A Political Ecology of Nature-based Solutions: empirical cases in Spain and Germany

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are increasingly being implemented as tools to sustainably manage stormwater and adapt to floods and droughts, while providing multifunctional benefits to humans and biodiversity. Extensive literature exists on Sustainability Transition Theory (STT), which helps to understand the governance and management dimensions of NbS as a sociotechnical system, but neglects its historical, geographical, and socio-environmental aspects. This thesis aims to gain a critical understanding of NbS from a cross-disciplined approach through Political Ecology (PE) and STT and focuses on the conflicts, environmental justice issues, discursive representations of nature’s role, the uneven production and distribution of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES), and sensitivity to spatial dimensions that are produced when NbS are implemented. This dissertation examines water related NbS through empirical cases of NbS in the Delta of the Tordera River and Barcelona, Spain, and Hannover, Germany. By applying a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods on different urban and peri-urban scales, this thesis examines the different levels of acceptance, perceptions, and perspectives that stakeholders have of NbS. It offers reflections to understand how nature is reframed in the space production of NbS, as results show that stormwater and green spaces are directly related to each other toward ‘greening’ transitions, intensifying pressures to solve existing urban and peri-urban problems. It also provides insights into the new governance schemes associated with NbS and the reasons for disagreement among parties, such as power imbalances, tradeoffs, and intrinsic uneven human-nature relations. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of the nuances of implementing NbS as a political process and argues to redefine a more realistic NbS discourse, and provide platforms for knowledge exchange and discussions to create more just NbS.

Keywords: Nature-based Solutions; Political Ecology; socio-ecological transitions; socio-political analysis; citizenship; participation; Environmental Justice; stormwater.