Stephen Woroniecki Profile picture
Social science of climate change & biodiversity. Assist Prof. @LiU_EnvChange. Assoc @NatureBasedSols. Fellow @IPBES Transformative Change 🇸🇪🇬🇧
Oct 22, 2021 5 tweets 6 min read
Today is #Halfearthday2021, a plan to protect 50% of the earth, to stop #biodiversity loss & prevent #climate change. Wow, a plan to #restore the planet: that's hopeful!? Unfortunately, not. There is good science showing this is the wrong direction... 🧵 (1/5) #COP26 #COP15 2/5. Every funder should know that if a Half Earth proposal lands on their desk, there will be social risks. Despite the cosy rhetoric, Fortress Conservation leads to #humanrights abuses. Protecting 50% of the globe could affect >1 billion ppl, per Schleicher et al., 2019
Sep 23, 2020 9 tweets 7 min read
"The recent radical ideas to save nature; namely ‘half earth’ (nature needs half) and ‘new conservation’ further threatens biodiversity conservation and community livelihoods" - Wilhelm Kiwango #pollen20

Challenging the mainstream narrative at this crucial time
#rewilding George Iordachescu highlights the long history of collective management of large forested and pasture areas. #Commons management goes back 1000 years, transcending nature-culture divide and drawing on local #knowledge. Conservation not the main goal (it's #livelihoods) #pollen20
Sep 22, 2020 5 tweets 3 min read
"Market based solutions dominate policy proposals but remain consisently marginal to actually addressing the problems" says @FoleyPfalzgraf, as part of her careful and revealing #POLLEN20 pres:

""Fixing" the Forest in Vanuatu" #carbon #offsetting Foley places a carbon offsetting scheme in Vanuatu as part of a history marked by colonialism, deforestation and depopulation
Sep 22, 2020 6 tweets 3 min read
Interesting take-aways from @elliotjchurst's thought provoking #POLLEN20 presentation "The nature of Nature-based Solutions" @PolEcoNet

1/5 Recognition of multi-scale power inequalities
"our nature is not your solution" 2/5 Elliot introduces three interesting lenses, incl. NbS as infrastructure
Aug 12, 2020 4 tweets 3 min read
A word bandied around - but for those interested, this might be a 'must-read'

progressive.international/blueprint/e6e0… Would love to debate this with you @AChausson @SumeteePahwa @PKashwan @clairefrwordley @TataGonzalez @wendo_hausner! Thanks for sharing @CaroRackete
Aug 4, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Reading Judith Butler's 'Bodies that Matter' and wondering why dominant strains of Green thinking are apparently happy to put up with 'Environment' (as a 'domain of abjection'), as the absence of something, and all that this it entails..
#environmentalhumanities Image To clarify, Butler is here, if I understand correctly, talking about how the disciplinary category of sex (the material dimension of of gender) is key to emerging as a subject (becoming a conscious *somewhere* as a particular subject shaped through the recursive work of power)
Jul 20, 2020 10 tweets 2 min read
Ok here goes: The IPBES global assessment called for Transformative action to confront the nature crisis. Protection and making the economic case didn't feature highly as solutions.

So why is @IPBES working on behalf of an org that advocates these actions, these discourses? There is a lot to say about power when a scientific organisation turns away from the transformative implications of its own scientific synthesis.
Jul 7, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
Melita Samoilys "The coastal people of East Africa see themselves as intimately linked to the seascapes, and we are seeing a Locally Managed Marine Area movement emerging - underpinned by a formalisation process and national legislation." Absolutely critical #NbSdigitaldialogues Image Some accompanying reading material @ecioxford

Kawaka, J.A. Samoilys, M., Murunga, M., Church, J. Abunge, C., Maina, G.W. (2017) Developing Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMAs): lessons learnt from Kenya. Ocean and Coastal Management. 135 (2017) 1-10.

cordioea.net/wp-content/upl…
May 22, 2020 7 tweets 2 min read
'How can we work with nature to move us from business as usual?' glad to hear that Just Rural transition will form part of NBS work in UK ODA related to nature-based solutions. #justtransition #transformation
May 19, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
NUMBER THEATRE ARBOREAL EDITION theguardian.com/environment/20… '3 billion trees' is not a biodiversity strategy @EU_Commission! arc2020.eu/wp-content/upl…
May 14, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read
Susan Chomba talking about the role of ecosystem restoration as part of a green recovery from COVID.. Sue says now when we talk about restoration we are not necessarily talking about forest. Rarely do we mean return to a pristine state. We must be careful fo the restoration through fortress conservation model. Image
May 9, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
Debates about tree planting are not new...

Interesting history by Rangan et al., 2010
#trees #climate #myths #frames Image Rangan, H., Kull, C.A. & Alexander, L. Forest plantations, water availability, and regional climate change: controversies surrounding Acacia mearnsii plantations in the upper Palnis Hills, southern India. Reg Environ Change 10, 103–117 (2010). doi.org/10.1007/s10113…
May 5, 2020 4 tweets 4 min read
Should parks open to enable people access to famine foods during the COVID crisis? In some places the lack of enforcement capacity means this will happen anyway.
@JonnyEcology @clairefrwordley @wendo_hausner @SumeteePahwa @hmirfanullah @lera_miles
theguardian.com/environment/20… It seems to me that "Poaching" is a one size fits all label for what is a very diverse group of activities some of which purely concern people's survival - perhaps an especially unhelpful term during this crisis?
@kamarovobi @gotonura @NeilBurgess081 @TimChristo
Apr 20, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Recommendations to improve ecosystem-based adaptation for practitioners and researchers:
1. Move beyond adaptation as an outside intervention, done by some on behalf of others. Recognise the social-ecological vulnerabilities of a place & its communities. / @Focali_se 2. Consider carefully how projects bring in outside knowledge, expertise and technical skills. How can this knowledge build on already existing knowledge and practice? / Image
Mar 31, 2020 4 tweets 4 min read
With lockdowns happening all over the global south, and affecting many poorer people in the global north, now is the time to start talking about Food Security
aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/k…
@ODIdev @ColinMcQuistan @Natagarabatos
@wendo_hausner @hmirfanullah @SaleemulHuq @MineIslar What kind of questions should we be asking? - open question @N_Kabeer @gotonura @mleach_ids

Save the Children's Food Economy Approach (via Lucy Emerton) asks how do different families in a particular food
economy normally obtain food & non-food
income, in 'good' and 'bad' yrs?
Mar 26, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read
Rich and poor, we are all in this together...right?

I'm reading that a lot now. Maybe you are too.

So are we all in the same boat?

Does the Corona lay our unequal society aside and reduce us to our biology?

Quick thread on inequality inspired by the @IDS_UK blog / In this crisis its tempting to think we're all in the same boat. And that solidarity will stem from a collective recognition of equality.

It's easy when looking at the models to think that Corona strips back our differences, and reduces us all to our biology as human beings..
Jan 23, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read
*Now* - @LUCSUS_LU seminar on plural valuation of nature by Erik-Gomez Baggethun. Erik is a Professor of Environmental Governance at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).

lucsus.lu.se/event/lucsus-s… @LUCSUS_LU Erik asks, how do we confront the hidden value of nature? as recognised prominently in the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment
Nov 8, 2019 8 tweets 7 min read
Net zero. Negative emissions. Offsetting. Climate compensation. Overshoot. This is the new lexicon.

But what does #netzero actually mean? Here are four badly drawn charts showing how different net zero strategies could have very different effects for planet. 🌍 🌲👇🌳👇 1/6 Again sorry about my drawing. In 1st chart, the most extreme, emissions rise and don't come down. Near 2050 enough trees are planted to match the emissions at the year 2050.

Net zero 2050 ☑️
Cumulative emissions +148 net (crude scale according to squares in my notebook). Image
Oct 10, 2019 6 tweets 8 min read
What if #land was held in #trust, a collective right and responsibility, and a gift of stewardship to future generations? What if land was not reduced to exploitation and speculation? What if at each juncture we took the road to restore?
#Itcouldbedifferent #FridaysForFuture ImageImageImageImage @Y4Nature @AChausson @ZuhaibShah003 @SebWillemart @danilourzedo @Env_Reform @RightsResources @ForestRightsAct @Fern_NGO @ChrisGPackham In this struggle, let's enable the voices of those most marginalised and at risk of environmental change

Oct 9, 2019 5 tweets 3 min read
The most insidious function
of power is to convince us that it must be this way, and that this is all there is. In this way, power covers its tracks. The crisis that we face is a crisis of #imagination, shaped by #power.

#Itcouldbedifferent #WhatIf
wp.me/p6Ero0-Q "Many of the worst chapters of this history result from scientism: the ideology that science is the only valid way to understand the world and solve social problems. Where science has expanded and liberated our sense of self, scientism has constrained it."
nature.com/articles/d4158…
May 3, 2019 6 tweets 13 min read
XR I think the work you do is exemplary and inspiring so I am loathe to do this. But my alarm bells are ringing too, as a climate scientist watching XR making waves as part of an ever broader political movement for climate action. So this is meant wholly as constructive 1/6 @bridgetmck @robertpossnett1 @ExtinctionR @ExtinctionR_SV @GreenRupertRead @xr_swerebellion @XRBristol @XR_NYC @XRSwindon @ExtinctionR_DE 2/6 The science that XR uses to make its claims is not widely accepted. The IPCC on the other hand has legitimacy cos of its unique science:policy interface and cos it is the largest scientific undertaking *ever*. Criticism of it should not be done lightly.