Muddy terrains of environmental expertise

Project title: Muddy terrains of environmental expertise våtmarksrestaurering i tider av klimatförändringar

Project leader: Jenny Lindblad, SoM, KTH
Participants: Kristina Tamm Hallström, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm; Score, Stockholms Universitet & Linda Soneryd, Örebro University; Score, Stockholms Universitet  

Funder: Vetenskapsrådet

Project period: 2025-2027

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 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. By investigating the multiplicity, diversity and ordering of expertise that inform urban restoration, this project seeks to identify dominant knowledge regimes, value conflicts and local ecosystem understandings that underpin contemporary ecosystem restoration. It does so by addressing the overall research question: How is dominant restoration expertise constructed and maintained?

Wetland restoration in Stockholm (Sweden) is the empirical entry point for ethnographic studies of urban restoration expertise in the making. Across three years, the project charts 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. Ultimately, the project contributes with insights into which modes of urban ecosystem restoration that are gaining prominence, and the alternatives of urban water futures that by these are foreclosed and marginalized.