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Stewardship in an urban world: Civic engagement and human–nature relations in the Anthropocene
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Stockholm Resilience Centre.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6300-0572
2017 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Never before have humans wielded a greater ability to alter and disrupt planetary processes. Our impact is becoming so noticeable that a new geological epoch has been proposed – the Anthropocene – in which Earth systems might no longer maintain the stable and predictable conditions of the past 12 millennia. This is particularly evident in the rapid expansion of urban areas, where a majority of humans now live and where environmental changes such as rising temperatures and habitat loss are happening faster than elsewhere.  In light of this, questions have been raised about what a more responsible relationship between humans and the rest of the planet might look like. Scholars in sustainability science employ the concept of ‘stewardship’ in searching for an answer; however, with multiple different applications and definitions, there is a need to better understand what stewardship is or what novelty it might add to sustainability research. This thesis investigates stewardship empirically through two case studies of civic engagement for protecting nature in cities – Bengaluru, India and New York City, USA. Further, the thesis also proposes a conceptual framework for how to understand stewardship as a relation between humans and the rest of nature, based on three dimensions: care, knowledge and agency. This investigation into stewardship in the urban context uses a social–ecological systems approach to guide the use of mixed theory and methods from social and natural sciences. The thesis is organized in five papers. Paper I reviews defining challenges in managing urban social–ecological systems and proposes that these can more effectively be addressed by collaborative networks where public, civic, other actors contribute unique skills and abilities. Paper II and Paper III study water resource governance in Bengaluru, a city that has become dependent on external sources while its own water bodies become degraded and depleted.Paper II analyzes how locally based ‘lake groups’ are able to affect change through co-management arrangements, reversing decades of centralization and neglect of lakes’ role in Bengaluru’s water supply.Paper III uses social–ecological network analysis to analyze how patterns in lake groups’ engagements and collaborations show better fit with ecological connectivity of lakes.Paper IV employs sense of place methods to explore how personal bonds to a site shapes motivation and goals in waterfront stewardship in New York City. Finally,Paper V reviews literature on stewardship and proposes a conceptual framework to understand and relate different uses and underlying epistemological approaches in the field. In summary, this thesis presents an empirically grounded contribution to how stewardship can be understood as a human–nature relation emergent from a deep sense ofcare and responsibility, knowledge and learning about how to understand social–ecological dynamics, and theagency and skills needed to influence these dynamics in a way that benefits a greater community of humans as others. Here, the care dimension is particularly important as an underappreciated aspect of social–ecological relations, and asset for addressing spatial and temporal misalignment between management institutions and ecosystem. This thesis shows that care for nature does not erode just because green spaces are degraded by human activities – which may be crucial for promoting stewardship in the Anthropocene.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University , 2017.
Keywords [en]
agency, Bengaluru, boundary object, care, civil society, community, environmental ethics, knowledge, natural resource management, New York City, problem of fit, rigidity trap, sense of place, social–ecological system, urbanization, water governance
National Category
Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences Oceanography, Hydrology and Water Resources Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Research subject
Sustainability Science
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-146193ISBN: 978-91-7649-933-7 (print)ISBN: 978-91-7649-934-4 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-146193DiVA, id: diva2:1137130
Public defence
2017-10-13, Vivi Täckholmssalen (Q-salen), NPQ-huset, Svante Arrhenius väg 20, Stockholm, 09:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Mistra - The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental ResearchSida - Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, AKT-2010-046
Note

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.

Available from: 2017-09-20 Created: 2017-08-30 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. Stewardship in Urban Landscapes
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Stewardship in Urban Landscapes
2017 (English)In: The Science and Practice of Landscape Stewardship / [ed] Claudia Bieling, Tobias Plieninger, Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 219-221Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge University Press, 2017
National Category
Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Research subject
Natural Resources Management
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-144642 (URN)10.1017/9781316499016.023 (DOI)9781316499016 (ISBN)
Available from: 2017-06-27 Created: 2017-06-27 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved
2. Against the current: rewiring rigidity trap dynamics in urban water governance through civic engagement
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Against the current: rewiring rigidity trap dynamics in urban water governance through civic engagement
2016 (English)In: Sustainability Science, ISSN 1862-4065, E-ISSN 1862-4057, Vol. 11, no 6, p. 919-933Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This paper investigates how the agency of local residents can affect persistent and unsustainable practices in urban water supply governance. Using a case study from Bangalore, India, we analyze a social-ecological trap which developed after a shift to external water provision paired with rapid urbanization. The reluctance of forsaking initial investments in infrastructure and competence, and the subsequent loss of the local network of lakes built for harvesting rainwater, reinforced dependence on external sources while undermining groundwater levels in the city. These feedbacks made water scarcity a structurally persistent feature of Bangalore. This situation started to change when local residents recently started organizing to preserve and restore Bangalore's lakes. By entering collaborative management agreements with municipal authorities, these lake groups have restored and established effective protection of five lakes. Through a case study of this civic engagement we show that the lake restorations have the potential to counteract trap mechanisms by restoring ecological functions, and by reducing water scarcity as groundwater levels rise and authorities are relieved from maintenance and monitoring tasks. Importantly, these lake groups have also created opportunities for over a dozen similar groups to form across the city. This demonstrates that social movements can be an important source of change in social-ecological traps.

Keywords
Agency, Bangalore, India, Environmental governance, Social-ecological systems, Social movements, Urbanization
National Category
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Research subject
Natural Resources Management
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-136280 (URN)10.1007/s11625-016-0377-1 (DOI)000386378100007 ()
Available from: 2016-12-05 Created: 2016-12-01 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved
3. Enhancing social–ecological fit from the bottom up: Urban lake networks and grassroots innovators
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Enhancing social–ecological fit from the bottom up: Urban lake networks and grassroots innovators
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Urban environmental governance is often hampered by social institutions being poorly aligned with fragmented ecosystems. Bottom-up approaches have been argued to address this problem of social-ecological fit, but there is a lack of empirical understanding of how local initiatives might emerge and spread in a way that enhances fit. We study a system of hydrologically interconnected lakes in Bengaluru, which public authorities have largely failed to protect resulting in many degraded lakes and undermined societal and ecological benefits that the system of lakes provides. Local residents have, largely in response to these failures, formed lake groups and convinced municipal actors to recognize them as partners that share management responsibilities for certain lakes. These initiatives have inspired others to follow suit and work with lakes elsewhere in the city, hence triggering the question whether local lake groups in this way contribute to a better social–ecological fit at a broader landscape scale. This study mixes quantitative social–ecological network analysis with interviews to analyze fit and describe the processes by which lake management can be shaped to match ecosystem structure. Results show that certain key lake groups – enabled by supportive municipal officers – have successfully innovated how lakes are managed, acknowledging their place in and dependence on the broader network of interconnected lakes. In the wake of this, a new generation of collaborative lake groups is emerging, where lakes are often managed more holistically by recognizing them to be part of the larger network of lakes. The analysis identifies key lake groups that are instrumental to shaping the spread of the bottom-up driven initiatives in ways that aligns with the interconnected nature of the lake system. This is a process that relies on acknowledgement and support from public authorities, but is primarily driven by local actors. By describing this process of innovation and diffusion, the study contributes important lessons on how to enhance fit between governance arrangements and the ecosystem on which cities depend.

Keywords
Bengaluru, India, local actors, global South, problem of fit, social–ecological systems, urban sustainability
National Category
Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Research subject
Natural Resources Management
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-144643 (URN)
Funder
Sida - Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, AKT-2010-046Mistra - The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research
Available from: 2017-06-27 Created: 2017-06-27 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved
4. Pathways to urban environmental stewardship: Sense of place and civic engagement for urban waterfronts
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Pathways to urban environmental stewardship: Sense of place and civic engagement for urban waterfronts
(English)Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Participation of local residents is considered beneficial for urban environmental stewardship, but the understanding of how urban stewards relate to the places they work with is poorly developed. This study of civic groups working to steward urban waterfronts challenges the notion that stronger attachment drives deeper commitment to stewardship. The study looks at three types of groups doing stewardship work on waterfronts and water bodies in New York City: community groups, environmental groups and recreational groups. Using interviews and Likert scale surveys (n=31), we assessed stewardship activities, place attachment and place meanings that members associate with site that each group works with. Our findings show that community group members are more attached to the sites they work with than members of environmental or recreational groups, but environmental groups report the greatest effort put into stewardship work. Further, we show that place meanings reveal different categories of groups based on how they currently view the site (as a place of work, a place of home, or a place of use), and what they want to achieve for it in their stewardship work: some groups work to restore what the place was previously, others work to protect what it currently is, while a few work to create a new identity for their place. These findings demonstrate how pathways to stewardship differ and are not dependent on strong place attachment; however, they can generate fundamentally different outcomes depending on what place meanings stewardship seeks to protect.

Keywords
civil society, human-nature relations, New York City, place attachment, place meanings, urban social-ecological systems
National Category
Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
Research subject
Natural Resources Management
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-146189 (URN)
Funder
Mistra - The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research
Available from: 2017-08-25 Created: 2017-08-25 Last updated: 2022-02-28Bibliographically approved
5. Stewardship as a boundary object for sustainability research: Linking care, knowledge and agency
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Stewardship as a boundary object for sustainability research: Linking care, knowledge and agency
Show others...
2018 (English)In: Landscape and Urban Planning, ISSN 0169-2046, E-ISSN 1872-6062, Vol. 179, p. 17-37Article, review/survey (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Current sustainability challenges - including biodiversity loss, pollution and land-use change require new ways of understanding, acting in and caring for the landscapes we live in. The concept of stewardship is increasingly used in research, policy and practice to articulate and describe responses to these challenges. However, there are multiple meanings and framings of stewardship across this wide user base that reflect different disciplinary purposes, assumptions and expertise, as well as a long history of use in both academic and lay contexts. Stewardship may therefore be considered a 'boundary object'; that is, a conceptual tool that enables collaboration and dialogue between different actors whilst allowing for differences in use and perception. This paper seeks to map out the multiple meanings of stewardship in the literature and help researchers and practitioners to navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with using the term. We provide the first qualitative systematic review of stewardship, and identify four distinct meanings of the concept in the literature: Ethic, Motivation, Action and Outcome. We then develop a novel framework for thinking through and connecting these multiple meanings, centered around three dimensions: care, knowledge and agency. This framework is used to identify the care dimension and relational approaches as important areas for future stewardship research. In these efforts - and for scholars engaging with the stewardship concept more broadly - this paper can act as a helpful 'centering device', connecting practitioners, policy-makers and researchers from multiple disciplines in pursuit of sustainability.

Keywords
Anthropocene, Environmental ethics, Human-nature relations, Literature review, Natural resource management
National Category
Biological Sciences Social and Economic Geography Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Research subject
Sustainability Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-160999 (URN)10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.07.005 (DOI)000444927200002 ()
Available from: 2018-10-15 Created: 2018-10-15 Last updated: 2022-03-23Bibliographically approved

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Enqvist, Johan

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