Exploring the Amplification of Nature-Based Climate Solutions in Urban Canada: A Comparative Case Study

Abstract

As cities navigate increasingly severe impacts from interrelated climate, biodiversity and socioeconomic crises, nature-based climate solutions (NBCS) are increasingly promoted across research, policy and practice as compelling multi-solving approaches that conserve, restore, and steward natural places and processes for social-ecological benefit. Yet their implementation is often limited to small-scale pilots and short-lived programs. While scholarship has examined how to accelerate and scale urban NBCS, less is known about the conditions through which their impacts are amplified within and across urban contexts, particularly in Canada. This thesis investigates the pathways and governance conditions of urban NBCS amplification through a comparative case study of Vancouver and Halifax. In abductively analyzing 20 key informant interviews alongside policy and planning documents, I developed two manuscripts which: 1) map the pathways of how NBCS initiatives are amplified beyond their initial scope; and 2) identify what are the structural governance conditions that determine if and how these initiatives are amplified. The first manuscript shows that amplification follows non-linear, multidimensional, and recursive pathways involving multiple actors over time. It also introduces enriching as a new type of amplification to capture how initiatives increase their impact through a broader diversity of co-benefits. The second manuscript highlights that the context sensitivity of NBCS includes where in the organizational structure they are operated from. Structural barriers are identified as products of how complexes of governance conditions interact, as well as strategies that can catalyze how these complexes are reconfigured for advancing amplification. By empirically analyzing how urban NBCS are governed and amplified across scales and contexts, this study advances theoretical and practical understanding of how NBCS can shape and are shaped by urban regimes, and how they can contribute to transforming urban Canada towards positive futures.