Insurgent coproduction towards reparative urban ecologies: dwellers-led wetland infrastructure in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Ecological infrastructure such as wetlands is crucial for cities, particularly in the face of biodiversity crisis, environmental injustices, and climate impacts. However, their construction is often premised on erasing existing informal reciprocities and stewardship practices between urban nature and poor communities – leading to displacement of marginalised dwellers. It is therefore urgent to materialise visions of reparative wet infrastructure in cities with histories of exclusionary governance. Reparative infrastructure must be coproduced with informal dwellers who remain structurally marginalised in planning. But how can wetlands be coproduced in contexts where urban authorities are unwilling to recognise the epistemic authority of the urban poor? Scholarship on coproduction has rarely engaged the question of coproducing reparative urban ecologies with marginalised actors. Drawing from critical urban literature on insurgent planning and coproduction, and based on an ongoing research-to-action project with a collective of stewards facing eviction, we argue that reparative wetland infrastructure can be coproduced through three co-constitutive practices: respectful noticing of human-nature entanglements in informal settlements, centering dwellers in knowledge production, and teaching the state to co-create novel ecologies. We show that the justice outcomes of coproduction cannot be assumed – they must be actively produced through insurgent practices. Our argument advances debates on just sustainabilities and coproducing ecologies by situating these conversations in the global South, demonstrating that co-producing ecological infrastructure demands critical attention to existing urban commons, equitable stewardship relationships, and insurgent modes of participatory governance – offering lessons for sustainability planning and policy in rapidly urbanising contexts.