In March, the CCIT will be visited by the brilliant Megan Maurer, who is currently an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management (KU). She will dive into the fractured nature of experiences around urban nature and nature-bases solutions (NBS) with a talk titled "Embracing the Ambivalent Green Transition". A cultural anthropologist by training, she is interested in interdisciplinary examinations of the relationships among people and plants in cities.


Abstract:

We face inter-related crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and increasing urbanisation and inequality that require immediate action. Nature-based solutions (NBS) offer key contributions to urban green transitions while fitting neatly within existing governance regimes aimed at optimising performance via data-driven technological / infrastructural interventions. As ever more sophisticated forms of data collection and assessment are being used to guide urban NBS planning, design, and implementation, these interventions face resistance from urban residents due to social unacceptability and unjust outcomes, troubling the prospect of an "optimal" outcome. These challenges indicate needs for qualifying different types of data by engaging diverse values of nature and knowledge systems and accounting for the multivalent, lived experience of urban environments. Moreover, they reveal a gap in knowledge regarding the negative contributions of nature (e.g., ecosystems disservices, disvalues of nature) - in particular, how these can be described and assessed across different scales, and how they shape the formation of urban residents’ preferences and practices regarding urban nature and NBS. Drawing together on-going and prospective work in Copenhagen and New York City, I consider the role of spatial-qualitative and place-based methods for identifying "the bad things" in urban nature and residents’ experiences of ambivalence, or the co-occurrence of both positive and negative nature perceptions and experiences. Furthermore, I discuss how the integration of these approaches with other forms of social, spatial, and ecological data through a social-ecological-technological systems analysis can reveal multi-scalar pathways of ambivalent value formation and their role in shaping urban nature preferences and practices. The goal of this analysis is two-fold: (1) to explore methodological possibilities for the integration of large-scale data, participatory digital methods, and ethnographic approaches in research for urban green transitions; and (2) to provide an empirical basis from which to propose a more socially acceptable and just approach to urban NBS planning, design, and management through prioritising living with ambivalence, rather than optimisation.

Picture credits: Beeing