Coevolutionary approach to unlock the transformative potential of nature-based solutions for more inclusive and resilient communities

Project Information

COEVOLVERS

Grant agreement ID: 101084220

DOI

10.3030/101084220

EC signature date 17 October 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 October 2026

Funded under

• Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment

Total cost

€ 5 254 627,50

EU contribution

€ 5 254 627,00

Coordinated by

LUONNONVARAKESKUS
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COEVOLVERS (Coevolutionary approach to unlock the transformative potential of nature-based solutions for more inclusive and resilient communities)

Reporting period: 2024-05-01 to 2025-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

COEVOLVERS holds that the most effective way to contribute to an overall transformation in line with the ambitious targets of the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the Restoration Law, and the Climate adaptation strategy entails a radical change in how European societies understand and practice their nature policy and the governance of nature-based solutions (NBS) as a means to it.

Consequently, for COEVOLVERS, the challenge is to understand nature-based solutions as dynamic ecosocial structures, implying that various environmental, economic, social, political, ethical, and cultural features contingently condition their initiation, design, and functioning. This challenge will be addressed through the design and advancement of coevolutionary theory and the engagement of relevant human and nonhuman actors, especially the most vulnerable, with political and administrative actors in seven communities of inquiry (Living Labs) to co-design just NBS governance techniques, models, and practices across Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the second reporting period, the Living Labs have continued their work with local individuals, local stakeholders, and national stakeholders to support inclusive design and the implementation of NBS, contributing to transdisciplinary learning across contexts, disciplines, and project partners. They have strengthened their integrative focus on non-human actors, or earth others, as we also have started to call the non-human partners in our project. For COEVOLVERS, NBS are ‘coevolutionary technology’, co-constructed in a place-sensitive manner, especially with a caring disposition toward vulnerable people and earth others. By identifying the role and significance of affordances, that is, environmental features that fulfil needs and interests of human and nonhuman actors, COEVOLVERS has developed a situated actor-centred approach for NBS design and implementation.

The socio-political situations in seven LLs have been assessed with the overall objective of co-creating, testing, and evaluating NBS for improved governance processes. Existing problematic situations, current institutional arrangements for governing them, and the need for improvements in governance practices have been identified. Various, carefully crafted digital and arts-based methods have been used to solve problems or overcome them. The knowledge gaps and needs across sectors and partner countries have been identified to promote cross-sectoral knowledge exchange and transformative learning toward the actionable synthesis of techniques and governance models. The first aspects of forthcoming Key Exploitable Results are already being disseminated and communicated through various platforms and channels to reach the target audiences. Such results comprise early findings regarding coevolutionary learning, NBS design as a multispecies niche-constrictive practice, understanding of the COEVOLVERS partner countries’ populations’ preparedness to multispecies co-existence, and the consequent and necessary Nature-based Governance mode, and how to turn all these findings into effective DEC and actionable knowledge.

COEVOLVERS has engaged in collaborative, co-creative, i.e. transdisciplinary research, making innovative connections between disciplines and actors from different sectors, and initiating cooperation with the Overseas Cousins in Peru (Piura) and Grenada (Carriacou), as well as two sibling projects. The ethical aspects have been embedded in all activities and explored together within the project partners and the committed Ethical Advisor.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Co-creation & coevolution

COEVOLVERS suggests a radical solution for NBS design and implementation. Instead of approaching NBS design as an engineering task, NBS are being re-conceptualised as co-creative processes that sustain and enrich co-evolutionary potential in and between the ecosystems and human settings. COEVOLVERS’s approach for co-creation has led to considering the creation of a new type of “natureculture”, structures that bring opportunities for both people and nature. This process is conceptualised as naturecultural niche construction. Niche construction is a biological process in which organisms modify their environment in lasting ways that make it more suitable for themselves. While niche construction alters an organism’s own environment, it transforms the environments of other organisms and the selection pressures acting within them, thereby influencing the development and evolution of both the organism’s own species and those of others. Naturecultural niche construction captures spontaneity, creativity, and potentiality in doing and undergoing change toward admired futures. COEVOLVERS addresses the formation of habits and intrinsic values in the long run, gradually changing the aesthetic, ethical, and scientific principles of urban land use planning.

Toward nature-based governance

Governance is typically understood as the coordination of multilayered social relations and processes in the absence of a unifying authority. Governance encompasses a diverse range of approaches that involve stakeholder collaboration, community engagement, and reflexivity to effectively implement environmental and societal solutions. However, understanding and addressing multispecies vulnerabilities in NBS has remained in a blind spot. COEVOLVERS has targeted its work and gained results on the vulnerability-producing circumstances that require specific governance measures to protect the sovereignty, autonomy, and individuality of people, but also non-human agencies in naturecultural niche construction. COEVOLVERS call this approach Nature-Based Governance (NBG). The NBG is a governance mode in which multispecies’ lived environments, affordances, and the admired goals or telos are systematically articulated and brought into the institutional reconfiguration processes responding to the circumstantial life-challenges and multispecies’ justice requirements.

Transdisciplinary collaboration, learning and ethics

COEVOLVERS’ work has been transdisciplinary in all three senses: across disciplines, with practitioners in real-life settings, and in expanding knowledge beyond normal disciplinary boundaries through digital, arts-based, and other co-creative methodologies. Doing research in multispecies settings, especially when focusing on vulnerable and marginalized people and nonhuman animals, raises ethical questions, concerns, and dilemmas. In COEVOLVERS, situational ethical reflection on what is the right thing to do in research or Living Lab settings is continuously practiced to identify, address, and resolve ethical questions.