| 1. |
- Deak Sjöman, Johanna, et al.
(author)
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Expectations of i-Tree Eco as a tool for urban tree management in Nordic cities
- 2024
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In: Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. - 2624-9634. ; 5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- While urban forests are recognized as imperative toward climate adaptation in cities and provide health and recreational benefits to citizens, municipal tree officers often struggle to find successful governance arrangements and budget support toward long-lasting investment and implementation in new planting schemes and protection of existing trees. Since its release in 2006, i-Tree Eco has helped urban tree officers worldwide to find tangible leverage in the means of quantitative mapping, numeric measures, and economic values of ecosystem services. This may in turn help ease gridlocks and potentially support constructive dialogues across sectors, with decision-makers and public engagement. With the release of i-Tree Eco v. 6 in Europe 2018, 13 Nordic cities were engaged in a larger research project with ambitions to use i-Tree Eco for the purpose of retrieving numeric and monetary data of the biophysical structures and ecosystem services of the urban forest. Based on questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, we present the results from the Nordic i-Tree project with a focus on expectations, opportunities, and potential barriers experienced in using i-Tree Eco in urban forest management. The most prominent expectation and foreseeing opportunities were recognized toward using numeric information on trees to change policies and support cross-sectoral collaboration while reaching politicians and the public. Identified barriers involved how limited resources are spent on public outreach and how information about the project to relevant stakeholders were not distributed from the beginning which may have implications on the dissemination of results. As some important ecosystem services, e.g., cultural services, are not captured by i-Tree Eco, presenting the partial value of urban trees may pose also potential risks to cross-sectoral collaboration. Other findings conclude that although numeric information on ecosystem services is seen as beneficial in terms of communicating with different stakeholders, a deeper understanding toward the criteria used in the valuation process and the potential risks of numeric approaches may provide more context-specific applications.
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| 2. |
- Himes, Austin, et al.
(author)
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Why nature matters : A systematic review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values
- 2024
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In: BioScience. - : Oxford University Press. - 0006-3568 .- 1525-3244. ; 74:1, s. 25-43
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research.
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| 3. |
- Stålhammar, Sanna
(author)
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Transformative research for sustainability: characteristics, tensions, and moving forward
- 2024
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In: Global Sustainability. - 2059-4798. ; 7
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Research review (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Technical summary The question of how science can become a lever in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals permeates most recent sustainability research. Wide-ranging literature calling for a transformative approach has emerged in recent years. This 'transformative turn' is fueled by publications from fields such as sustainability science, social-ecological research, conservation science, sustainability transitions, or sustainability governance studies. However, there is a lack of a shared understanding specifically of what is meant for research to be transformative in this developing discourse around doing science differently to tackle sustainability problems. We aim to advance transformative research for sustainability. We define transformative research and outline six of its characteristics: (1) interventional nature and a theory of change focus; (2) collaborative modes of knowledge production, experimentation and learning; (3) systems thinking literacy and contextualization; (4) reflexivity, normative and inner dimensions; (5) local agency, decolonization, and reshaping power; (6) new quality criteria and rethinking impact. We highlight three tensions between transformative research and traditional paradigms of academic research: (1) process- and output-orientation; (2) accountability toward society and toward science; (3) methodologies rooted in scientific traditions and post-normal methodologies. We conclude with future directions on how academia could reconcile these tensions to support and promote transformative research.Non-technical summary Dominant ways of doing research are not enough to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The typical response of science to dealing with the current local and global sustainability crises is to produce and accumulate more knowledge. Transformative research seeks to couple knowledge production with co-creating change. This paper defines the transformative way of doing research to pro-actively support society's fight against pressing societal and environmental problems. We present six characteristics of transformative research. We reflect on the challenges related to implementing these characteristics in scientific practice and on how academia can play its part.Social media summary Sustainability transformation needs to be reflected in science, but what makes sustainability research transformative?
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