Taking stock of the diversity of bottom-up biodiversity action

Halting and reversing biodiversity loss calls for ever more substantial efforts across the globe. There is broad consensus that transformative changes are needed. However, in the BIONEXT project, we have learned that transformative change as a concept lacks concreteness (BIONEXT report on a conceptual understanding of transformative change). It often seems to be defined more by what it is not than by what it entails. For example, it is argued that the making of transformative change cannot rest on fragmented, localised actions as those cannot address the scale of the challenges we face. Instead, solutions and interventions should have the capacity to reorganise human-nature relations in radically new ways.

Focusing on overarching, systemic—and typically science-based—solutions may, however, also cause unintended harmful consequences. The appeal for transformative change may be misinterpreted as suggesting that the biodiversity crisis could be solved through ‘top-down’ strategies or centrally defined silver bullet solutions.

To deepen the understanding of the making of transformative change, we in the BIONEXT project have studied the options for change that evolve through bottom-up action. Through interviews, focus group discussions and identification of bottom-up initiatives, we have focused on the diverse ways through which individuals and groups seek to fight biodiversity loss as a part of their everyday work or voluntary activism. The aim was to make visible how differently biodiversity is sought to be made to matter ‘from below’.

Various ways of making biodiversity matter

We categorised bottom-up practices across the civil, market and public spheres in Europe by tracing the different ways in which biodiversity concerns are turned into issues that are attainable for action and intervention. Sometimes this translation may not require substantial effort. For example, in the context of planned road building or forest felling, biodiversity concerns can become highly pertinent and tangible. However, it is also possible that connectedness to biodiversity protection may call for the identification and innovation of specific mediating elements. For instance, when a lawn at a university campus is transformed into a meadow, the lawn is used to carve space for biodiversity. Yet sometimes such carving may rest on less place-specific means, such as on the adaption of a new business model in a company. Biodiversity is then made to matter for economic value-creation and reorganisation of markets.

Based on our analysis of the qualitative data, we identified seven different modes in which biodiversity is rendered an actionable issue. We call these modes of intervention. The modes, and the issue configurations characterising them, are presented in the figure below.

Transformative change from below

Our findings point to the capabilities of bottom-up actors to generate new avenues for the protection and nurturing of biodiversity. Across Europe, actors have invested innovatively both in the empowerment of fellow humans, as well as in the contributions that nature has to offer to support a sustainability transformation. The sorting of the modes of intervention thus helps policymakers, including the bottom-up actors themselves, to learn from, become inspired and engage with innovations and niche solutions. It can also make explicit the critical roles that some grassroots actors have adopted, as the governance bodies have not done their share to foster transformative change.