In sustainability science, revising the paradigms that separate humans from nature is considered a powerful ‘leverage point’ in pursuit of transformations. The coupled social-ecological and human-environment systems perspectives at the heart of sustainability science have, in many ways, enhanced recognition across academic, civil, policy and business spheres that humans and nature are inextricably connected. However, in retaining substantialist assumptions where ‘social’ and ‘ecological’ refer to different classes of entity that interact, coupled systems perspectives insist on the inextricability of humans and nature in theory, while requiring researchers to extricate them in practice – thus inadvertently reproducing the separation they seek to repair. Consequently, sustainability researchers are increasingly drawing on scholarship from the ‘relational turn’ in the humanities and the social sciences to propose a paradigm shift for sustainability science: away from focusing on interactions between entities, towards emphasizing continually unfolding processes and relations. Yet there remains widespread uncertainty about the origins, promises and challenges of using relational approaches. In this paper, we identify four themes in relational thinking – continually unfolding processes; embodied experience; reconstructing language and concepts; and ethics/practices of care – and highlight the ways in which these are being drawn on in sustainability science. We conclude by critically discussing how relational approaches might contribute to (i) a paradigm shift in sustainability science, and (ii) transformations towards sustainability. Relational approaches foster more dynamic, holistic accounts of human-nature connectedness; more situated and diverse knowledges for decision-making; and new domains and methods of intervention that nurture relationships in place and practice.

Woroniecki, S., C. Wamsler, and E. Boyd. 2019. The promises and pitfalls of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change as a vehicle for social empowerment. Ecology and Society 24(2):4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10854-240204

Climate change vulnerability and social marginalisation are often interrelated in and through environments. Variations in climate change adaptation practice and research account for such social-ecological relations to varying degrees. Advocates of ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation (EbA) claim that it delivers social co-benefits to marginalised groups, although scant empirical evidence supports such claims. I investigate these claims in two EbA interventions in Sri Lanka, interpreting social benefits through an empowerment lens. I use qualitative methods such as focus groups and narrative interviews to study the conduct and context of the interventions. In both cases, marginalised people’s own empowered adaptive strategies reflect how power relations and vulnerabilities relate to dynamic ecologies. The findings show that EbA enabled social benefits for marginalised groups, especially through support to common-pool resource management institutions and the gendered practices of home gardens. Such conduct was embedded within, but mostly peripheral to, broader and deeper contestations of power. Nevertheless, projects acted as platforms for renegotiating these power relations, including through acts of resistance. The results call for greater recognition of the ways that marginalised groups relate to ecology within empowered adaptive strategies, whilst also highlighting the need to recognise the diverse interests and power relations that cut across the conduct and contexts of these nominally ecosystem-based interventions.

We welcome Raymond et al.’s invitation to further discuss the ‘pragmatics’ of relational thinking in sustainability science. We clarify that relational approaches provide distinct theoretical and methodological resources that may be adopted on their own, or used to enrich other approaches, including systems research. We situate Raymond et al.’s characterization of relational thinking in a broader landscape of differing approaches to mobilizing ‘relationality’ in sustainability science. A key contribution of relational thinking in the process-relational, pragmatist and post-structural traditions is the focus on the generation and use of concepts. This focus is proving methodologically useful for sustainability scientists. We caution against viewing the generation of concepts purely in terms of ‘applying the knife’ to ‘divide components.’ Relational thinking offers alternatives more congruent with complexity: away from an ‘external’ actor cutting away at the world with an ‘either/or’ logic, towards an ‘immersed’ actor contributing generatively within it using a ‘both/and not only’ logic. The pragmatics of relational thinking will vary according to purposes. We describe two possible pathways for using relational thinking in research practice – (i) working forwards from relations, and (ii) working backwards from existing concepts – and discuss how relational thinking can contribute to complexity-oriented visions of ‘solutions-oriented sustainability science.’