When invasiveness manifests: the zebra mussel and its implications for conflict management and planning practices
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Miriam Jensen
Aalborg University Denmark
miriamj@plan.aau.dk
Author(s):
In this paper, I will reflect on the transformative possibilities of non-human entities and species for infrastructures, planning practices and conflict management. In 2006, the species Zebra mussel was introduced into the largest Danish river infrastructure, Gudenåen. Sitting at the bottom of canoes and other human induced- mobilities and disturbances, the Zebra mussel has today spread throughout the entire river infrastructure. Upon meeting the river infrastructure the mussel became invasive and destabilised the systemÍž essentially transforming and altering it. I explore how these ecological transformations created a crisis moment through the extensive flooding it produced, which led to political and local mobilisation, new social practices, local conflicts and altered temporal possibilities. Drawing on field observations, interviews, workshops, historical material and text analysis, I trace the species through its knots and nodes in the infrastructural system to reveal its visibilities and invisibilities through its materialisations, consequences and the narratives surrounding it.
I argue that current planning practices and conflict management are inefficient as non-human actors, such as the Zebra mussel, have the potential to destabilise and transform physical surroundings, essentially creating new preconditions and foundations for planners. I show this through a focus on the current cross-municipal flood protection plan developed for the Danish river infrastructure, Gudenåen, which takes its staring point in the status quo maintenance of the infrastructure. I argue that the flood protection plan is devised through the interaction and practices between both human and non-human actors. The preparations for crises in the midst of the nonplanned consequences of non-human actors within infrastructures therefore deem it impossible to plan without the inclusion of non-human actors and their capacity to alter and change systems. Social imaginaries in the form of plans and future scenarios must therefore be grounded in multispecies relationships between both human and non-human actors.
Preparing for future crises: Temporal possibilities and their materialisations