FairNature: embedding justice in the scaling of NbS

Although NbS have shown promising results in some contexts, concerns over justice arise as stakeholders are likely to be affected in different ways, resulting in an unequal distribution of costs and benefits. Such concerns could be amplified when scaling NbS across contexts and places. Addressing this problem will have a positive impact on climate change mitigation and improve biodiversity and human well-being.

FairNature is composed of a consortium of six European universities and research institutes and works in collaboration with a diverse range of stakeholders in six case studies in Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Spain. In addition to ICTA-UAB, consortium consists of the Instituut Natuur- en Bosonderzoek (INBO, Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Belgium), HOGENT (Belgium), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Université Grenoble Alpes (France), Environmental Social Science Research Group (ESSRG, Hungary), Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM-VU, the Netherlands) and the Ecologic Institute (Germany).

FairNature will develop a framework to support practitioners to scale NbS in a just and fair manner to foster transformative change, biodiversity protection, and societal well-being. The project thoroughly consider the political, organizational, and cultural contexts which impact people and their communities.  Principally, the work will be determined by the needs of stakeholders. In the action cases, scientits will collect knowledge and information from various sources to consider environmental justice implications and evaluate what the current solutions in place are, their efficiency and success, and their potential for just scaling over a wider geographical range.

The research is driven by stakeholders’ needs and their involvement and collaboration with the project. The project will ensure that those who are most affected by the work take part in the decision-making and execution of it. The project follows an innovative reflexive learning approach in which stakeholders and scientists collaborate within, between and beyond the six case studies in reflexive labs.

In the study, researchers will distinguish between scaling up (to higher policy levels), scaling down (reallocating necessary resources), scaling out (replicating over a wider special scale), scaling in (ensuring to have the institutional infrastructure in place), and scaling deep (changing norms, beliefs, values, and practices). When referring to justice, it's understood as having three clear dimensions: procedural (fairness in the decision-making process), distributive (fairness in distribution of resources), and recognition (acknowledging diverse values and voices of stakeholders).

The goal is to co-create a framework (the ‘FairNature Guide’) to support multi-level NbS practitioners in achieving just scaling of NbS for just transformative change.