Enablers of justice in the nature-based real estate sector in The Netherlands

Abstract

Nature-based-solutions (NBS) have been proposed as a promising pathway to building resilient, sustainable, and climate-adaptive cities. However, the recent academic scholarship is increasingly becoming aware that the impacts of NBS are not uniformly positive. This is because NBS tends to be costly, require high maintenance, more importantly can result in green gentrification and extend to a wider justice discussion spanning a diverse range of justices, including distributional, procedural, recognition and ecological justice. Therefore, there is a growing need to gain a deeper understanding of the wider justice interaction within the NBS paradigm, and re-orient the NBS implementation to include these justice aspects going forward.

Motivated by the recent emergence of real estate projects that successfully contribute to creating justice and remedying past inequalities, this research pioneers exploration into the intersection of real estate justice in NBS implementation. Through 11 semi-structured interviews from a carefully curated, diverse range of NBS practitioners and field notes from Urban NBS Day 2023 event organized by Utrecht University and Eindhoven University of Technology, this research aims to answer what enables justice in the nature-based real estate sector in The Netherlands.

The results show that receiving government support, harnessing knowledge, robust engagement, conducive organizational management, and partnerships help enable justice in the real estate sector in The Netherlands. This study offers three main contributions to the current academic discussion. First, it provides an overview of the debate on negative impacts of NBS in real estate. Second, it explores the wider justice implications of NBS in the real estate sector. Third, it unveils the factors that enable justice in the nature-based real estate projects. Through evidence, it shows that specific enablers can mitigate or rectify injustices arising from the conventional implementation of NBS in real estate.