Outcomes

See the project overview on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/records/10984188)

Sarkki, S., Haanpää, O., Heikkinen, H.I. et al. Mainstreaming nature-based solutions through five forms of scaling: Case of the Kiiminkijoki River basin, Finland. Ambio (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01942-0

ABSTRACT

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are considered as means to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss while simultaneously enhancing human well-being. Yet, it is still poorly understood how NBS could be mainstreamed. We address this gap by proposing a framework on NBS and employing it in Finland’s Kiiminkijoki River basin through participatory workshops and a questionnaire. We examine socio-environmental challenges and visions, existing and emerging NBS to reach the visions, and ways to scale-up NBS to a river basin level. In the river basin, water quality is the priority challenge, due to its relationships with local culture, climate change, and biodiversity. Our results consider how (1) to ensure the relevance of NBS for local actors, (2) instrumental, intrinsic, and relational value perspectives can be enhanced simultaneously by NBS, and (3) site specific NBS can be mainstreamed (i.e., by scaling up, down, out, in, deep) to the river basin level and beyond.

The paper was published in Máltai Tanulmányok, 2024/3, in Hungarian

Abstract:

The crisis of mental health, related to the global polycrisis, is more and more perceived worldwide. Nature-based solutions aim to mitigate these crises, which allow us to solve our problems in cooperation with nature. One type of nature-based solutions are healing gardens which build on the positive impact of nature on human mental health. Healing gardens are habitats created through the interaction between humans and non-humans contributing positively to both biodiversity and human mental health. In the ‘Healing Garden Living Lab’, a research organization, a civil society organization, and a Hungarian mental health institution have joined together to transform a hospital garden into a healing garden via participatory action research. Multiple form of knowledge, the needs and experiences of the people who work and heal in the hospital, and the interests of plants and animals living in and visiting the garden all participate in the transformation of the garden. KEYWORDS: healing garden, mental health, nature-based solutions, participatory action research

Umwelt Collapse: The Loss of Umwelt-Ecosystem Integration. Biosemiotics 16, 479–487 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-023-09545-8

Abstract:

Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory opens new perspectives for understanding animal extinction. The umwelt is interpreted here as a sum of structural correspondences between an animal’s subjective experience, ecosystem, physiology, and behaviour. The global environmental crisis disturbs these meaning-connections. From the umwelt perspective, we may describe extinction as umwelt collapse: The disintegration of an animal’s umwelt resulting from the cumulative errors in semiotic processes that mediate an organism and ecosystem. The loss of umwelt-ecosystem integration disturbs “ecological memory,” which provides the ecosystem with adaptive modelling and self-design capacities. Making a distinction between core and mediated umwelts, and describing different types of umwelt collapse, are suitable methods for more detailed analysis. The concept of umwelt collapse enables the reinterpretation of extinction, from an internal perspective, as a semiotic breakdown. Such an approach may help us map scenarios of animal extinction, and may lead to successful compensation strategies in adapting to environmental change.

The conventional approach to environmental governance, based on institutions, regulations, and interventions, has failed to stop the current ecological catastrophe. I suggest a radical alternative: Ritual as the core mode of ‘nature-based governance’ (NBG) that enacts deep and comprehensive reciprocity between people and nature. NBG grounds governance mechanisms in embodied more-than-human practices with normative force. I build on theories of embodiment to suggest a general concept of ritual that is inspired by but generalizes over Indigenous thought and is informed by East Asian ideas about ritual as the pivot of social order. Further, the embodiment framework recognises ritual as a kind of action humans and non-humans share as living beings. Therefore, rituals can be harnessed in workable governance mechanisms to create and sustain communities of multi-species cohabitation. I distinguish between two basic types of reciprocity corresponding to two types of governance: Disembodied reciprocity enacted by conventional human-only governance schemes and embodied reciprocity enacted by NBG. Embodied reciprocity creates relationality of people and nature. Equipped with these theoretical insights, I suggest practical applications in the context of NBG of Nature-based solutions, discussing three stylized models. These are the formation of urban multi-species communities in urban gardening and urban forests, the commoning of ecosystem services of animal populations in wildfire protection, and reconceptualizing eco-compensation as a reciprocal ritual of gift-giving.

The paper argues that mainstream approaches to environmental policies and governance failed to stop the ecological catastrophe. A solution requires achieving authentic reciprocity between people and nature. I suggest that this can be enacted by creating rituals of mutual gift-giving, inspired by Indigenous spirituality and ritual orders in East Asia. This approach is called ‘Nature-based governance’. Mainstream governance approaches conceptualize reciprocity in disembodied media, such as quantitative measures of compensating nature for services rendered to people. Nature-based governance is embodied reciprocity, which means that people engage in direct interactions with nature. I develop theoretical principles and discuss three examples of Nature-based solutions in cities where I confront disembodied and embodied reciprocity. For instance, in many cities biowaste is collected in bins and composted at specialised sites, out of sight for the citizens. Alternatively, urban gardens are a Nature-based solution with many benefits for citizens beyond the gardening community, such as water regulation and improving microclimate in the neighbourhood where the gardens are located. This allows the creation of gift-giving rituals where the neighbourhood collects biowaste for composting in the gardens and celebrates the harvest in return, for example, at Thanksgiving feasts. I conclude that rituals emerge spontaneously if aesthetic designs synthesize the grey and the green elements in the urban infrastructure that invite people to engage directly with nature, such as improving the opportunities for birds dwelling in the city.

Hiedanpää, J., Tuomala, M., Pappila, M. et al. Ecosocial compensation of nature-based social values in Turku, South-West Finland. Socio Ecol Pract Res 5, 391–407 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-023-00163-9

Abstract:

Complementary building is one of the key objectives in current urban planning as cities attempt to mitigate climate change. However, this development often reduces the urban green space. This incremental encroachment can negatively affect both the well-being of residents and biodiversity. Compensation is a way to safeguard the urban green space under the pressure of complementary construction. In the spirit of creative democracy, in this study, we examined the preconditions for ecosocial compensation and the mitigation of the harmful effects of incremental encroachment, as well as the mitigation hierarchy, in the context of land-use planning. We organised three workshops for planners and civil society associations at which we examined the preconditions for ecosocial compensation and other mitigation options using co-creation methods. We also carried out a PPGIS survey for the residents of Turku and were able to insert one question into the voting advice application of the municipal election in 2021. Our results show that there is a need for a new kind of information regarding nature-based social values when considering mitigation options and compensation. A comprehensive planning approach instead of incremental planning practices is important for considering compensation. Residents’ initiative is essential in the ecosocial approach, and the compensation process may become a way for residents to step up and introduce concerns and new opportunities to the public discussion and actual decisions about urban green space.

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Simo Sarkki, Timo Maran, Katriina Soini, Juha Hiedanpää: Nature-based solutions as more-than-human art: Co-evolutionary and co-creative design approaches. Nature-Based Solutions, Volume 4, 2023, 100081, 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbsj.2023.100081.

Abstract:

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are mostly seen as engineering approaches to meeting the challenges of human societies under ecological stress, while also nurturing biodiversity. We argue that given the accelerating speed of environmental change, NbS design for biodiversity recovery cannot be informed by past or current conditions but must create the evolutionary potential for yet unknown future biodiversity. The objective of our paper is to reconceptualize this creative role of NbS design as artwork, building on John Dewey's pragmatist aesthetics. We suggest that in emphasizing the aesthetic dimension of NbS, triggers, mechanisms, and affordances can be harnessed that activate the co-creative potential of both humans and non-humans for cooperation, resilience, and future biodiversity. We build on recent developments, both practical and experimental, in interspecies art and design and locate these in the two dimensions of co-creation and co-evolution. As a result, we distinguish three categories of NbS as artwork, transformative art, interspecies art, and exaptive art, present their main features and give some illustrations of how they may regenerate the current ways to approach and design NbS.

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath’s article examines the role of the imaginary in utopian ideas in the eco-social transformation. Utopia has three essential functions: First, it provides a vantage point for critical evaluation of the status quo; second, it fosters motivation for change; and third, it gives direction to change. Since the crucial issue in eco-social transformation is the interface between the economy and the environment, we need to explore utopias that include the economy.

In current debates, economics usually plays the role of “realism”. Herrmann-Pillath argues that mainstream economics carries the seeds of a utopian turn when it recognizes that the concept of the “economic subject” is analytically free of “speciesism”. From this follows a strong moral imperative to recognize the rights of non-humans in economic systems, especially property rights. However, economics does not show how this can be practically achieved. This requires going beyond economics and appropriating moral and aesthetic practices to cultivate reciprocal relationships with nature.

These practices cannot emerge on a society-wide level, but must be rooted in the local. Therefore, the author proposes to consider ‘nature based solutions’ as a vehicle of utopian transformation, i.e. as an element of the communitization of landscapes. In this case, they are no longer merely eco-technological fixed points, but become aesthetic and moral media for reciprocal forms of living.