SCI Annual Lecture with Harriet Bulkeley: Governing with Nature

The lecture will be held on 3rd December from 3pm in the blended theatre 1 (GA.056), Nancy Rothwell building. Tickets are limited and registration is essential to attend the lecture.

There will be a panel chaired by Mat Paterson (SCI/SoSS), with panellists Charis Enns (Global Development Institute), Mike Hodson (SCI/AMBS) and Carly McLachlan (Tyndall Centre). This will be followed by an audience Q&A session and a small reception afterwards in the same location.

Harriet Bulkeley holds joint appointments as Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health and Professor in the Department of Geography, Durham University, and Professor at the Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University. Her research is concerned with the process, practices and politics of environmental governance, and she has particular expertise in the areas of climate change, nature, energy and urban sustainability.

Harriet has published widely, including An Urban Politics of Climate Change (Routledge 2015) and Accomplishing Climate Governance (CUP 2016). She has an extensive record of international collaboration and has served as a co-investigator on multiple interdisciplinary projects working across the social and natural sciences. Harriet currently leads the Horizon Europe NATURESCAPES project (2023 – 2027) examining how nature-based solutions can contribute to biodiversity, climate change and social justice across urban regions globally.

Governing with Nature: towards climate and social justice?

The upsurge of interest in and deployment of nature-based solutions has come with the promise that they hold transformative potential as interventions which are capable of addressing the challenges of the loss of nature, climate change and social justice. Such optimism is based both on a sense of the inherent ‘good’ of nature and the purposeful intent to design interventions that harness the inherent properties of nature towards multiple ends. While nature-based solutions are now to be found across diverse geographies, their growing popularity within the urban realm is particularly notable. Whilst historically cities have been viewed as the antithesis of nature and their governance reliant on the domination and control of environmental systems, the introduction of nature-based solutions into the urban realm heralds a different way of thinking and doing the urban by governing with nature. This talk explores how and why cities have started to bring nature back into the city and what this in turn might tell us about the possibilities of governing with nature towards climate and social justice.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Nancy Rothwell Building, Booth Street East, Manchester, United Kingdom