"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 (Toxopeus et al., 2020). 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."
In his presentation, Arjen Buijs (Wageningen University) emphasizes the importance of urban green and that's effect on mental and physical wellbeing. Unfortunately, urban green space is not distributed equally in cities: environmental justice is a big issue. There are three different dimensions of environmental justice:
Distributional justice: Equal distribution of green space and its benefits (De Vries et al, 2020)
Recognition justice: Use, access and suitability to needs and preferences (Kloek et al, 2018)
Procedural justice: Decisionmaking & governance
Arjen introduces the concept of 'Mosaic governance' which entails an interactive governance & mosaic landscapes & practices (Buijs et al 2019) and shares multiple examples of contribitions to environmental justice.
Presentation by Arjen Buijs (Wageningen University)
AMS Institute, Scientific conference 'Reinventing the City -Blueprints for messy cities? Navigating the interplay of order and complexity' The Old & New City (Diversity & Inclusion) - 23 April 2024
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Arjen E.Buijs, Natalie M.Gulsrud, RominaRodela, Alan P.Diduck, Alexander P.N.van der Jagt, Christopher M.Raymond (2024) Advancing environmental justice in cities through the Mosaic Governance of nature-based solutions. Cities, 147, Article 104799.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2024.104799
Buijs, A.E. et al. (2019) Mosaic governance for urban green infrastructure: upscaling active citizenship from a local government perspective. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening Volume 40,April 2019, Pages 53-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2018.06.011
de Vries S, Buijs AE, Snep RPH. (2020) Environmental Justice in The Netherlands: Presence and Quality of Greenspace Differ by Socioeconomic Status of Neighbourhoods. Sustainability. 12(15):5889. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12155889
Frantzeskaki, N.,et al . 2016. "Elucidating the changing roles of civil society in urban sustainability transitions." Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 22:41-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2017.04.008
Kloek, M. E., Buijs, A. E., Boersema, J. J., & Schouten, M. G. C. (2018). Cultural echoes in Dutch immigrants’ and non-immigrants’ understandings and values of nature. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 61(5–6), 818–840. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2017.1319803
Icon image: Presentation 'Mosaic governance and environmental governance: Can civil society contribute to inclusive transformations?' by Arjen Buijs (AMS Institute Scientific Conference Reinventing the City, April 23, 2024)
