Project description
Innovative approaches for co-designing robust and just river restoration
River restoration is a key political priority, yet its implementation faces opposition. Different actors have diverging ideas about if and how rivers should be restored. In this context, the MSCA-funded REvive project seeks to investigate river restoration as a politically charged process shaped by multiple ontologies and epistemologies. Focusing on three rivers in Spain, the project aims to generate fresh interdisciplinary insights into the socio-political complexities of river restoration. Through rigorous academic analysis and constructive engagement with local stakeholders, REvive will facilitate restoration design labs, devising methodologies for collaboratively designing equitable and resilient river environments. This ambitious endeavour will emphasise the importance of the ‘politics of design’ and ‘design justice’ for both human and non-human entities.
Objective
Nature and river restoration are high on the political agendas; the EU Biodiversity Strategy and Nature Restoration Law stipulate ambitious goals. However, in practice, river restoration projects – including barrier removal, implementation of ecological baseflows, and others – are contested. Different human and nonhuman actors have diverging ideas about what the future of rivers should look like. Underlying are multiple ontologies about what rivers are, can and should be; and epistemologies that define how rivers can be known. Through innovatively analysing river restoration as a political and contentious encounter of multiple ontologies and epistemologies, this project goes beyond the state-of-the art. Based on the study of restoration initiatives in three rivers in Spain, the project will generate new interdisciplinary knowledge about the complexities of river restoration. Rigorous and critical academic analysis will be combined with the exploration of pathways for constructive engagement: with local actors, the project will organize restoration design labs to develop methodologies for co-designing just and robust river conviviality. The project goes beyond mainstream formats of multi-stakeholder platforms through a focus on the ‘politics of design’ and ‘design justice’ that includes humans and nonhumans alike. This is a highly ambitious undertaking, which is made feasible through a careful methodological and conceptual set-up. The placement at the University of Girona and the secondment at the University of Twente will allow the researcher to develop a wide range of knowledges and professional skills; while she will use the project results and her expertise to stimulate transdisciplinary and critical debate in academia and practice. The non-academic placement with the Catalan Water Agency allows to make the generated scientific knowledge actionable and vice versa, to let action inform continuous knowledge production about just river restoration.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
17004 Girona
Spain