Representatives of IFE SAS were visible at joint 10th International Degrowth Conference and 15th Conference of the European Society of Ecological Economy with the title Science, Technology, and Innovation beyond growth: Cultivating collective creativity for a sustainable future which was held in Pontevedra, Spain (June 18-21). We organized Special session Towards nonanthropocentric nature-based solutions (NBS): Theory, methodology, and policy implications which was divided into two blocks. The special session was chaired by Juha Hiedanpää (LUKE) and Tatiana Kluvánková (IFE SAS), who also contributed by their presentations accompanied by contributions presented by Martin Špaček (CETIP) and Orsolya Lazanyi (ESSRG) as well as participants from our “sister” project TRANSLIGHTHOUSES and other external participants. Each block was attended by about 20 other conference participants who discussed presented multi-species stakeholder approaches to give voice to non-humans in co-creating NBS.

Dr. Martin Špaček and prof. Tatiana Kluvánková

Tatiana presented contribution titled Nature-based governance: Towards non-anthropocentric nature-based solutions (NBS) which created theoretical basis for understanding nature-based governance being both inspired and shaped by nature leading to benefits to humans, non-humans and their shared living environments. Promise of nature-based governance is to recognise better yet hidden perspectives to environmental decision-making to better cope with and respond to ongoing biodiversity and climate crises and give voice to non-humans thus acknowledging the institutional and multi-actor complexity in support of community resilience and sustainability transformation.

Martin continued with jointly prepared presentation titled From nature-based solutions to nature-based governance: behavioural approach to understand human and non-human interactions which was focused on introduction of a behavioural approach as an method to simulate multi-species involvement in nature-based governance. The method applies an algorithm of common pool resource game, originally developed by Elinor Ostrom, to solve social-ecological dilemmas in diverse cultural, ecological and geopolitical settings. Our newly developed role-board game ECOPOLY: TogetherBetter is an interactive agent-based model, which enables to simulate resource dynamics, enable mutual learning and fair collective decision-making by human players stepping into the roles of diverse human and non-human actors. The game is developed in close collaboration between IFE SAS and CETIP.

For more information about the conference see: https://esee-degrowth2024.uvigo.gal/en/