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Scholarship on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) primarily focuses on the potential for NbS to deliver multiple benefits to humans and biodiversity from networked natural systems. These approaches, if enacted without sensitivity to local contexts and histories, can deepen long standing injustices resulting from the destruction of complex self-organizing ecological systems, the usurpation of Indigenous governance and knowledge, and the prioritization of technical managerial approaches transforming nature into infrastructure. Here we review, synthesize, and critically reflect on existing scholarship on the rise of NbS in New York City, USA, to inform environmental policy in support of just transformations of complex urban systems. To do so, we examine NbS within the context of the social-ecological-technological system (SETS) of NYC. We organize our review and synthesis around three interrelated concepts of justice: Ecological, Indigenous Environmental, and Infrastructural Justice. Ecological Justice entails addressing the harms, needs, and desired futures of ecological actors while identifying synergies with human focused environmental justice concerns and movements. Indigenous Environmental Justice requires restoring Indigenous systems of governance and knowledge while making space for a diversity of social-ecological practices of marginalized communities. Infrastructural Justice addresses the historical and ongoing injustices perpetuated through mainstream infrastructure policy and design practice – including Environmental Justice concerns – which have increasingly turned towards NbS. Without embedding these principles within emergent NbS focused environmental policy agendas seeking just transformations, they will likely recreate utilitarian, anthropocentric, and colonial modes of managing nature as infrastructure. We conclude with a research-to-action agenda for meeting the interdependent needs of urban ecosystems and humans. • Dominant NbS approaches do not consider social or ecological justice. • NbS can be made more just by integrating concepts of Ecological, Indigenous Environmental, and Infrastructure Justice. • Applying these concepts within case study of NYC, USA, we identify opportunities for improving research and practice. • Explicitly including justice goals in NbS reorients policy at multiple levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There is a misalignment between rationale and criteria used to site GI practices. • Rationale emphasize multifunctionality (stormwater, social cohesion, biodiversity). • Criteria emphasize stormwater, available space, and technocratic elements. Green infrastructure is an increasingly popular urban sustainability strategy, widely promoted for its ability to provide multiple benefits. We examined 120 planning documents from 19 U.S. cities to identify if and how the stated benefits that cities use within their rationales for green infrastructure programs (rationale statements) align with the criteria used to site green infrastructure at the neighborhood scale (siting statements). Our findings suggest that many of the desired benefits stated in the rationales for green infrastructure lack corresponding and specific siting criteria. This was particularly evident for rationale statements concerning social and cultural ecosystem services, seemingly because certain benefits, especially those related to stormwater management, are prioritized over other green infrastructure services. While multiple benefits remain a dominant rationale for green infrastructure in the cities analyzed, including stormwater management, social cohesion, and biodiversity benefits, siting criteria were dominated by stormwater management, available locations, and other logistical considerations. These findings indicate a large-scale misalignment between the multifunctional ideal of urban green infrastructure and the procedures used to implement green infrastructure programs. We conclude with a discussion of how siting criteria and processes can be elaborated to deliver the desired benefits of green infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Current US urban Green Infrastructure planning requires transformation to address equity. • Only 11% of plans define equity and 14% define justice. • Current planning practices manufacture consent with limited inclusion. • GI planning intends to significantly transform urban environments. • Municipal, state, and federal policy must build inclusive planning capacity with communities. Cities across the Unites States have embraced green infrastructure (GI) in official planning efforts. The plans conceptualize GI as providing multiple functions and benefits for urban residents, and form part of complex responses to intersectional urban challenges of social injustice and inequity, climate change, aging and expensive infrastructure, and socio-economic change. To date, it is unclear whether official city GI programs address systemic racism and urban inequality. To fill this knowledge gap, we coded and analyzed 122 formal plans from 20 US cities to examine if and how they address equity and justice in three domains: visions, processes, and distributions. We find a widespread failure of plans to conceptualize and operationalize equity planning principles. Only 13% of plans define equity or justice. Only 30% of cities recognize that they are on Native land. Over 90% of plans do not utilize inclusive processes to plan, design, implement, or evaluate GI, and so target many communities for green improvements without their consent. Although 80% of plans use GI to manage hazards and provide multiple benefits with GI, less than 10% identify the causes of uneven distributions and vulnerability. Even fewer recognize related issues of houselessness and gentrification. Very few plans have mechanisms to build community wealth through new GI jobs. We find promising seeds of best practices in some cities and plan types, but no plan exemplified best practices across all equity dimensions. If formal GI planning in US cities does not explicitly and comprehensively address equity concerns, it may reproduce the inequalities that GI is meant to alleviate. Based on our results, we identify-three key needs to improve current GI planning practices for green infrastructure and equity. First, clear definitions of equity and justice are needed, second, planning must engage with causes of inequality and displacement, and third, urban GI planning needs to be transformed through a focus on inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Cities are complex social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) deeply rooted with injustice. • Ecological justice (EcJ) or justice to nature informs the SETS framework to reveal hotspots and blindspots. • Analysis of SETS-EcJ reveals distributional inequalities, deficiencies in social-ecological recognition, participation, and capabilities. • Nature-based solutions come to the forefront as actions to repair/restore these justice hotspots. Examining justice in cities requires using analytical approaches that can unpack their complex nature and reveal the many interacting dimensions that affect justice patterns and processes. Although justice in cities has been examined extensively, it has primarily focused on social and environmental dimensions. However, justice is multi-dimensional, influenced and affected by multiple actors, dynamics, and processes. In this paper we propose the use of ecological justice, as justice of, to, and for nature as a critical lens for portraying a more integral understanding of urban injustices. This lens extends the notion of justice to nature through four dimensions: distribution of harmful impacts, recognition of nature, participation of nature, and the capabilities of social-ecological systems. Through a relational lens we develop a methodology that uses the social-ecological-technological system (SETS) conceptual framework to unpack how the dimensions and interactions affect ecological justice across urban landscapes. This methodology is operationalized into measurable variables and applied through a case study in New York City. A spatial analysis of indicators that act as SETS-Justice proxies at a Community District level, reveal high spatial variability of ecological justice hotspots when looking at each dimension independently. Identifying ecological justice hotspots can provide critical information for improving ecological justice through multiple means. For example, hotspots lacking in social-ecological recognition and participation of nature can inform context-specific solutions such as policies and projects that target community engagement, capacity building, and improve ecological knowledge. Additionally, a composite analysis of SETS-Justice through the aggregation of all indicators, reveals justice hotspots different to those commonly mapped in other justice-focused studies. This approach highlights the need to jointly address issues of environmental and ecological justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New York City (NYC), the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 induced a significant shift in the use and accessibility of urban green spaces (UGS). To understand the impact of COVID-19 on the access to UGS, we conducted a spatial analysis of geographic access to UGS and perceived access based on data collected from a social survey deployed from May 13 to June 15, 2020. We examine geographical accessibility to UGS and how this compares to perceived accessibility, or the ease which residents feel they can access a UGS. We further explored the correlation between spatial access to UGS and fifteen social vulnerability variables including economic status, household composition, minority status, and housing type for different zip codes. The results show that geographical proximity variables can predict a number of the perceived access variables, particularly those related to COVID-19 measures. Although lower-income communities were found to have higher spatial access to UGS, many of the same communities, including people living in crowded and multi-unit buildings, on average only have access to smaller green spaces, suggesting an uneven distribution of larger quality parks. This observation is further confirmed by survey results. These findings have implications for policies surrounding the distribution of UGS and whether equitable access is provided to NYC residents, with implications for similar patterns that may exist in other cities. • We compare geographical access to urban green spaces (UGS) with perceived access. • Geographical accessibility can predict perceived concerns regarding social distancing. • UGS environmental justice implications are related to perceptions of UGS qualities. • We overlap COVID-19 vulnerabilities with the availability of UGS at the zip code level. • Many working-class neighborhoods are highly impacted by COVID-19 and have smaller UGS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]