Nature-based solutions as ideological fantasy

Abstract

Michael Gunder’s research demonstrates how spatial planning ideologically promises fullness and harmony in practices which manage subjective lack. Fantasy-constructions, such as ‘sustainability’, serve to sustain capital accumulation and economic growth, often at the expense of sustaining non-human nature. The last decade has witnessed a burgeoning of greenwash terms, including ecosystem services, green infrastructure, envirodevelopment and so on, several of which have been incorporated into the relatively new idiom of nature-based solutions. I explore discourses of nature-based solutions as illusionary ideological fantasy in order to unpack the powerful relationalities reinforced through its proliferation and implementation. I conclude that there is a need to recognise nature-based solutions for the ideological fantasy they are and to generate ways of thinking and acting which begin to traverse this fantasy and confront the real socio-economic-environmental questions of our time.</p