A multispecies ecological-unequal-exchange framework for the urban metabolism: dialectical tensions and meaningfulness in practice

Although recent degrowth scholarship increasingly recognises the contribution of nonhuman actors in achieving more just and inclusive social-ecological transitions, their active role in the metabolic processes that underpin such transitions remains a critically under-researched area. The nonhuman world is generally described in a passive and normative manner, as a ‘resource’ or ‘material’ not to be (over-)exploited. Only recently, the becoming ‘resource’ of nonhumans in degrowth models has been critically scrutinised and degrowth itself defined as a combination of resourcification and de-resourcification practices. Only few works have questioned animal welfare in degrowth societies, the interdependence between human wellbeing and that of other forms of life, or the need for ‘re-animalising’ human wellbeing as a lever to multispecies justice. However, these works do not offer a systematic approach to understanding non-humans’ influence on degrowth transitions. This is an even more pressing challenge in cities, where metabolic patterns of wild and domesticated fauna and flora are essential dimensions to the production of urban space. In particular, the materialisation of animal and plant geographies of action in the public space (including through contested definitions such as “nonhuman labour” or “the work of nature) deserves further attention in the implementation of urban degrowth agendas. Drawing on a literature review across four alternative narratives of the “urban metabolism” (social ecology, Marxian political ecology, ecological economics, and more-than-human geography) this paper argues that a deeper description of nonhuman nature’s active role is essential to achieving the triple aim of degrowth in cities (decreased resource use and environmental pressure, reduced inequality, enhanced wellbeing). Accordingly, we propose the development of a two-pronged theoretical framework, resting on dialectical tensions between two worldviews: i) recent progress in Ecological Unequal Exchange (EUE) assessment and its application to (infra-)city metabolism, which can unravel increasing inequalities in material exchanges among cities’ denizens (and associated “metabolic rift”) as well as the incommensurable recognition of human “services” (or labour) vs the “work of nature” in the production of urban space; ii) social ecology’s understanding of socioeconomic metabolism as resulting from a (material) stock-flow-practice nexus, which can be broadened to incorporate a multispecies practice-theory’s understanding of communities’ capacity to introduce change in the world as emerging from the relations between human/nonhuman practices and material arrangements. Finally, the framework is prospectively applied to a real case in the Brussels Capital Region to ascertain the analytical consistency of dialectically combining the two facets of our method and its meaningfulness in practice.