Rethinking NBS with marginalised economic knowledge: towards a transformative diversity

Lemaître, Andreia;Callorda Fossati, Ela;Ruiz Rivera, Maria José;Anya Umsteva;José Luis Fernandez-Pacheco;et.al.
(2024) 4th International Conference Social and Solidarity Economy and the Commons. Beyond the “Decarbonization Consensus”: The Ethics.. — Location: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Iscte - Lisbon) (13.November.2024)

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Abstract
Nature-based solutions (NBS) are “actions inspired by, supported by or copied from nature […] aiming to help societies address a variety of environmental, social and economic challenges in sustainable ways.” (European Commission, 2015: 5 & 24). This widespread definition should not obscure the contested character of the concept. A clear manifestation of contestation lies in the call “No to Nature-Based Solutions Dispossessions!” (2021). Contestation is also reflected in recent critical reviews (e.g., Anguelovski and Corbera, 2023; Remme and Haarstad, 2022; Kiss et al., 2022) pointing to the need to pay greater attention to justice concerns and deeper forms of participation. Moreover, early EU-funded research on NBS has overlooked the sociopolitics of NBS (Harriet Bulkeley, 2020). Against this background, TRANS-lighthouses (More than green - Lighthouses of transformative nature-based solutions for inclusive communities) is an EU-funded research project rethinking the sociopolitics of NBS across different landscapes (urban, rural, forestry, and coastal) while experimenting with a set of NBS initiatives in Europe. The project aims to deepen transdisciplinarity by establishing a wide community of practice (including universities, municipalities, civil society, and Southern associated partners from different continents) on critical and pragmatic approaches to NBS. This contribution presents the conceptual framework (CF) of TRANS-Lighthouses from a socioeconomic angle. The CF builds on the sociology of absences and of emergences, a methodological tool and epistemological operation to recognize marginalised knowledge (Santos, 2014). It focuses on identifying invisible actors and conditions that make counter-hegemonic social experiences absent and close the horizon of possible alternative futures (Santos, 2014). The angle taken addresses absences and emergences over what can be understood as “the economy”. We explore absences in mainstream NBS discourses and introduce what we call “Five building blocks of transformative economies beyond extractivism”: Non-extractivist economies, Substantive-transformative economies, Solidarity economies, Caring economies and Indigenous economies. All address system changes in human-nature relations and socio-ecological justice concerns. After explaining such heuristic choices and presenting each building block and their implications for NBS, we discuss the challenges they pose together, in combination, as an attempt to provide another (counter-hegemonic) imaginary and to open up new avenues of research in this field.
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Lemaître, A., Callorda Fossati, E., Ruiz Rivera, M. J., Anya Umsteva, Jonas Egmose, Beatriz Caitana, & José Luis Fernandez-Pacheco. (2024). Rethinking NBS with marginalised economic knowledge: towards a transformative diversity. 4th International Conference Social and Solidarity Economy and the Commons. Beyond the “Decarbonization Consensus”: The Ethics.., Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Iscte - Lisbon). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/273628