Ethnographies of changing and competing knowledge of wetland restoration in times of climate change

The project examines what expertise about wetlands that is produced, requested and granted legitimacy and authorship through the ways in which planning processes deal with watery terrains and ecosystem restoration. Such processes are particularly challenging in the social, ecological and governance complexities of urban areas where restoration of freshwater ecosystems takes form through struggles among expertise drawing on competing value frameworks variously privileging issues such as climate adaptation, biodiversity, water purification, recreation, and property values.

Background and research questions:

Freshwater is an increasingly acute issue for cities in the context of the multifaceted climate crisis. In response to this, restoration of freshwater urban ecosystems such as wetlands is gaining momentum. However, restoration is far from straightforward, as diverse ways of knowing, valuing and living with ecosystems are at stake in claims about imperatives for their remaking on the ground. The project seeks to identify dominant knowledge regimes, value conflicts and local ecosystem understandings that underpin contemporary ecosystem restoration by addressing the following questions:

• What different understandings about specific wetland sites are produced, and through what means is this done, in the planning and performing of restoration interventions?
• What relations of consensus and competition exist across the identified wetland understandings and value frameworks?
• How are various understandings and value frameworks sorted in and out from restoration interventions, and on what grounds?

The project contributes to the critical scholarly work by exploring the mechanisms of ecosystem restoration actions and other forms of environmental management through which unsustainabilities are sustained and hegemonic relationships cemented.

Research approach:

Wetland restoration in the Stockholm region is the empirical entry point for ethnographic studies of urban restoration expertise in the making, charting the local, social and

material contingencies through which such expertise is produced, and informs restoration action, and inaction. Key methods are walking interviews with professionals involved in municipal restoration interventions, and observations and interviews at national policy events gathering urban water expertise.

Further information:

The project, running in 2025–2028, is funded by the Swedish Research Council.