheless, projects acted as platforms for renegotiating these power relations, including through acts of resistance. The results call for greater recognition of the ways that marginalised groups relate to ecology within empowered adaptive strategies, whilst also highlighting the need to recognise the diverse interests and power relations that cut across the conduct and contexts of these nominally ecosystem-based interventions.
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