Rethinking trade-offs in nature-based solutions from a multispecies justice perspective

Katinka Wijsman; Melissa Pineda-Pinto; Simo Sarkki; Charlotte Stijnen; Janneke den Dekker-Arlain; Christopher M Raymond

doi:10.1038/s42949-025-00261-5

Rethinking trade-offs in nature-based solutions from a multispecies justice perspective

NPJ Urban Sustain. 2025;5(1):67. doi: 10.1038/s42949-025-00261-5. Epub 2025 Aug 18.

Authors

Katinka Wijsman¹, Melissa Pineda-Pinto², Simo Sarkki^{3

4}, Charlotte Stijnen¹, Janneke den Dekker-Arlain¹, Christopher M Raymond^{5

6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
² Melbourne Centre for Cities, Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC Australia.
³ Cultural Anthropology Unit, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
⁴ University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany.
⁵ Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁶ Ecosystems and Environment Research Program, Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
⁷ Department of Economics and Management, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract

Trade-offs in nature-based solutions are increasingly recognized, with novel research interrogating their justice implications. Yet, these trade-offs and justice implications remain entrenched in an anthropocentric orientation, which is problematic in ecological and ethical terms. We discuss four common assumptions on trade-offs in NBS (instrumentalism, neutrality of science, collaborative consensus, and unitemporality) and rethink them through a multispecies justice lens, maintaining that dealing with trade-offs is a form of interspecies politics.

Keywords: Environmental social sciences; Environmental studies.

Publication types

Review