Research, part of a special feature on The Coproduction of Conflicts in Environmental Sustainability: Concepts, Methods, and Ethics

INTRODUCTION

This paper is written at a time when concerns about increasing polarization in societies worldwide are escalating. This societal trend may reflect difficulties in coping with the world’s rapid, uncertain, and multifaceted changes, including how to address environmental degradation (Carpenter et al. 2019, Karakas and Mitra 2020, Chen et al. 2021, Patterson et al. 2024). Polarization typically involves aligning with specific narratives, information, and knowledge, while dismissing opposing viewpoints as invalid. It renders perceptions encapsulated in “echo chambers” and “epistemic bunkers” (Nguyen 2020, Furman 2023), escalating differences into antagonism. Following scholars such as Chantal Mouffe, I consider conflict to be a necessary aspect of social life, and one that can indicate a healthy democracy (Mouffe 2013). Yet, polarization is a very particular type of conflict, and distinguishing it from healthy democratic disagreements, expressions of diverse interests, and even from resistance to processes of oppression is essential for this paper. Polarization refers to large scale socio-political cleavages that, as McCoy et al. (2018:18) observe, “reduce the normal multiplicity of differences in a society ... in terms of Us vs Them narratives.” Said otherwise, polarization prevents the confrontation of different positions and therefore freezes positions into a given conflict.

Contrary to the belief of many scientists, providing scientific evidence alone often falls short or even proves counterproductive in transforming polarization, as shown by findings on “backfire” or “boomerang” effects in climate change communication (Hart and Nisbet 2012, Zhou 2016). This is because polarization is not solely driven by a lack of information or understanding; rather, the literature increasingly acknowledges that polarization includes significant affective and relational dimensions (Suhay 2015, McCoy et al. 2018, Furman 2023). There is a growing focus on the role that affects and emotions such as fear, mis/trust, or aversion play in the gradual reduction of differences into two single, confronted, social identities (Iyengar et al. 2012, McCoy et al. 2018, Torcal and Comellas 2022).

Polarization concerns environmental governance because it can lead to deep-seated social divisions, rendering environmental disputes “intractable” (Kriesberg 1993, Mitchell 2014, Özkaynak et al. 2023). The recent study by Powell (2024) on low-traffic zones shows how groups feeling marginalized by environmental policies can become affectively polarized against them as representing the status quo, opposing the progress of sustainability transformations. However, knowledge about polarization in environmental governance and sustainability transformations remains limited (Patterson et al. 2024). As a result, literature on intervention strategies within polarized social-ecological issues is even scarcer.

This paper explores how knowledge co-production can occur within polarized environmental contexts using a relational perspective from the very initial decisions to analysis. I draw on a co-production experience aimed at transforming a highly polarized dispute over the eutrophication of a coastal lagoon in Spain, the Mar Menor.^[1] Eutrophication, especially when triggered by diffused or nonpoint nutrient sources from agriculture, has long been analyzed as a “wicked issue” involving multiple parties, uncertainties, and lack of effective public action (Rittel and Webber 1973, Whitney 2010, Saunders et al. 2017, Levain et al. 2020). A significant amount of works have signaled polarization between agricultural and environmental narratives in eutrophication cases in regions with intensified agricultural economies (Paolisso and Maloney 2007, Le Chêne 2012, Bourblanc 2019, Evans et al. 2020, Levain et al. 2020; Cabello and Brugnach 2023). This cleavage is an emergent social-ecological phenomena in which ecological degradation triggers environmental movements against the agricultural sector, polarizing the public opinion along affinities to farming activities (Levain et al. 2020).

In previous research we explored the various uncertainties concerning the sources for nutrient enrichment in the Mar Menor and, consequently, the solutions to prevent their diffusion into the lagoon (Cabello and Brugnach 2023). We discuss how uncertainties, contested knowledge claims, and insufficient public governance helped create a field for disputing the centrality of agricultural responsibility in nutrient overenrichment. In this paper, I describe how I engaged in a transformative co-production process (Pereira et al. 2020, Charli-Joseph et al. 2023) with a group of actors holding polarized positions in this dispute and interrogate how and why the relational dynamics shifted along the way.

I first situate polarization in relation to the eutrophication of the Mar Menor lagoon as a process of social fragmentation wherein epistemic, political, and affective dimensions are intertwined. They all belong to the entanglement of the lagoon with the multiplicity of agents that affect and are affected by it. I then use process-relational (Barad 2007, 2014, Brugnach 2017, Mancilla Garcia et al. 2020) and affect theory (Colombetti 2014, Candiotto 2019, Slaby et al. 2019, Slaby and Von Scheve 2019) to explore how to operationalize the design, facilitation, and observation of a co-production strategy within such a context focusing on relational transformation. I suggest that one way to operationalize this concept in polarized contexts is by placing attention and making differences and affects matter in the “relational becoming” of knowing together (Barad 2007, Brugnach 2017, Mancilla Garcia et al. 2020, Phillips et al. 2021). The analysis of the co-production experience speaks of an affective pattern underlying polarization that I call the framing/blaming/eluding responsibility trap. I argue that moving beyond us vs them dichotomies in environmental disputes calls for an affective engagement that shifts the responsibility trap to matters of co-response-ability (Haraway 2016) and discuss what in our process enabled such a relational transformation.

THE PROCESS OF POLARIZATION OVER THE MAR MENOR EUTROPHICATION

In this section, I describe the process of polarization over the degradation of the Mar Menor. Following McCoy et al. (2018) conceptualization of societal polarization as a relational and political process of division that extends to multiple spheres of social coexistence, I argue that polarization in the Mar Menor has deepened from an epistemic dispute to a more profound affective divergence between “saviors of the lagoon” and “deniers of the lagoon.” Such social-ecological cleavage poses significant challenges to sustainability transformations in the area.

The Mar Menor is a coastal lagoon surrounded by a large agricultural area, Campo de Cartagena, located in the Region of Murcia (SE Spain). Its shallow and hypersaline conditions made it a unique and diverse aquatic ecosystem of 135 km², host of emblematic and endangered species. It used to be the prime vacation and recreation place for the Murcian society, carved in childhood memories of joyful adventures within crystalline waters (Zuluaga-Guerra and Cabello 2023). In the context of the agonizing Spanish dictatorship and the transition to democracy during the 1970s–1980s, large infrastructures were built, notably the contentious Tajo-Segura water transfer, and active policies were launched to expand urbanization and tourist services on the coastline, and intensive irrigation inland. The new activities brought water from the nearby Tajo river basin, an important migrant labor force from southern countries such as Morocco and Ecuador to work in the fields, new transnational economic players, and a major transformation of the landscape. Importantly, they brought economic wealth to the region and a silent enrichment of nutrients to the lagoon for decades, until its water turned green in 2016.

The first algae bloom marked a tipping point in the history of the Mar Menor. The “green soup” made visible the flows of nutrient-rich water released by multiple agents across the basin, unsettling local communities and their strong bond with the lagoon (Cabello and Serrano 2024). New environmental defender movements emerged. They actively learned about eutrophication and campaigned for solutions, pointing at intensive farming activities as responsible for nutrient pollution (Guaita-García et al. 2021).

The regional government established a Scientific Committee and a Participation Committee tasked with collecting available knowledge and providing guidance on possible interventions. In 2017, the Scientific Committee released its first and only comprehensive assessment of the eutrophication problem. However, by 2018, both committees were disbanded following the resignation of several members. After that, epistemic contestation intensified between two predominant narratives regarding the causes and solutions to eutrophication (Cabello and Brugnach 2023). The crux of the dispute revolves around determining the precise impact of water flows from modern, highly efficient irrigation systems on the over-fertilization of the lagoon. Different ecological and hydrological models and facts are heralded by each narrative to either support or confront the idea of agriculture as the main nutrient source, feeding a value-laden conflict regarding the sustainability of the agricultural sector. Notably, these ambiguous facts relate to insufficient historical data and knowledge on the connections between expanding human activities (farming, tourism, urbanization, pig farming, mining, navigating), the profound modification of the watershed’s surface and groundwater hydrology, and the lagoon’s eutrophic crises (for a detailed analysis of knowledge and uncertainty politics in the Mar Menor, see Cabello and Brugnach 2023).

The epistemic dispute was, however, embedded in a broader context of political polarization. The Socialist Party won the 2019 general elections and as a result controlled the central government in Madrid. The People’s Party, the biggest right-wing political party, remained the ruling party in the region of Murcia. This meant that the two main political parties of the Spanish political spectrum controlled different levels of government and responsibility for the Mar Menor. The new Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition shifted the water governance strategy developed by the previous government into one based on environmental restoration and nature-based solutions. Regional representatives fiercely opposed it. The two parties battled in the media and eventually introduced separate action plans for the area. Meanwhile, the new Spanish far-right party has been gaining support within Campo de Cartagena by opposing agricultural reforms. The high score for this party in the region of Murcia has been associated with the importance of agriculture in the economy and in attracting migrant labor (Crespo Martínez and Mora Rodríguez 2022).

Political polarization mobilized long-standing power struggles in the region. The regional government is often criticized by environmental organizations for its ties with agroindustrial networks that connect large European retailers with local agroexport companies and cooperatives, farmers, and, the most unprotected, migrant workers (Pedreño Cánovas et al. 2015). Fishermen are another vulnerable sector whose livelihoods depend both on the lagoon’s health and on regional public subsidies. On the other hand, environmental movements found in the Ministry a way of elevating their regionally dismissed demands.

The situation worsened with episodes of anoxia in 2019 and 2021 leading to massive death of aquatic species. The view of suffocated fishes and organisms on the lagoon shores heavily affected coastal communities and the Spanish society as a whole.^[2] It also brought important economic impacts to the tourist and fishing sectors. Fieldwork during 2021 revealed a territorial cleavage between inland agrarian communities and coastal municipalities, incapable of seeing their histories as intertwined (Zuluaga-Guerra and Cabello 2023). Divisiveness between those who “defend the lagoon” and those who are “blamed for polluting the lagoon,” notably farmers, was expressed in emotions such as loss, abandonment, nostalgia, and outrage on the one side, and victimization, confusion, and grievance on the other side. There was also fear of speaking up, of being signaled and suffering consequences because “everything is politicized.”^[3] At that time, the Mar Menor was a hostile environment that could be best described as a “battle of second to last against last” (Fernandez-Savater 2024:214), a situation in which everyone is afraid of losing their livelihood, their identity, or their environment, where mistrust against the other is the air everyone breathes.

Two diverging movements help to illustrate the escalation. First, environmental organizations united in an unprecedented action in the European context: a citizen-led legislative initiative (https://ilpmarmenor.org/) to grant legal personhood of the Mar Menor, approved by the Spanish Parliament in October 2022. Second, many agricultural companies and the main irrigation community of the Campo de Cartagena launched a foundation (https://fundacioningenio.com/en/foundation/) to counterbalance the bad public image of the sector. They spread misinformation that rejects any causal connection of farming activities with eutrophication, steadily approaching narratives from the far-right party. In my view, these movements not only reflect an epistemic battle in the delineation of responsibilities and associated demands for action, or a value confrontation concerning the sustainability of intensive agriculture. They also signal a deeper ontological divergence (de la Cadena and Blaser 2018) between deeming the lagoon a companion subject with a right to exist and be protected, and denying a material connection, and thus responsibility, toward it. The Mar Menor has become the heart of a socionatural constellation of conflictive affectivities (Cabello and Serrano 2024).

In conflict studies, the idea of intractability refers to long-standing and difficult to resolve disputes (Kriesberg 1993, Lewicki 2003). Halperin and Sharvit (2015) describe intractable conflicts as destructive societal patterns built around an “ethos of the conflict,” a set of collective beliefs about legitimacy, trust, and unity paired with certain emotional orientations that act as self-perpetuating mechanisms. Feelings of threat, fear, or anger against discrimination may lead one to search for enclosed spaces that feel safe to share your values and opinions. This is what Furman (2023) terms “epistemic bunkers,” epistemic structures focused on creating emotional (or even physical) safety in hostile environments that come at the cost of increased polarization and reduced possibilities for dialogue and empathy.

SITUATING A SPACE-IN-BETWEEN: AFFECTIVE RELATIONALITY IN POLARIZED CONTEXTS

Situating knowledge co-production in an uncertain, polarized, and affectively charged social-ecological context presents significant challenges and demands careful consideration of preliminary steps in the “relational becoming” of collaborative research (Phillips et al. 2021). Theory on knowledge co-production for sustainability transformations suggests key questions and ensuing dilemmas to be addressed when framing the process: why co-produce and to what end, what to co-produce, with whom, and how (Lepenies et al. 2018, Pereira et al. 2020, Chambers et al. 2021). In this section I theoretically reflect on the first three questions, then address the latter two in the next methodological section.

The choice for the Mar Menor as research site was motivated by the desire to explore the challenges and the practice of co-production in polarized environmental issues. The first question we asked ourselves was what could be transformative here considering the sociopolitical context outlined above. Pereira et al. (2020) define transformative spaces (or T-Labs) as knowledge co-production processes that have an explicit aim for social-ecological transformation. In this literature, transformation is understood as change that happens at personal, collective, and systemic levels (Charli-Joseph et al. 2018). The underlying rationale is that opening up spaces for various actors to come together and collaboratively reframe social-ecological problems can bear collective agency to enact changes (Dewulf et al. 2009, Charli-Joseph et al. 2023). In-depth dialogue, facilitation, and experimentation are key ingredients in the purposeful deconstruction of dominant narratives and the co-creation of new ones.

By the time of framing our co-production process in 2022, there was no formal or informal space for multistakeholder dialogue in the Mar Menor. The severity of eutrophic events and the polarization of society and public institutions blurred the capacity to imagine a less fragmented territory and to take collective action. Our take was that attempting to create a space for social interaction among polarized perspectives could be transformative enough and create a reference for future endeavors. This purpose resonates with the idea of prioritizing co-production for relating-together rather than for generating a specific knowledge output (Chambers et al. 2021). As a point of departure, we adhered to feminist contributions to knowledge co-production that invoke an “ethos of care” when weaving relations with co-researchers (Phillips et al. 2021, Staffa et al. 2022).

A process-relational understanding of knowledge sees knowing as emergent from interactions (Brugnach 2017, Mancilla Garcia et al. 2020). In a knowledge co-production process, participant ways of knowing and subjectivities are in a state of constant remaking, emergent from situated affectivity and relational meaning-making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007, Slaby et al. 2019, Phillips et al. 2021). Affect theory helps qualify the relational dynamics in a co-production process as “encounters between bodies that involve a change - either enhancement or diminishment - in their respective bodily capacities or micro-powers” (Slaby and Mühlhoff 2019:27). This perspective challenges the rationalistic separation of body and mind by acknowledging the fundamental role of emotions and affects^[4] in both individual cognition and participatory sense-making (Colombetti 2014, Candiotto 2019). In this vein, knowing is a relational process of continuous becoming as affects and emotions are experienced in interactions between bodies. Such relational conception of knowledge is also captured in Orlando Fals Borda’s idea of sentipensar—thinking-feeling—that underpins participatory action research (Fals Borda 1987, Fals Borda and Moncayo 2009). Affective relationality can thus be seen as the space-in-between (Brugnach 2017) human and other entities that allows for new social-ecological meanings, agencies, and materialities to emerge (Barad 2007, Nightingale et al. 2022, Siqueiros-García et al. 2022).

Creating a space-in-between a polarized context is not an easy task. It needs to pay close attention to conflictive dynamics, which in the Mar Menor are strongly affective and power-laden but also epistemic as discussed above. Furman (2023:8) suggests that shaking epistemic bunkers requires de-escalating hostility, creating sufficiently safe spaces “in which at least some conversations about important issues can take place.” A strategy of de-polarization resonates with conflict transformation approaches that aim to embrace “ecologies of difference,” i.e., networks of sorts where differences connect rather than separate (Lederach 2003, Escobar 2005, Rodríguez and Inturias 2018). It also aligns with a Deleuzian understanding of difference as a positive force of social transformation, not as a negative dialectic against the other (Deleuze 1994, Taguchi 2012).

Substantial literature justifies the need for co-producing out of difference under conditions of uncertainty and intractability (Brugnach and Ingram 2012, Brugnach 2017, Capizzo 2023, Gorostidi-García et al. 2023, Patterson et al. 2024, Powell 2024). In this perspective, co-production cannot stem from consensus or knowledge integration ideas that lead to erasing differences risking boomerang effects on polarization (Hart and Nisbet 2012). To the contrary, it is precisely from thinking in terms of difference and dissensus that transdisciplinary practice can enable what Hellen Verran (2018:113) describes as “working together/keeping distinct.”

The question then is, how can affective relations be constituted in a process so that different ways of knowing and experiencing eutrophication coexist? In line with Brugnach (2017), I argue that the answer to this question requires paying close attention to how differences underlie, emerge, and are rewired along a co-production process. In this vein, relational transformation can be seen as shifts in differences within the affective relations enacting such differences. In a polarized group, it can occur by intentionally designed and facilitated activities that help participants connect affectively while exploring their differences. This strategy resonates with the idea of diffraction as proposed by Donna Haraway and Kared Barad,

[U]nlike methods of reading one text or set of ideas against another where one set serves as a fixed frame of reference, diffraction involves reading insights through one another in ways that help illuminate differences as they emerge: how different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how these exclusions matter. (Barad 2007:30)

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH

Organizing a T-Lab

Inspired by previous T-Lab references, especially the one developed at the Xochimilco wetland of Mexico City (Charli-Joseph et al. 2018, 2023, Siqueiros-García et al. 2022), we organized a process of knowledge co-production during 2022–2023. We aimed at creating a small group of 10–15 people willing to meet recurrently across the different phases of our design (Fig. 1). Our main concern for recruitment was the balance between maximizing diversity while minimizing power inequalities. We were also concerned with having limited resources and with having to facilitate the process as a team of two early career female scholars, outsiders to the local context. Acknowledging the complexity of the context and the limitations of the research team we invited participants who (1) live or work in the area, (2) have diverse backgrounds, networks, and knowledge of the area, (3) are affected by the lagoon’s crisis and the social-ecological changes induced by it, (4) hold different experiences on the eutrophication problem, especially in relation to the land-sea fracture, ((5) show openness and capacity for dialogue with different positions, and (6) have low decision-making power, are not representatives of organizations, or visible voices in public debates. Working with lay people in their quality of persons and local knowledge holders rather than representatives of public discourses was a twofold strategy to soften power imbalances and to open a window for more intimate connection. It also felt a “care-full” way for us to be able to hold a safe-enough space (Bond and Barth 2020). However, this decision came with the trade-off of limiting our ability to extend transformative change beyond the immediate group.

Identification and invitation of participants was part of the preliminary research in 2021. It is noteworthy that being perceived as external researchers neutral to the case helped establish those relations. That said, we were positively surprised to see 12 out of 18 invitations accepted. The final group was composed of three small-medium farmers, an agrarian technician, a fisherman, three biologist experts in the lagoon, one activist from an environmental organization, the owner of a small real-estate company, and two university professors working in arts and humanities disciplines. Not all of them participated regularly, with a smaller group of 8 attending most activities and the rest intermittent. The gender mix was quite unbalanced with 3 women, 9 men and aligned with the lagoon-agriculture territorial cleavage (all farmers were men). Finally, we were unsuccessful in engaging migrants working on agricultural fields and young persons.

In line with Charli-Joseph et al. (2023), we framed the process as a dialogue space around the lagoon’s crisis without an explicit goal. We placed special care on those feeling their participation could pose a threat to their activities or their relations. We established certain rules for participation that included a confidentiality agreement. Our methodological strategy was structured in five phases resembling T-Labs and conflict transformation approaches (Mindell 2017, Pereira et al. 2020). Each phase had an explicit process-relational goal and a tactical design with associated expected relational outcomes (Fig. 1).^[5] Overall, we organized individual interviews at the beginning and end of the process, plus four collective workshops. After each workshop, we collected feedback surveys from participants on the methods, the outcomes, and the relational qualities they perceived during the collective space.

A process-relational diffractive analysis

A crucial aspect of the above-described process is that researchers played different and overlapping roles. I was co-convener, co-researcher, and co-facilitator. As for writing this paper, I take the role of analyst. How can I account for the agency I had beyond a mere observer of an objective, external reality? Within the knowledge co-production literature, there is increasing attention to the challenges and dilemmas involved in juggling multiple roles (Wittmayer and Schäpke 2014, Hilger et al. 2021, Schuijer et al. 2021). As a rule of thumb, critical reflexivity on the tensions and synergistic potential between roles is encouraged.

I find, however, potential in the idea of diffraction as an alternative method to reflexivity. Proposed by Donna Haraway (1997) and Karen Barad (2007, 2014) and more recently popularized in educational and social science research (Taguchi 2012, Davies 2014, Bozalek and Zembylas 2017), diffraction displaces the subject-object demarcation that tasks the researcher with reflecting and representing an independent reality. As feminists and action research have for long argued, we are not third parties (Larrea 2019); we are engaged agents in the transformative mattering of the world. When I structure and facilitate a collective conversation, I am continuously affecting and being affected by the ongoing relational dynamics. I become entangled and co-constitute their becoming. As an analytical approach, diffraction suggests resisting the focus on interpreting “what a person really means” and, instead, being attentive to how differences emerge and what effects they have on oneself and on others (Taguchi 2012). By making differences matter, researchers can co-create “new onto-epistemological mappings in which something new might emerge” (Davies 2014:734).

Another important contribution of diffraction lies in its explicit attention to the material other-than-human agencies taking part in the conversation. As Bozalek and Zembylas (2017:8) put it, “to engage in diffractive analysis means to study the practices of knowing as they are enacted in the materiality of the world.” This materialist-discursive account can open new pathways for transformative transdisciplinary research to account for the multiplicity of living agencies involved in complex environmental problems. This is particularly relevant for recognizing the Mar Menor as “multiple” (Mol 2002), emerging within diverse affective social-ecological entanglements in the area that move many people to act and change their practices.

Diffraction is an experimentation field mostly applied to re-reading texts. However, as shown by Davies (2014) in her analysis of childhood anger dynamics, it can also be used as a process-relational observation method. During the T-Lab process, I developed an auto-ethnographic diary inspired by critical feminist reflexivity (Phillips et al. 2021). I described emotions (my own, participants’, and the overall group affective tonality), tensions, dilemmas I faced and ensuing decisions within and between encounters. In addition, I answered a questionnaire after each workshop including questions such as: how do differences emerge? In which methods or moments? What effects do they have on the group relational dynamics and how they evolve within interactions? How do I internally experience, react to, and influence those interactions?

Re-reading this data diffractively helps me keep attention to “when something comes to matter, when it actively changes the way things are and are perceived to be, both the ontology of bodies (our own and others’), and the meanings made of what happens, are affected” (Davies 2014:735). To do this however, I need to compost (Haraway 2016) the pieces of the diary together with transcripts, pictures, methodological designs, feedback surveys, the research question of this paper, and my own emotions, memories, and imaginaries about the process one year after it ended. In the following section, I present a story of what I now come to think the whole process was about, moving from the situation of departure to the situation of arrival throughout four “diffractive vignettes.” The purpose of the vignettes is to capture key shifting moments in the relational dynamics of the group. Except for facilitators, names have been changed in respect of anonymity agreements.

A STORY OF RESPONSIBILITY IN MORE-THAN-HUMAN BONDS

Let me start by briefly describing the affective arrangement (Slaby et al. 2019) of departure for this journey, as noted from the initial interviews we had with participants. When asked for their motives for taking part, responses varied from the desire to fix the problem to that of having their voices heard. Bottom line, there was a shared recognition of the need for dialogue spaces. Yet, the fundamental motivation was the common concern for the Mar Menor. From different vantage points and emotional dispositions, they felt a connection to the lagoon and its deterioration.

For most of them, the lagoon was described as being part of who they are as subjects and feel strong emotions for its loss (“I learned to walk on these shores and to swim in this water,” “I feel deep sadness,” “frustration and helplessness, that’s how I feel ... I’m not prepared for another anoxia”). They expressed a sense of loss because they cannot pass on their more-than-human bond as a legacy to the next generation. Few others viewed the lagoon as a symbol of the fight against extractivism and nature degradation (“it affects me, but like other threatened territories”). Lastly, farmers expressed double, somewhat contradictory, affective weight: on the one hand, the lagoon is part of their identity, on the other, they feel blamed for its degradation and face economic consequences in their activity (“tension that you notice in some people who make derogatory, aggressive comments against farmers,” “it’s costing me quite a lot of money”).

The lagoon thus emerges as a shared matter of care that enables thinking with it in a relational way while also dissenting within the multiplicity of ways of knowing and experiencing it (De La Bellacasa 2017, Staffa et al. 2022). The most pressing differences expressed during the interviews sharply align with dominant polarizing narratives as analyzed in Cabello and Brugnach (2023): is agriculture the main responsible activity for eutrophication or are there other unaccounted drivers? Where does responsibility for the damage and for taking action lie?

Vignette 1: Becoming polarized

It is June 2022 and there is a heatwave in Murcia, up to 40 °C. We are in the first workshop with our co-researchers. The room is located in a beautiful town by the lagoon, Los Alcázares. It is ample but has no air conditioning, so we open all windows to create ventilation. I am really nervous because I fear a high probability of the workshop not working. There are some casualties, notably those representing more bridging positions. I have been preparing for weeks with my facilitation mentor. I have embodied the positionalities of participants and unfolded the accusations that may emerge.

We start with an introduction exercise asking participants for their favorite restaurants and natural places, their main superpower and their kryptonite. The room remains mostly silent along the way. We introduce ourselves as researchers-facilitators and our vision for this process, together with the expectations and questions participants expressed during interviews.

We then play a role game to collectively explore the main narratives around responsibility and action in the eutrophication of the lagoon. Moving through the room, they perform publicly visible roles like central and regional authorities, agricultural unions, the fishermen collective or environmental organizations. To bring in usually unheard voices, we have introduced the role of a migrant from Senegal working on a fishing boat. The game goes smoothly as participants accurately reproduce public discourses that place responsibility on the other actors.

“We all know the roles in this problem very well,” was the first comment in the later reflexive session, sitting in a circle, brought by Tomas, an environmental activist. Few comments follow on the shared responsibility by all citizens to act and on the problem of “politicization” of society, narrated as a hindrance to collective action. I ask about this idea of politicization, what does it mean? Farmers Jose and Rafael say they perceive this in the blaming of agriculture as “the sole culprit” and in the framing of farmers as “agroindustry.” In their view, this is a political term that does not reflect the reality of the sector nor help address the problem. “I go to demonstrations for the Mar Menor, but I do not say I am a farmer,” Rafael says.

I feel the weight of his comment while observing a participant who has been silent thus far. He is Luis, an environmental consultant with a strong expertise on the lagoon’s ecology. He seems uneasy and I ask if he wants to speak. He raises his voice and tone: “Well, you are saying that everything is politicized ... but there are objective measures, the values of nitrates in the aquifer, parameters that are measured every day that show there is an impact on the ecosystem. ... 7 European Directives are violated, discharge laws are violated, otherwise you would not get 250 mg of nitrates, because the directive sets a certain percentage of nitrate and you have x 5. Something is failing ... and this is objective.” He goes on with accusations to farming practices as responsible for overfertilization in the lagoon, as proved by measurable data. I know this will fire the discussion. Before opening to replies, I frame his arguments as the most controversial topics for this group that we expect to untangle in the upcoming workshops.

Farmers José and Rafael react immediately pointing at wastewater and other nutrient discharges, they question the reliability of existing scientific data. The dynamics escalate in several rounds of blaming and defense. I start feeling anxious, I fear farmers are going to leave and not come back. I try to slow down the conversation and notice how difficult it is for me to interrupt a highly intense and mostly masculine discussion. At some point I stand up in between, using my body as a way to gain attention. Then farmer Pedro takes the floor and says, in a rather calm voice: “I am polluting, right now, I am irrigating. Even complying with all laws, I still pollute.” The atmosphere relaxes. For the first time someone takes responsibility, the ghost in the room. The conversation shifts. We polarize again on the effectiveness of the measures taken by farmers to reduce nutrient leakage, and again about what to do with those breaking the laws. Time is up.

This vignette captures how, despite our intention to initiate the process in a gentle manner, polarizing differences emerge with strength in the group and trigger a tense accusation-defense relational dynamic, strongly based on knowledge and uncertainty claims. I later realize a deeper power dynamic operating, that between expert knowledge using “the voice of science” or “the voice of law” and farmers’ knowledge and experience. There were other asymmetries: between those who felt comfortable in a tense dialogue space and those who felt unease, between a majority of men and a minority of women, including us facilitators. Yet, except for that one farmer who assumed responsibility, everyone in the group felt like a victim blamed by others in the Mar Menor crisis.

This polarized pattern continues over the second workshop when discussing controversial “solutions” such as changing the agricultural model. For the third workshop we try a different strategy aimed at fostering an emphatic connection and unraveling the role of knowledge claims and uncertainty in narrative polarization (following the analysis of Cabello and Brugnach 2023). The following two vignettes unfold the methods used and the key interactions sparked by the workshop.

Vignette 2: Storying our connection with the lagoon

We are starting workshop 3. It is December 2022 and the room is chilly today. We are a small group of six plus the two facilitators: the three farmers (José, Rafael, and Pedro), the lagoon consultant (Luis), a university professor of philosophy (Federico) and, the only woman, a biologist expert in the lagoon (Eva).

This time we commence on a more affective level. We asked participants to bring an object that signifies their connection to the Mar Menor. We have placed a symbolic lagoon of blue paper on the floor and, sat around it, we share our story laying our object in it. Two goggles, a pair of flippers, a pair of old sandals, a family picture on the shore and a hoe from old farming practices. All stories refer to childhood memories, most about themselves-in-the-once-experienced-lagoon, when “you could see in the water,” “when there were rocks on the shores instead of dredged sand” and “there was not this nasty sludge.” All, except the hoe, materially embodied nostalgia. The hoe was a story of justice with old farmers (his father) who reused urban wastewater in the 70–80s when the local council did not care about it. Paula adds her glasses to signify how the lagoon has become “her life” as a PhD researcher. I add the book I am reading, by María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care.

Vignette 3: Walking through polarities

From the stories of connection we move to play the tug-of-war game with the idea of embodying what it means to be polarized. It is fun and, I think, effective. Then we start a journey through dominant narratives. We have placed three stops in our journey to explore the key arguments in controversy as defended by each narrative, another stop about the solutions they propose, plus a fifth one focused on other problems and experiences of the lagoon that are often marginalized by dominant narratives such as the difficulties faced by traditional fishermen, the tourism sector, and migrants working in primary sectors. Each stop includes the two positions in the extremes of the room. In between them, there is a small table with info sheets summarizing key journal papers, scientific reports, and stakeholder reports supporting each of those sides, classified by colors to signify these different types of information pieces. The summaries contain goals of the piece, methods used, and main results, plus a brief analysis of uncertainties and limitations. Additionally, there is something to eat at each table.

I invite them to move to the first stop, read carefully the two narratives and the info sheets, and then take a position between the two poles. They have a limited number of participation turns materialized in speak-turn cards. It seems to work. The conversation is tense but structured, they get to listen to each other. We start with the role of the aquifer in nutrient discharge as opposed to surface water flows. Different scientific reports provide contrasting figures. Methods are discussed, uncertainties acknowledged, and they concur that both surface and groundwater flows are important and interdependent.

We move to the next stop on the sustainability of the agricultural model dependent on external water resources and migrant labor in precarious working conditions. Farmers question the need for maintaining the Tajo water transfer in light of alternatives like desalination. I am astonished because it is a very controversial topic in the Spanish hydro-political context. I notice the lack of attention to the social aspects of sustainability and ask if someone wants to use a speak-turn in that direction. We get a story about farmers lying in demonstrations followed by a blaming comment from Eva, “all farmers are pirates.” Intense agitation in the room, I feel we need to move on.

The third stop is the most crucial and difficult one. The controversy is about the weight of agricultural versus urban wastewater discharges, the exact percentages are under discussion. Here I have to swing between the roles of facilitator and researcher. I want to challenge the narrative on scientific objectivity from the first workshop but also denounce the recent campaign of misinformation elevating wastewater as the main nutrient source. I believe these two aspects are key to the escalating dynamics so I use my human-water modeling background to unpack them. This time I explain the reports and their limitations myself, questioning numbers on both sides. I notice my nerves because I am overlapping roles, it can be felt as power abuse and backfire.

“So, if not 85% agriculture, maybe it’s 50%, then what?” says Eva. Paula and I seize the chance to reframe the discussion: “Do we really need exact percentages to take action?” we get a loud “no,” “We need to take action in every place ... acknowledging there are limitations,” says farmer Pedro. The conversation moves to discuss the usefulness of numbers “they’re useful to find and signal culprits, this is how society works, finding culprits,” reflects Luis. A different tone and mood this time. “Well, that does a lot of damage” answers farmer Rafael. The atmosphere relaxes, something has happened here.

The conversation continues with both sides in a fluent exchange. Farmer Pedro repeats his role of acknowledging responsibility, but he continues “who gave us the permits, who encouraged us to expand irrigation land and dig wells: our public institutions. Who is then responsible?” The other farmers ask again for more detailed studies, they do want percentages. “I do not believe we are the major culprit.” You do not want to hold this pain, I internally think, and verbalize: “We are having a conversation in two layers, the facts and how they affect you.” “Yes, you named it,” agrees farmer Rafael.

We shift to discuss the efficacy of the different solutions that are being implemented. The last turn is for Federico, he goes “I believe there have been parallel processes of blaming and victimization that reinforce each other. The problem is not that farmers individually have bad practices, the problem is that there are many farmers, many hectares using nitrates.” Farmers concur. We run out of time and do not make it to the final stop of the journey.

After the workshop we all move to a bar to get a drink. It is the first time they agree to stay together and continue the conversation in an informal setting. I realize we have succeeded in our aim of shifting polarizing relationality in a way. Yet, I recognize that in prioritizing the discussion between dominant narratives as facilitator, I reproduced the marginalization of other minoritarian realities that were to be discussed in the last stop.

For the fourth workshop, we feel the group is ready to move beyond polarizing and create something together. We decide to focus on co-creating an imaginary and proposing actions toward it. The following vignette captures what this imaginary shows and how our ultimate goal of coordinating agencies toward action was only partially fulfilled.

Vignette 4: Activating action?

We are in our final workshop, end of January 2023. This is the most creative space we have designed thus far. Josune, our invited graphic facilitator, is drawing a big panel with reflections from the session. The middle of the panel is now occupied by a cartography of a desired lagoon’s territory. Contributions are diverse, some may be even incompatible. But there it is, a collectively dreamed monster mapping of a different Mar Menor. It is full of desired objects, animals and plants, barely a few human beings. Someone even dreams of a Mar Menor without people, left to “nature to repopulate it,” sparks laughs and jokes. The group is playful and seems to enjoy the exercise.

We propose to end the session with a message of action for our desired Mar Menor. Each of us writes on a paper and introduces it in a time capsule. We read the messages in a row, Josune keeps drawing. More than half go for education and awareness raising, especially for younger generations. Farmers commit to reducing their inputs and expanding sustainability policies among their networks. Two refer to opening up participatory spaces within and outside academia and another two to finding bridges with the agricultural sector.

Then Paula asks the crucial question: what about a collective action? The atmosphere freezes, I feel the discomfort. After a few seconds, someone proposes to go for lunch. Another person suggests doing something on the Mar Menor, like cleaning a beach or fishing for crabs. They agree on sharing the contact list. We move to speak of our commitments as researchers and close the session with warm gratitude toward the group.

Reading back, I am hesitant if I was expecting something different, more collective, would emerge. Yet, I can recognize relations had changed, as was expressed by participants (see Fig. 2 on relational qualities during the workshops). Our final interviews support this partial transformation. They all affirm to not have changed their ideas on what the causes of eutrophication are. Nevertheless, most declare to learn and widen their understanding of the problem. Above all, they value the affective encounter with others in a safe environment and the methodologies applied. They concur that a similar process could be useful for the Mar Menor, at a larger scale, with more actors and other goals. They miss having more and diverse people, and more time to arrive at some sort of conclusion.

AFFECTING POLARIZATION?

This paper started by highlighting polarization as a relevant challenge to environmental governance and sustainability transformations, and a major knowledge gap. Although polarization is a wide and complex societal phenomena, polarizing or discord patterns (Patterson et al. 2024) can nowadays be traced in relation to social-ecological problems like decarbonization, agricultural production, biodiversity protection, or, as unpacked here, eutrophication. Bridging the literature on eutrophication as a wicked problem and on affective polarization, I have analyzed how polarization in the Mar Menor is rooted in a nuanced interplay of epistemic-political-affective processes. Crucially, these processes revolve around one question: who holds responsibility?

In Cabello and Brugnach (2023) we argued that responsibility lies at the heart of the “wickedness” of the Mar Menor nonpoint pollution dilemma because of the largely uncertain nature of the social-ecological relations involved. The analysis presented here suggests that differences around responsibility questions manifest in contested knowing-feeling claims, marked by a territorial cleavage between agrarian and coastal communities in how they affectively relate to the lagoon’s crisis, but also by long-standing hydro-political conflicts and power struggles in the region.

Approaching knowledge and polarization as relational processes (Brugnach 2017, McCoy et al. 2018), our co-production research sheds light on an underlying affective pattern that could be termed the “framing/blaming/eluding responsibility trap.” The weight of ecological loss is a tough sentiment, as extensively analyzed in recent studies on ecological grief, solastalgia, or ecoanxiety (Cunsolo and Ellis 2018, Galway et al. 2019, Jiménez et al. 2022). It triggers a necessary quest for answers, often through the production of scientific evidence to delineate responsibilities and making decisions. Feeling blamed as responsible for environmental damage based on “objective facts” is also difficult to hold, especially when it conflicts with one’s livelihood as discussed by Nightingale (2013). It can spark victimization and defensiveness. Feeling marginalized by knowledge-driven environmental policies and by the actions and inactions of public authorities, as also shown by Powell (2024), ignites grievance and contestation. In the Mar Menor, feelings of victimization and grievance echo in “deniers of the lagoon” narratives. In turn, defensiveness and denialism elude responsibility by, for instance, questioning the legitimacy of scientific data that links farming practices to eutrophication, searching for alternative scientific explanations or contrasting scientific facts to other ways of knowing. Elusion, in turn, leaves responsibility in a vacuum calling for more data and knowledge, more framing and more blaming.

Donna Haraway proposed the concept of “response-ability” as the type of relational quality required for learning how “to live and die (together) on a damaged planet” (Haraway 2016:2, parenthesis added). In her perspective, the ability to respond is about becoming-responsible-with each other, about activating attention to how we care for the relationships we are entangled in whether we like them or not. Not as a moral obligation nor in an innocent way, but as an ethical, probably difficult, commitment to staying with the trouble of sharing fragmented territories like the Mar Menor. The question that emerges for me here is how to move from responsibility as a trap to nurturing co-response-ability as a relational quality.

Bringing together the Mar Menor co-production experience with the burgeoning literature on process-relational and affect thinking as a lens to engage in transformative social-ecological research (Brugnach 2017, Mancilla Garcia et al. 2020, Nightingale et al. 2022, Siqueiros-García et al. 2022), I suggest relational transformation as a co-production strategy in polarized contexts focused on how differences emerge from and are transformed within affective relations. By making differences matter in a care-full environment, affectivity brings back nuances and multiplicity in polarized contexts, pluralizing entrenched societal divisions.

During our co-production process, shifts in the affective relational dynamics were largely driven by moments of framing/blaming/eluding but also of acknowledging responsibility and other ways of challenging the polarizing trap. How? First, by giving space to affective and embodied experiences that helped participants understand each other’ entanglements with the lagoon, while recognizing it as a shared matter of care (De la Bellacasa 2017). Second, by foregrounding that knowledge affects (Hertz and Bousquet 2024 pre-print: https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/rsgyw), and when framed as objective truth to blame on someone, it hurts and has affective consequences. Third, by embodying the role of scientific knowledge claims in the polarization of dominant narratives while signaling that contested facts are uncertain. Uncertainties helped open a different relational space for different forms of local knowledge to discuss, even collaboratively reduce, “known unknowns” in more symmetric terms (Brugnach et al. 2008, Brugnach 2017, Giatti 2019, Krueger and Alba 2022). Finally, by questioning the link between data and action and demonstrating that action can be taken in uncertain conditions. Action and co-response-ability are also matters of affect, not purely of sufficient knowledge.

Challenging the responsibility trap paved the way for moving from polarizing to collectively imagining a different more-than-human Mar Menor. Changes in relational qualities (Fig. 2) enabled a safer space-in-between for epistemic cooperation among multiple ways of knowing-feeling the lagoon (Brugnach 2017, Candiotto 2019). Compared to the previous T-Lab experience in Xochimilco that inspired this work (Charli-Joseph et al. 2018, 2023), our achievements in terms of reframing dominant narratives and fostering collective agency can be considered incomplete, as new narratives were not enacted by a collectivity emerging from this process. Halperin and Sharvit (2015) suggest two conditions for initiating conflict transformation processes: shifting the attitude of delegitimization toward the other and creating a minimum sense of trust. I think this is a humble partial achievement that can be claimed for our experience. Further work is required concerning how new relations and imaginaries can enact more sustainable practices and coordinate existing types of knowledge in co-response-able solutions for the Mar Menor. Figure 3 summarizes the above described process of relational transformation.

A final point for discussion concerns my own co-response-ability. I must admit that co-facilitating this process was exhausting and I felt overwhelmed and failing more times than I can count. This was partially because of juggling roles and holding inner tensions such as caring for participants’ emotional safety as facilitator while desiring to dig deeper as researcher. Moreover, paying attention to multiple axes of discrimination and avoiding perpetuating any of them is a challenge demanding more experienced facilitation skills than my own. On the other hand, playing the double role of facilitator-researcher made a difference when challenging the role of data in the responsibility trap, which ultimately enabled transforming the polarizing trap.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper contributes to enhancing the understanding of polarization in environmental disputes and offers a comprehensive framework for navigating the tumultuous waters of polarization through knowledge co-production. Tapping into process-relational and affect theory, it argues for an affective engagement within polarization that knots ways of knowing-feeling-becoming with environmental degradation.

The paper adds to the literature on transformative spaces by grounding a co-production experience aimed at relational transformation within the polarized context of the Mar Menor eutrophication. It expands methodological endeavors within this literature by explicitly connecting T-Labs and conflict transformation approaches. Furthermore, it explores diffraction as a process-relational analytical approach for co-production processes focused on “together doing difference” (Verran 2018:115).

Through a diffractive reading, I have conveyed one story among many possible ones about this experimental research, acknowledging numerous limitations and avenues for future research. We bolstered power asymmetries at the expense of constraining diversity within the group and our potential policy and institutional impacts. For instance, we did not engage the migrant population, highly invisible in the Mar Menor eutrophication discourses, nor did we invite individuals with staunchly “denier” positions. The group remained relatively small, and although we can claim a relational transformation at this level, further research is needed to determine if affective relational strategies can be incorporated into formal policy processes to enhance their transformative potential. Working with larger, more diverse, and more asymmetric groups would, at the very least, require a longer process and a wider team that includes experienced facilitators. If I were to start again, I would start differently, dedicating sufficient time to connect on an affective level to what participants care about before delving into tense discussions that trigger the responsibility trap.

__________

^[1] This process was co-organized and co-facilitated by Paula Zuluaga Guerra. Some parts of this article are written in plural “we” in acknowledgement of our collective discussions and decisions, whereas those that refer to my personal analysis and interpretation are written in first person.

^[2] Illustrative of this emotional impact are numerous headlines in the national media referring to “the agony of the Mar Menor” or “requiem for the lagoon,” or the annual civic action of “hugging the Mar Menor” in which tens of thousands of people participate. See, for instance, https://www.europapress.es/murcia/noticia-70000-personas-abrazan-mar-menor-guardan-minuto-silencio-miles-peces-muertos-dias-20210828135512.html

^[3] Expressions of fear were only shared in one-to-one or small-group informal conversations, never in recorded interviews. However, the idea of pervasive politicization was a constant in fieldwork interviews and participatory spaces.

^[4] The distinction between affect and emotion is amply discussed in the literature. For the purposes of this paper, I adhere to Slaby et al.’ (2019) delineation between affect as a more primary and pre-categorial relational phenomena and emotions as episodic instances of affect that are culturally developed and linguistically coded, reflecting certain evaluative orientations toward the world.

^[5] It is important to note that this scheme was not preliminarily designed but, following the principles of participatory action research (Fals-Borda 1987), was the outcome of an open-ended process in which the goal of each action was decided upon collective reflection on the previous action.

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