Equity Framework for NbS
Centering - Awakening - Collaborating - Widening - Composting
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Developing an Equity Framework for Nature-Based Solutions (NbS)* addresses environmental justice-focused organizational needs with a biomimetic lens. Our approach extends environmental justice to eco-justice - i.e., beyond the rights of the human community to the wider "We" of the biosphere. If an equity framework for NbS fails to include the rights and needs of all creation, and in particular, more-than-human actors and beneficiaries, it misses the mark of posthuman insights, innovations, and ethical imperatives.
Socio-diversity mimics biodiversity, complexity, and collaborative processes for a healthier whole.
Calling to the Center
Identifying, Acknowledging, & Inviting the Wider "We"
"Cor ad cor loquitur" means "Heart speaking to heart." Authentic belonging, establishing trust, and calling all stakeholders, marginalized communities, eco-civic, cultural and spiritual leaders, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), as well as listening to the voices and suffering of wild creature-kin, arbor elders, plant-cousins, aqua-, and terra-kin, is paramount to a representative, vibrant Whole.
Awakening to Action
Participation that is Just & Equitable
Equitable participation doesn't happen just when we arrive at the table. Full-sensorial, embodied presencing is required for free, prior, informed consent, learning, re-languaging, and effective communication ("Cor ad cor loquitur"). Activation of each participant's fully embodied self leads to co-creative, equitable solutions for seemingly intractable issues that affect the wider "We."
Full-sensorial receptivity to stimuli - embodied participation leads to adaptive integration.
Symbiotic, eco-systemic health and wholeness require a release of stranglehold by species who fail to prioritize cooperation over domination for the benefit of the whole.
Collaborating From Abundance
Enacting Restorative Justice
Equitable "distribution" of natural resources, benefits and costs contributes to a scarcity assumption that fails to dismantle hierarchical fallacies and oppression. Power imbalance is rectified when eco-systemic cooperation addresses excess, over-consumption, and waste. Sustainable resource "allocation" is reimagined as symbiotic resource exchange that bolsters IPLCs and marginalized communities, including wild-kin.
Widening our "We"
"Justice" for IPLCs & Rights of the Wider "We"
A sociology of knowledge - understanding that the fabric of knowledge is not univocal but perspectival and socially constructed - demands that our concepts of "Justice" expand beyond anthropocentrism to eco-centrism. Human rights in respect to environmental justice are not served by excluding the rights of Nature.
Imitation of Nature requires an acknowledgment of the rights of Nature to exist, fully, in cooperation with, not subservient to the rights of humanity.
Persistent monitoring, full-sensorium integration of stimuli, energy, nutrition, hydration, infestation, or other threats to well-being lead to systemic adaptation and growth.
Composting for Emergent Life
Adapting & Integrating Change
Accountability and bio-feedback loops in Nature preserve inter-species collaboration, conserve energy, compost waste, and evolve life to adapt to environmental change. Transparency in information exchange, consistent monitoring, reviews and course-corrections, conflict resolution, grievance procedures, interactive learning systems, and renewed commitment to the Whole form the basis for integrating what has been learned in order to stimulate new growth and new life.
*Note: See Theodore Tallent & Aiora Zabala, "Social Equity and Pluralism in Nature-based Solutions: Practitioners' Perspectives on Implementation" (Environmental Science and Policy 151, 2024), indicating five core elements in their conceptual equity framework for NbS: Recognition, Participation, Distribution, Rights, and Accountability. They offer this disclaimer: "We structure our framework around five main components which we identified as central to a social equity approach: recognition, participation, distribution, rights and accountability. We limit our framework and research goals to human actors and beneficiaries, considering the widespread anthropocentric focus in the literature on social equity and NbS projects. Future work may give further consideration to equity including non-human actors through alternative empirical approaches to investigate ecojustice."