Resource Management and Geography - Theses
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ItemExamining the role that vegetation plays in inducing the deposition of fine sediment in Southeastern Queensland river corridors( 2020)Southeastern Queensland river corridors have a fine sediment problem, causing temporary water shortages to the Brisbane Metropolitan area during Cyclone Oswald in 2013, as well as edging Moreton Bay closer to a permanently turbid state, threatening seagrass, corals and important fisheries. One possible solution is revegetating rivers corridor in order to trap fine sediment and reduce its delivery into water supply reservoirs and Moreton Bay. This thesis examines the influence of shrubby vegetation on the deposition of fine sediment on benches and floodplains along rivers. Most researchers just assume that it is very effective at doing so and some argue that riparian shrubs world wide have actually evolved specific traits to induce the deposition of fine sediment and act as ‘ecosystem engineers’ (Corenblit et al., 2015). In doing so these ecosystem engineer plants construct fine sediment landforms in a river, and thus, create their own ecological niches. However, biogeomorphic ecosystem engineering has never been described in the subtropics, nor have studies illustrated that the above ground biomass density of riparian vegetation can actually induce the deposition of fine sediment during flows. Furthermore, though conceptual frameworks for the distribution of different biogeomorphic interactions have been developed (Gurnell et al., 2016), this framework has not been applied quantitatively to explain the distribution of biogeomorphic interactions due to the flow regime, geomorphic context, and biogeomorphic traits. Additionally, the construction of fine grained landforms by vegetation is dependent on the supply of fine sediment, and no studies on the subject have examined the patterns of incoming SS on the effectiveness of floodplains and vegetation as fine sediment filters. My thesis addresses these gaps outlined above, where I test the validity of this ecosystem engineering model in Southeastern Queensland river corridors for two rheophytic shrub/ tree species, Meleleuca bracteata and Casuarina cunninghamiana, in order to assess its use as a management strategy for reducing fine sediment yields from catchments. Specifically, my thesis addresses the following research question: How do the major drivers of the process of vegetated induced deposition dictate the types and spatial distribution of biogeomorphic interactions in Southeastern Queensland river corridors? To address this overarching question with the following research questions: 1. How does the supply of sediment and frequency of flow dictate the part of the river corridor where vegetation is most likely to induce sedimentation, and reduce end of catchment yields? 2. Under what flow conditions can riparian shrubs and trees in SEQld induce the deposition of fine sediment due to their above ground biomass density, and at what part of the river corridor do these conditions occur most frequently? 3. What kinds of bigeomorphic interaction occur most frequently in SEQld macrochannels, and where do these interactions occur most often? These three questions are addressed in three empirical chapters (Chapters 3, 4, and 5). The capacity of vegetation to trap sediment depends on how sediment is delivered to the floodplain. Analysis of an exceptional data set of suspended sediment from 19 streams in SE Qld demonstrated that the proportion of total annual sediment yield moving onto the floodplain in floods varies dramatically between catchments, from 5% to 95%. Hysteresis could increase or decrease the proportion of an event sediment load moving onto the floodplain by 10 - 20%, but the larger the flood the smaller the hysteresis. This is one of the most comprehensive analyses of this basic floodplain process available. I then turned to the probability of inundation of a vegetation patch, as well as the ability of that patch to influence suspended sediment transport and deposition. I applied hydraulic theory to Terrestrial LiDAR scanner derived measurements of vegetation density, in order to estimate the threshold shear stresses for within-patch deposition of suspended sediment. I found that rheophytes with patch averaged densities greater than 0.2 can influence hydraulics enough that they could induce deposition of silts in flow conditions that would otherwise only deposit gravels in the absence of vegetation. lend- ing process based evidence that vegetation can trigger the deposition of suspended silts when establishing on flow regimes where medium gravels would normally be deposited. Further, data from 21 stream gauges suggest that vegetation could induce deposition at between 15 to 25 % of the total inset bank height, providing a process based estimate of the critical zone for biogeomorphic interaction (Gurnell et al., 2016), namely the height above the thalweg where vegetation induced deposition is most likely to occur. Although vegetation can induce deposition I did not find compelling evidence for the proposition that these plants create ecological niches by converting gravel bars into fine- grained landforms. Out of 103 trees that I excavated on floodplains, only 7 (7%) showed this pattern. In the rest of cases the plants established on a fine grained surface, and further deposition was also fine grained. Thus, these plants appear to be opportunists rather than engineers. The peak in both burial depth, and deposition rates occur between 30 - 100 % of the inset bank heights, implying that the the actual critical zone for deposition is broader, and higher up the bank than the process based estimate made earlier in chapter four. The findings of this thesis show that riparian vegetation can induce the deposition of fine sediment, but the proportion of catchment sediment yield will vary enormously between catchments. Where plants do establish coarse bars, they can occasionally induce the deposition of a new floodplain. However, in the reaches of SEQld studied in this thesis, patches of vegetation are more likely to establish as a consequence of existing fine sediment deposition than be the cause of that deposition, implying that these riparian species are opportunists, before they become biogeomorphic engineers.
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ItemSpatiality and materiality in knowledge controversies: the co-production of expertise with socio-material order( 2020)This dissertation examines knowledge controversies and the role of spatial and material forces in the production of expertise. The focus is on the spatial and material aspects of expert knowledge production, how they shape the performance of expert knowledge, and what this means for analyses of decision-making power. The core problem being addressed is the under-interrogation of spatiality and materiality as it relates to the production of expertise in knowledge controversy events. The aim is to expand the explanatory potential of the literature by incorporating spatiality and materiality into analyses of expertise. The fieldwork concerned a knowledge controversy event that centred around the White River in the Southern Carpathian mountain ranges of Romania. This river captured the attention of a coalition of NGOs in Romania known as the Natura 2000 Federation Coalition of Romania. They brought legal action against an arm of the Romanian state who granted a proposal to develop a micro-hydropower project on the river. The research then analyses the spatiality and materiality of expert knowledge and its role in shaping the case of the White River as a knowledge controversy event. My research questions focus on how spatial and material forces are garnered in the production of expert knowledge, and how this influences the exercise of decision-making power by experts in knowledge controversy events such as the White River case. My approach to addressing these questions assembles work in knowledge controversies, STS, materiality, spatiality, geographies of science, and critical legal geographies literatures. In addressing my research questions, I argue that experts need to create, maintain, and defend space in order to underpin their knowledge claims and related claims to decision-making power. This conception is contrasted with arguments that assume the primacy of the socio-material rubric, and given that condition, the pre-eminence of ‘socio’ forces in a context of ‘socio-material’ order. My critique contributes to spatiality, materiality, STS, and knowledge controversies literatures with an analysis of the experts attached to the White River controversy. In particular, my analysis foregrounds the spatiality and materiality of expert knowledge practices to illustrate their influence in knowledge controversy events. I do this by outlining various forms of expertise involved with the White River case (e.g., law, science, government, NGO) to examine the intersection and contestation of knowledge production in spatial and material terms. Ultimately, I argue for a ‘space creating analytic’ to be applied to knowledge controversy analyses that utilises the explanatory power of the spatiality and materiality of expertise.
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ItemTurbulence, habit and desire: life after two coal mine closures( 2020)This thesis investigates the experiences of workers and their families as they navigate disruptions to everyday life caused by workplace closure and job loss. Situated in the boom-and-bust world of extractive industry, it draws on qualitative fieldwork at two recently closed coal mines in Australia and China to explore the twists and turns of life after loss in restructuring economies. Picking up people’s lives several years after the mine closures, this thesis traces the cascading chain of changes catalysed by the event of closure. It explores how circumstances of life come to press upon bodies in the wake of loss, and how these intensities can come to reshape how people experience the world. It ultimately asks how people might weather the crisis of loss such that they regain a sense of life as an ‘ordinary’ timespace, reorienting from the past to the future. To do this, this thesis approaches loss as a non-relational force of interruption, showing how loss decomposes existing relations and exposes people to an unknown present. Drawing on postphenomenological theories of bodily change, it then tracks the shifts in concerns, anxieties, and orientations that emerge in this timespace of vulnerability and exposure. These processes of change are explored through three empirical chapters on the forces of turbulence, habit and desire. Turbulence shows how loss can bring ordinary life into disorder, leaving people exposed to the intrusions of unfamiliar and often unmanageable conditions. Habit suggests how melancholy durations of life can redraw everyday existence, allowing bodies to pick up different lines of the past to make sense of the present. Finally, desire describes how encounters after loss might begin to mobilise processes of repair, reorienting people from a lost past towards an unfolding future. By examining the relationship between self and other in the constitution of subjectivity, this thesis shows how transformations of the subject can come about through affective intensities that fold otherness into the self. It contributes to understandings of affect, embodiment, and relationality in geography, addressing how the turbulent circumstances of life after loss can speak to tensions in geographers’ understandings of connection and disconnection, presence and absence, relation and non-relation, activity and passivity. By focussing on how people come to live on after loss, this thesis moves beyond the melancholic tendencies of existing literatures on loss to foreground incipient processes of corporeal transformation. Its thrust is thus consolatory: it aims to recognise the gaps and tears that accompany ends, whilst refusing to forgo the vital and affirmative possibilities of life after loss.
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ItemExperiencing and Adapting to Heatwaves: A Study of Bangladesh-Born Migrants in Victoria( 2020)Climate change is a critical concern in Australia and globally. Anthropogenic climate change will contribute to increasing intensity and frequency of heatwaves. People view and respond to heatwaves in many ways, depending on their awareness, expertise, access to resources and geographic location. Previous experience of climate extremes is a critical factor in shaping how people perceive risks and adapt to reduce the impacts on their lives and livelihoods. In the past decades, many studies have focused on heatwaves, heat-health impacts including mortality and morbidity, and heatwave adaptation and mitigation. However, limited research reflects on culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations and migrants in relation to heatwave experiences and adaptation. Advancing understanding of the impacts of heatwaves on migrants' lives, and the significance of their cultural beliefs and past experience of heatwaves, can provide insight into heatwave adaptation. In particular, migrant communities with heatwave experience may have potential to respond effectively to heatwave events at the resettlement site. This study aims to understand the experience of heatwaves among members of a migrant community in a site of settlement, namely Bangladesh-born migrants in Victoria. It investigates risk perception around heatwaves, the impact of heatwaves on daily lives, and coping techniques used by this cultural community. Considering the diverse cultural background and experiences of the participants, this study also examines whether and how their environmental knowledge, cultural beliefs and previous adaptation experience influence their ability to adapt to heatwaves in Victoria. In addition, this study discusses some of the major challenges confronting this population in applying heatwave adaptation strategies. A mixed-methods approach comprising both qualitative and quantitative research was used to conduct this study. The data collection instruments consisted of a semi-structured interview protocol and a survey questionnaire. One-on-one, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants, who were purposively chosen from five Local Government Areas (LGAs). The survey data (n=393) were collected from five LGAs in Victoria using a three-stage cluster sampling technique. A four-part survey questionnaire involving Heatwave Risk Perception, Heatwave Adaptation Strategies, Cultural Beliefs towards Heatwave Adaptation and Barriers towards Heatwave Adaptation was developed to assess the experience of participants. The 33 item Heatwave Adaptation Strategies measure was used to identify heatwave adaptation techniques used by participants; participants were asked to respond to these 33 items both in relation to adaptation measures used previously in Bangladesh, and currently in Victoria. The questionnaire used a six-point Likert type scale for recording participants' self-reported responses. Quantitative data were processed and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 26. A descriptive analysis (mean and standard deviation) was undertaken to report the overall results, while advanced inferential statistics (i.e. t-tests & multiple regressions) was used to identify several predictor variables and their association with each other. The findings of the study are presented in chapters four and five. In chapter four, the analysis of the interviews yields the Bangladesh-born Victorian migrants' own explanation on their understanding of heatwaves, their risks to everyday life, and a range of challenges and adaptation measures to cope with this climate extreme based on their current and previous heatwave experience. The semi-structured interview protocol was developed to gain an in-depth understanding of participants' pre- and post-migration heatwave experiences and challenges. A hybrid method of thematic analysis, comprising both inductive and deductive approaches, was used to analyse interview data. The quantitative results are presented in chapter five. The results show the extent to which the participants perceived heatwave risks, their use of adaptation strategies, cultural beliefs, and barriers towards heatwave adaptation. For instance, this migrant community perceived a high frequency of heatwave risk (M=4.60, SD=1.22). The stepwise multiple linear regression results also demonstrate the significant predictors of heatwave adaptation strategies (HAS) in Victoria. Both qualitative and quantitative findings suggest that lack of access to information about heatwaves and their consequences is one of the major challenges for participants in adapting to heatwaves in Victoria. In addition, both qualitative and quantitative findings add nuance to understanding migrants and their adaptive capacities in coping with climate extremes in the host country. The study may provide useful insights for relevant planning organisations and government officials engaging in climate change adaptation planning and striving to reduce the negative impacts of heatwaves across all members of the community.
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ItemEvaluating barriers to dispersal: weirs and tributaries in the montane rivers of the Australian Alps( 2020)Dispersal involves the movement of individuals between established populations or colonisation of uninhabited areas and is a key organising process underpinning patterns in populations and communities. Dispersal is a fundamental component of metapopulation and metacommunity theory, central to explaining the underlying the patterns of abundance and distribution of species, both spatially and temporally. Furthermore, dispersal is a main determinant of community assembly, governing how communities are constructed and maintained through immigration. Barriers that limit or prevent species from dispersing to a location can have a major influence on population dynamics and how communities assemble. In a restoration context, this can result in delayed or poor restoration outcomes due to a lack of dispersing colonists preventing colonisation. In freshwater environments, one key hypothesis describing how dams and weirs affect rivers is that they disrupt longitudinal connectivity, fragmenting river ecosystems, potentially limiting dispersal of biota along rivers. In this thesis, I asked three main questions: 1) Are there natural barriers to dispersal in advective systems? 2) Do artificial barriers hinder dispersal more than natural barriers? 3) Do artificial barriers constrain dispersal in ways that affect population and communities, especially community assembly? The study focused on rivers located mostly within Kosciuszko National Park, in the Snowy Mountains region of south-east Australia. Many rivers in this area are affected by the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme and associated culverts, weirs and dams, which capture and divert numerous alpine and montane streams, severing flow connections between much of the Snowy River catchment and its headwaters. First, I tested how species dispersal between suitable habitats was influenced by the characteristics of the intervening matrix of unsuitable habitat. Specifically, I examined whether stream insect drift was constrained by natural river features, potentially limiting connectivity within rivers. I found that natural, slow moving pools may limit the connectivity of benthic invertebrate populations in rivers by reducing drift rates between riffle habitats. Furthermore, I determined that the hydraulic conditions within a pool limit drift dispersal and total distance between riffle habitat patches was not an important factor in limiting dispersal via drift. Secondly, I tested whether species dispersal was constrained by a human-made barrier, potentially limiting connectivity between populations more than natural landscape structures. In a natural river system, I studied whether a weir and associated pool reduced the drift rates of insects to a greater degree than natural pools. This component addressed a major knowledge gap about the effect of weir structures on downstream dispersal of stream biota. The weir consistently reduced numbers of drifting insects for 3 of 4 study taxa, exceeding the reduction of drifters in natural pools. The morphology of the weir pool was substantially deeper and wider and slower than the majority of studied natural pools. The combined effects of much lower average water velocity, multiple large low velocity areas within the weir pool and the weir wall were likely to be central causes of the reduction stream insect drift through the weir. Lastly, in a multi-year study, I tested whether and how the removal of dispersal constraints affected community assembly in new habitats and whether changed dispersal can alter existing communities. In this study, I investigated the patterns and mechanisms of freshwater invertebrate community assembly after the reintroduction of water to 2 streams downstream of weirs that were previously dry for over 50 years. Colonisation of the newly formed habitat in the tributaries downstream of the weirs was rapid and strongly influenced by dispersal via drift from upstream. Even with some dispersal constraint via reduced drift rates, the new communities rapidly resembled unimpacted communities that were the source of colonists. In the regulated rivers, a reduction in environmental constraints had a much greater influence on the trophic structure of established communities than increased dispersal from the newly formed community in the tributaries. Collectively, this research has overturned important, pre-existing assumptions about dispersal in advective systems by identifying and quantifying the influence of different types of barriers on movement and the effect of altered dispersal rates on community assembly. This information can inform the development of river restoration strategies in rivers affected by weirs and dams and elucidate how and why restoration measures may have been unsuccessful in the past.
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ItemGeographies of Refugee settlement: Care, Citizenship, and the role of Non-state Organisations( 2019)This research examines the role and position of the diverse organisations who provide support to people from refugee backgrounds settling in Australia. Non-state organisations in similar contexts have been conceptualised in uneven ways, with previous work understanding them to be ‘filling the gaps’ left by the retraction of the state under neoliberalism, or as working as a shadows-state apparatus. This research challenges such restrictive framings. Engaging with a feminist ethic of care, the research extends geographic literatures that have shown the capacity for organisations to resist and rework repressive influences from the state. Drawing on interviews with a range of organisations across Melbourne, Australia, including community organisations, local governments, faith-based organisations, and generalist charities, the research argues that non-state organisations are indispensable within the settlement landscape in Australia. It highlights the ways in which these organisations both provide people from refugee communities with essential services and resources, and undertake bridging work that allows the state to maintain a restricted and inaccessible approach to social service delivery. It also argues that non-state organisations are active agents in the construction of an expanded citizenship for people from refugee backgrounds, that moves beyond normative and exclusionary imaginaries of Australian citizenship upheld by immigration and settlement policy. Importantly and more broadly, the research shows how a feminist ethic of care informs and shapes the practices of these organisations, offering care-full inclusion in the face of care-less approaches to migration and refugee resettlement in Australia and globally.
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ItemCorporate Strategy and Ecological Modernization: Industrial Water Management in North China( 2020)In the ecological modernization of China, how firms respond to environmental constraints ought to be investigated to inform environmental reform in China. In industrial water management in particular, socio-economic development in China is boosting industrial water demand, yet water scarcity, severe in the drier north, has exacerbated the conflict between this natural resource and industrial need. While the Chinese government initiated various engineering projects, the largest being the South to North Water Transfer Project, to increase water supply in areas of demand, better management (e.g. changing consumption, reuse and recycling etc.) is argued to be of more urgency and sustainability in China. Positive changes in people’s values, attitudes and behaviours towards water could lead to efficient use of this limited resource. Therefore, this thesis takes a behavioural approach to investigate water management strategies in North China industrial organizations through the lens of ecological modernization. Empirical research is based on firms located in two regions, Beijing and Hebei. It investigates how industrial firms, one of the major market actors in ecological modernization, respond to both physical and regulatory environmental constraints. The methods used are primarily qualitative: semi-structured in-depth interviews and direct observation, supported by secondary data collection. The physical and institutional water availability in the study areas is firstly assessed. Then firm strategies in water management that patterned organizational behaviour are identified. Through analyzing strategies in different firms, the impact of firms’ own characteristics within their borders and the impact of locality attributes are disentangled. The thesis demonstrates ecological modernization a useful tool for understanding water management in China. It finds that North China’s industries are faced with both physical and regulatory water stress, though current prices fail to regulate industrial consumption. Environmental and institutional circumstances are driving environmental upgrading in this region. Firm-level adaptations featuring both upgrading and downgrading strategies include innovation, relocation, outsourcing, factory closure and rule breaking, depending on firm capabilities and orientations. I further argue that both firm characteristics (ownership, size/scale, financial status, market position, and sectoral character etc.) and locality factors (infrastructure and institution) play significant roles in shaping firm behaviour in water management, while interacting with each other. By building a tentative analytical framework to analyze the impact of firms’ own characteristics and locality on firms’ water strategy, this study contributes to both management and geographical theories within the framework of Chinese ecological modernization. And through the empirical analysis, water management suggestions for decision makers in both state and enterprise level are given.
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ItemThe Europeanization of the Renewable Energy Directive in France and the United Kingdom( 2019)The European Union’s (EU) Renewable Energy Directive (RED) establishes a renewable energy target of 20 per cent by 2020, with binding national targets allocated to each member state. The RED is an important component of the EU's longer-term ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emission by at least 80 per cent by 2050. However, implementation of the Directive has been uneven across the 28 member states, potentially undermining the EU’s long-term objectives and its claims to international climate leadership. This thesis examines the Europeanization of the RED in France and the UK with a specific focus on the electricity sectors of the two countries. It compares the implementation of the renewable energy targets in the highly concentrated, state-controlled French sector with the liberalised UK sector. It identifies the drivers of, and impediments to, the effective implementation of the Directive in the two countries with a particular emphasis on the role of state institutions.
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ItemUsing in-stream extraction to accelerate the recovery of sand-bed rivers impacted by pulses of bedload sediment( 2020)Rivers can experience sudden pulses of sediment, from human and natural erosion processes, that can accumulate in the bed. Abundant studies have examined the sources and dynamics of bedload pulses, and problems they cause, particularly flooding, avulsions, and habitat simplification. Much less has been written about what managers can do about bedload pulses. This thesis examines the use of in-stream extraction to accelerate the recovery of sand-bed rivers impacted by pulses of bedload sediment. This thesis investigates the use of in-stream extraction by developing three conceptual models, and then testing each model in the Glenelg River catchment, SE Australia. The conceptual models are (1) bedload pulse dynamics at the catchment scale, (2) reach scale response of a river to a sequence of extraction pits, and (3) how a river responds to multiple interacting interventions at the tail of a bedload pulse. This thesis uses repeat channel surveys, hydraulic and sediment transport modelling, UAV surveys, geomorphic mapping and interviews with extractors to evaluate the conceptual models. Bedload pulses in the Glenelg River do not behave as migrating waves. Instead, sediment accumulates upstream of valley constrictions and a series of standing waves emerge along the river. Wave crests are static, but sediment is exchanged between each of the waves during floods. At the centennial timescale standing waves are eroded one after another, from upstream to downstream, so that their overall behaviour resembles a single, catchment-wide Aggradation Degradation Episode. Extraction pits did not refill with sediment solely by migration of the upstream end. Instead, pit refill is discharge dependant. At bankfull discharge a zone of bedload transport forms between the migrating pit head and the tail of the pit. At the same time a lobe of suspended sediment intrudes into the pit, depositing sediment on the bed of the pit and along the margins of the pit. Point bar rebuilding is controlled by the pattern of secondary circulation in low angle meander bends, and by recirculating eddies on sharp mender bends. A series of extraction pits excavated along a reach interact and cause erosion in downstream reaches. Thalweg erosion increases in a downstream direction, but the presence of in-stream vegetation (Phragmites australis) causes a greater increase in channel complexity than extraction alone. Extraction prevents existing pools from infill but does not cause new pools to scour on the outside of meander bends. A particularly surprising finding of this thesis was that in reaches at the tail of a bedload pulse, where the source of sediment has already been controlled, local-scale interventions can produce highly localised recovery. In-stream vegetation is a key component of the sequence-of-pools morphology that forms in reaches where stock have been excluded. Reaches at the tail of a bedload pulse do not interact, but become disconnected, which is in direct contrast to existing paradigms of rivers as connected systems. Managers can use these results to decide if, where and how in-stream extraction can be used to accelerate recovery in sand-bed rivers impacted by a bedload pulse.
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ItemStorytelling REDD+: Ontological Intersections and Inequalities between Global Environmental Governance and Local Lives in Papua New Guinea( 2019)This thesis is about the ontological intersections and inequalities that emerge as initiatives to manage global environmental problems, such as the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, are translated locally in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It explores the frictions – awkward, unstable and unequal encounters – that are produced, and in turn move forward, different forms of environmental governance as they intersect with local lives in Suau, Milne Bay Province. I examine REDD+, and similarly the Cool Earth conservation program, as governance assemblages: constantly emerging and shifting networks of heterogeneous relations and elements coming together that necessarily impose power to foreground certain assumptions about reality. Through ethnographic fieldwork with communities implicated in the Central Suau REDD+ Pilot Project and a Cool Earth project, I focus on the stories people in Suau tell of climate change, land and trees, and how these stories come into friction with assumptions that underpin approaches to climate change mitigation and conservation. By engaging with Suau forms of knowledge transmission, including pilipili dai (storytelling), this work makes new contributions to how political ontology is practiced, thereby proposing ways of doing political ecology differently and engaging with decolonial research agendas. Rather than constructing ontologies as bounded, discrete entities, this thesis recognises the multiplicity of ontological assumptions intersecting and competing for primacy, as well as the politics involved in privileging certain assumptions over others. What is at stake here is not just the management of resources and livelihoods, but the very ways different people perceive and perform their realities. The core of this thesis is about inequality. It asks how the foregrounding and marginalising of assumptions enables and constrains different forms of environmental governance that may generate and reinscribe inequalities – not just inequalities between actors, but inequalities between different ways of being and knowing. By opening up space for other ways of perceiving and performing reality, this thesis works to enable different, potentially more equal, approaches to addressing environmental problems.