On March 7th, MUST researchers met with stakeholders from the Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Agriculture, Metsähallitus, Tampere City and Region, Lappeenranta City and Turku City to discuss options for incorporating multispecies justice in nature-based solutions (NBS) planning.
We invited our stakeholders to respond to questions such as whose voices and needs are missing in NBS planning, how can we include them in the discussion, and what would this look like going forward?
Important discussion themes included:
- Need to create new methods to hear the voices of humans and other species which are not commonly represented in environmental decision-making
- Importance of a new legal basis for recognizing and acting on biodiversity conservation across sectors, including possibilities for a new framework legislation
- The challenges of representing shifting baselines in biodiversity to different societal actors, as well as the consequences of these on wellbeing
- How to deal with invasive species using the concept of multispecies justice
- How to shift understanding of rights and responsibilities for the use and protection of nature so as to represent and give agency to other species
As we concluded the workshop session, we also set clear actions for involving our stakeholders in future MUST Forum events.
These biannual events will bring together our stakeholders to discuss a chain of topical issues in multispecies justice.
More information on future events will follow.
In response to the widely shared sentiment of the importance and newness of multispecies justice, we would like to share the four introductory keynotes as podcasts.
Please click on the following links to listen to these podcasts by MUST lead researchers summarizing their expertise:
Overview of the MUST project – Christopher Raymond
Multispecies and EU Environment Legislation – Jonathan Carruthers-Jones
Multispecies justice, nature-based solutions and wellbeing – Nora Fagerholm
How do multispecies approaches differ to traditional ecological approaches? – Maria Hällfors
To receive a PDF of the PowerPoint presentation from the MUST March 7th 2024 Forum, click on the button below:
