Urban stream restoration and justice: Integrating political ecology and coupled natural-human systems frameworks

Keywords: Urban stream restoration, coupled natural-human systems, political ecology, environmental justice
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 74

Abstract

Urban streams are hybrid socio-ecological entities, and an important focus in ecological restoration, municipal planning, and social justice. Much research has documented these frequently overused and degraded systems relative to their nonurban counterparts (e.g., expressions of the “urban stream syndrome”), and their potential, if restored, to deliver ecological and social benefits. Ecosystem services provided by urban streams include improved water quality, flood regulation, biodiversity benefits through the provision of habitat for wildlife and stream biota, establishment of landscape connectivity and riparian zones, and cultural services such as recreation and sense of place. Urban streams and restoration efforts are also sites of environmental injustice, reflecting structures of dispossession, inequity, and hazards. Thus, a growing body of work, including in urban political ecology, has examined equity, participation and justice in urban stream restoration.

Ecological and political-ecological studies of urban stream restoration – and its goals, processes and outcomes – are nearly as variable and complex as streams themselves. We undertake a representative review of the literature on urban stream restoration to examine their similarities and differences in ecological and social justice outcomes. To that end, we examine how a coupled natural human (CNH) and complex systems framework might help us understand disparate outcomes. Specifically, we examine to what degree case studies consider key characteristics of complex CNH systems: heterogeneity, feedbacks, nonlinearities and thresholds, surprise, and legacies. Focusing on these properties can shed new light on the contexts of variably successful restoration efforts, and on pathways to restoring socio-hydrological resilience in urban places.