Presentation short abstract

Our work draws together queer ecology, plant biology and social science approaches to advance community-led biodiversity planting and imagine what nature corridors built from community justice might look like. We reflect on working collaboratively with a community organisation in times of crisis.

Presentation long abstract

There are real opportunities across cities (especially those like Glasgow with high concentrations of community gardens and parks) to build nature corridors into the fabric of the city, providing pathways for pollinators and supporting the full ecological life of the city in the face of pollinator decline. But how such work can interface with growing social schisms, threats of gentrification, austerity and concatenating crises, aptly termed the ‘long emergency’ (Greenfield, 2024), remains a difficult question.

Our work draws together queer ecology, plant biology and social science approaches to advance community-led biodiversity planting and imagine what nature corridors built from community justice might look like. Working with a politically-active community arts organisation in a gentrifying neighbourhood of Glasgow with a community garden, we piloted a series of community-widening workshops based around pollinator education, citizen science and urban belonging to experimentally connect community social science and nature conservation, with an eye to producing planting arrays and exploring ideas about nature belonging.

Emerging findings from the project suggest that it is hard to get beyond the ‘usual suspects’ of environmental projects, despite being rooted in an organisation with a broad catchment. It also suggests that while nature-belonging is increasingly central to left-wing ideologies; it is also being crowded out louder crises. In this context, we suggest a very careful grounding in participatory practice is required; allowing the science to follow the community organising and be responsive to local priorities, in order to build climate justice into nature corridors.