Infrastructures for the Anthropocene: Nature-based Solutions and the infrastructuralisation of ‘Nature’

From the reintroduction of beavers for natural flood management to the managed grazing of cattle for biodiversity gain, the inclusion - or use - of nonhumans in/as environmental interventions is gaining traction as ‘win-win’ governance techniques for the Anthropocene, associated with a policy turn towards ‘Nature-based Solutions’ (NbS) to climate change and biodiversity loss. NbS are defined by the IUCN as actions that protect, manage, or restore ecosystems while addressing societal challenges (Cohen-Shacham et al., 2016), often involving humans ‘working with nature’ (Seddon et al., 2021). In this talk, I build upon my past critical work on NbS (Welden, 2023; Welden et al., 2021) to consider how the concept necessarily makes ‘Nature’ an infrastructural ‘Solution.’ While infrastructure is ‘conceptually unruly’ (Larkin, 2013), I define it as material relation with (environmental) objects in the (re)production of an organised practice. Weaving together more-than-human geography, political ecology, STS, and biopolitics, this talk outlines my critical typology of the infrastructuralisation of nonhuman bodies: Enrolment, Enmeshment, and Enfleshment, the latter two expanding upon language from Barua’s (2021) ontology of nonhuman infrastructure. This talk tells this infrastructural story through the discursive, material, and labouring lives (and deaths) of nonhuman animals made to be critical infrastructures for the Anthropocene.

Speaker: Annie Welden, UC Berkeley