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Within the context of climate change and the quest for more sustainable cities, greener urban solutions are gaining traction through emerging concepts that have been orienting municipalities' regeneration and development agendas, including the so-called nature-based solutions (NbS), which have been discussed, planned, and proposed worldwide by academics, NGOs, and policymakers. Comprising different scales and typologies, NbS makes up a modern toolkit of actions towards decarbonized, climate-resilient, and ecologically healthy cities, claiming ample ecological, social, and economic benefits. A literature analysis indicates a greater presence of research and projects focused on NbS in countries in the Global North than in the South; however, given their accelerated urban growth, lack of green areas, and degradation of local environments, cities of the South urgently need such solutions. Nonetheless, research on the effects of urban greening agendas in the Global North has demonstrated that solutions may be entangled with neoliberal practices of space production that exacerbate inequalities, resulting in harmful social impacts such as displacement of people and increases in land and housing costs. This study seeks to build an anticipatory understanding of practices that articulate NbS in the Global South from a Brazilian viewpoint. Given Brazil's reality of social and environmental injustices, we focus on whether implementing NbS could amplify such problems. Our objective is to contribute to the debate by (1) understanding how the NbS concept is being appropriated, in practice, in Brazil, and (2) reflecting and pointing out paths and recommendations on how to plan NbS through a justice lens. • Nature-based solutions (NbS) are spreading rapidly in the Global North. • Empirical work on NbS and the dimensions of justice in the Global South is lacking. • Environmental justice policy and planning are absent from Brazil's NbS projects. • We identify possible undesired social impacts of NbS and preventive measures. • There is a need to include "developing a Just City" as a goal in the planning axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of soy monoculture in the Brazilian Cerrado relies on land and water grabbing, although water appropriation is a least studied issue in the current literature. A mixed-methods approach was used to study changes in water use in western Bahia and the evolution of water and environmental standards over the last 20 years. The results show that the deregulation of environmental laws by the Bahia state Institute for the Environment and Water Resources (Instituto do Meio Ambiente e Recursos Hidricos, INEMA) has facilitated deforestation and water grabbing for large-scale irrigation by industrial agriculture. The social dynamics of struggles and resistance to this process was also analysed. The results show that water appropriation in the neoliberal agricultural frontiers of the Cerrado has changed not only water use and flows but also water governance systems, flows of power, and the representations that underpin them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article explores the contradictory relationship between identity politics and environmental conservation in Brazil. First, the rationale for setting aside territories for ethnic groups in Brazil that have been historically discriminated against is examined and legal definitions for such traditional populations are presented. Second, ethnographic and philosophical critiques of essentialized ethnic identity are used to highlight how traditionality and conservation are conflated in Brazilian environmental policies. These policies, in turn, are related to another bundle of contradictions in Western bio-centric preservation which (erroneously) essentializes nature and excludes the human presence from within reserves. Research findings from two remote regions located in critical biomes for conservation in Brazil are presented succinctly to illustrate different kinds of contradictions between ethnic territories and conservation. In conclusion, a relational research agenda is offered which avoids the pitfalls of essentialized identity and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has been widely adopted as a norm that promises to increase equality and sustainability of water governance through participatory decision-making. After decades of policy implementation, however, inequalities in outcomes and large-scale water-related disasters raise questions about the ability of IWRM to deliver on its promises. This article explores these questions by putting the history of IWRM at the global scale in conversation with the national scale of water governance in Brazil and the local scale of the Rio Doce, the site of the largest single environmental disaster in Brazilian history. This conversation highlights truncated practices of inclusion in which participation of diverse actors is possible only within an account of water as a resource system. Mobilizing recent debates about the Ontological Turn in social sciences and humanities, we argue that the appeal to inclusion in IWRM masks ontological exclusion in which participation is dependent on an ontology of water as a resource system. The case of the Rio Doce shows how promises of equality and sustainability through inclusion fail in the light of rendering local ontologies invisible or illegitimate for governance. In framing IWRM as a site of ontological inequality, groundwork is laid for a renewed promise of participation. • Global & Brazilian Integrated Water Resources Management is ontologically exclusive. • Rio Doce participatory water governance enacts rivers as a resource system. • Science, policy, institutions and management enact water as a resource system. • Conflict between the Krenak river ontology of Watú and the resource system ontology. • Ontological inclusion is necessary to meet participatory environmental policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with China's currently most prominent environmental policy concept: ecological civilisation. As this concept is becoming a cornerstone of China's strategy of socialist modernisation, we examine whether and how the term can enable ecological protection in China and beyond. We argue that ecological civilisation, while a recently emerged discourse, builds on established environmental governance practices in China that shape its manifestation in political action. To illustrate this argument, we explain how two philosophical principles central to ecological civilisation discourse, "holism" and "harmony", have been expressed in environmental political practice in Communist China. Building on this analysis, we suggest that ecological civilisation discourse may have a profound impact in certain policy domains (e.g., resource conservation and ecological conservation redlines), but limited transformative capacity in others (e.g., environmental litigation and resource extraction). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of compounding health, environmental, and climatic crises, Brazil may witness two of its most important environmental policy instruments, environmental licensing and impact assessment, be severely weakened. On May 13, 2021, the Chamber of Deputies passed a new General Law of Environmental Licensing, ignoring the concerns of civil society, scientists, and other relevant parties. If approved by the Senate and ratified by President Bolsonaro, this law will further undermine Brazil's increasingly fragile environmental protection and public participation in decision-making. Here, we review the bill's main provisions, highlighting potential far-reaching implications for environmental protection and governance, public participation in decision-making, and human rights in Brazil and beyond. Scientists can play an important role in debunking misinformation and advising Senators and the public opinion on the bill's dangerous effects. • A General Law of Environmental Licensing is a roll-back in Brazil's environmental legislation. • Bill 2159/2021 was approved by Chamber of Deputies without civil society dialogue. • The Bill's provisions affect each stage of licensing and impact assessment process. • The proposed bill weakens the territorial rights of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. • National and international adverse consequences of this bill are far-reaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]