The Onto-Political Dilemmas of Urban Forest Governance: A Case for Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogy in EcoSocial Work Practice at the Macro Level

Abstract

Urban forest planning, conservation, and governance often rely on data generated through positivist research paradigms, producing insights and decisions that are not easily accessible or meaningful to diverse publics. These gaps in understanding emerge across the spectrum of governance – from top-down institutional and political structures to grassroots, community-led practices of care. From a critical forest studies perspective, such tensions are not merely epistemic but also onto-political dilemmas , reflecting conflicting ways of being, knowing, and relating within multispecies urban landscapes. Adopting an EcoSocial work approach within an Indigenist Standpoint Pedagogical framework, this research explores how transdisciplinary, EcoSocial, and de/anti-colonial approaches can reframe urban forest governance as a process of co-creation rather than control. We draw on intersubjective and relational methodologies to surface alternative ways of learning, healing, and co-existing with urban forests. We consider the concept of becoming-intersectional in assemblage to describe the entangled relationships between humans and more-than-human beings, institutions and communities, science and art, settler-colonial systems and de/anti-colonial possibilities. Notions of individual and collective (shared) values in governance, settler colonialism, wilderness and the wild, decoloniality and care, healing, and ferality are considered in the context of our individual and collective belonging on this continent that is now known as Australia. This approach supports the development of collaborative approaches for diverse disciplines in environmental education. We reflect on the pedagogical potential of combining scientific datasets with arts-based storytelling to foster multispecies relationality and environmental education during times of climate, social, political, and economic upheaval. In doing so, this study contributes to an emerging practice of critical urban forest studies, one that foregrounds co-becoming, de/anti-colonial entanglements, and the transformative potential of cross-disciplinary collaboration in environmental education.