Confronting the ecology of crisis The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation and empowerment Woroniecki, Stephen 2020 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Woroniecki, S. (2020). Confronting the ecology of crisis: The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation and empowerment . (1 ed.). Lund University. Total number of authors: 1 Creative Commons License: Other General rights Unless other specific re-use rights are stated the following general rights apply: Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Read more about Creative commons licenses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 STEPHEN WORONIECKI STEPHEN Confronting the ecology of crisis Confronting the ecology crisis of In a warming and highly unequal world, people are searching for integrated, holistic solutions that can move beyond the siloes of social or environmental sustainability. In this context, there are tendencies, even in research, to assume that green is good, and that green is fair. Against this backdrop, nature based solutions to climate change have risen to prominence as a go to approach for delivery of win-win solutions when it comes to social change and empowerment of vulnerable groups. In this thesis I focus on Nature-based Solutions to Climate Change Adaptation in Sri Lanka. Using a power-based analysis, I explore the potential of such solutions to facilitate empowerment Confronting the ecology of crisis of the most climate-vulnerable groups. I locate some promises and pitfalls of these solutions, and make some suggestions how they can better acknowledge The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation social relations and processes. and empowerment Stephen Woroniecki is an interdisciplinary scientist STEPHEN WORONIECKI interested in understanding the social and the natural LUCSUS | FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES | LUND UNIVERSITY dimensions of climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainability. He has a background in ecology, and conservation, and resilience, having studied in Edinburgh, Stockholm, and Lund. LUND UNIVERSITY CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR INTEGRATION OF SOCIAL AND NATURAL DIMENSIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY (LUCID) LUCID was a Linnaeus Centre at Lund University. It was funded by the Swedish Research Council Formas, comprised six disciplines from three faculties and was coordinated by LUCSUS as a faculty independent research centre. The research aimed at the integration of social and natural dimensions of sustainability in the context of grand sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity and land use change. LUCSUS Faculty of Social Sciences 2020 ISBN: 978-91-7895-402-5 Confronting the ecology of crisis The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation and empowerment Stephen Woroniecki DOCTORAL DISSERTATION by due permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University, Sweden. To be defended at LUCSUS, Lund University. Date 7th February 2020 and time 10:15 am. OPPONENT: Professor Mark Pelling, King’s College London 1 Organization Document nam: Doctoral dissertation LUND UNIVERSITY Date of issue: 7th Februrary 2020 Author: Stephen Woroniecki Sponsoring organization: LUCSUS Title: Confronting the ecology of crisis; The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation and empowerment Abstract Nature-based solutions (NBS) focus on the material functioning of ecosystems as part of a transformative response to societal challenges. NBS represent a growing response to climate change with a range of interventions emerging across the world to address the causes and effects of climate change. The adoption of NBS is claimed to address a range of Sustainable Development Goals, including empowerment of marginalised people (Goals 10 and 15). In this thesis, I investigate these claims within the context of climate change adaptation. More specifically, I ask if and how ecosystem-based approaches (EBA) to climate change adaptation, as a type of NBS, empower vulnerable and marginalised groups. Four papers are presented that draw respectively on systematic review, conceptual synthesis, empirical, and comparative study. The empirical findings are from two sites in Sri Lanka with a range of climate vulnerabilities. Paper I systematically reviews adaptation case studies to show how empowerment can arise in an adaptation context amidst broader power relations. Paper II demonstrates theoretically the bounded and overlapping roles of EBA and empowerment. In Paper III, I show that EBA have the potential to support people’s empowered adaptive strategies amidst broader transformation of social-ecological relations, but this potential is presently constrained. In the studied cases, the dominant mode of EBA action as intervention limited the ability to support people’s empowered adaptive strategies. Across these papers, I demonstrate that frames embedded in EBA shape the institutional and material dimensions of these actions, becoming central to their capacity to support empowerment. Frames are discursive dimensions of power, or dominant modes of expression, that prefigure outcomes for who is empowered or disempowered through EBA initiatives. In Paper IV, I find that frames of EBA appear to reinforce assumptions of the passive dependency of marginalised people on ES. Further, the way that EBA is framed in biophysical terms may empower external experts and interventions, and lend authority to the knowledge claims of natural scientists. The papers collectively show that current frames of EBA do not make visible the social processes of adaptation or the predominant manner in which EBA is implemented as an intervention. These blind spots have consequences for empowerment since these frames hide people’s diverse and situated social-ecological knowledge, subjectivities, and agencies – aspects which better represent the ways in which people and ecologies emerge in co-evolutionary processes, including through responses to climate change. Confronting the issue of people being left out of the picture in NBS to climate change will entail a sizeable shift in the science and practice of these approaches. This turn would be facilitated by sustainability scientists acknowledging their position in power relations, confronting governance and equity issues in nominally benign solutions, and letting go of problematic assumptions about the relationships between people and nature. Key words; empowerment; power; nature-based solutions, climate change adaptation, ecosystem-based adaptation; sustainability science; frames, reflexivity; ecosystem services; transformation Classification system and/or index terms (if any) Supplementary bibliographical information Language: English Key title: Lund dissertations in sustainability science number 21 ISBN: 978-91-7895-402-5 (print) 978-91-7895-403-2 (pdf) Recipient’s notes Number of pages: 122 Price Security classification I, the undersigned, being the copyright owner of the abstract of the above-mentioned dissertation, hereby grant to all reference sources permission to publish and disseminate the abstract of the above-mentioned dissertation.Signature Date 2019-12-09 2 Confronting the ecology of crisis The interlinked roles of ecosystem-based adaptation and empowerment Stephen Woroniecki 3 All photos taken by the author Copyright pp 1-xx (Stephen Woroniecki) Paper 1 © John Wiley and Sons. Reproduced under licence agreement Paper 2 CC-BY-NC 4.0 Ecology and Society, Resilience Alliance Paper 3 CC-BY-NC 4.0 Sustainability, MDPI Paper 4 Manuscript unpublished Faculty of Social Sciences Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) Lund dissertations in sustainability science number 21 ISBN: 978-91-7895-402-5 (print) ISBN: 978-91-7895-403-2 (pdf) Printed in Sweden by Media-Tryck, Lund University Lund 2020 4 “Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” – David Mitchell ”A tree is a little bit of the future” – Franck Prévot 5 Table of Contents Papers included in this PhD ............................................................................ 8 Other relevant publications ............................................................................. 8 Abstract ........................................................................................................... 9 Prologue .............................................................................................................. 11 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 15 Nature-based responses to societal challenges ................................................. 15 Ecosystem-based adaptation and