Most people would agree that honeybees need help. Concerns about their dwindling numbers and the pesticides used on the food they eat have rallied environmental activists around the save-the-bees cause.
Photo: Jennifer Baljko
That increased awareness, combined with a host of other reasons including a movement to buy and produce local-made, organic honey, has spurred another noticeable trend: a rise in urban beekeeping, something we discuss in this podcast.
The increased number of beehives we’re hearing about in cities around the world brings with it another conversation about regulation. How are cities striking a balance between wanting to engage with sustainable, green efforts that support a healthy pollinator ecosystem while also protecting their citizens from pesky flying insects that swarm and sting when threatened?
It’s not always an easy question to answer. City rules on this topic are as diverse as the beehives taking up residence on rooftops. In some places, it’s illegal for an individual to have a beehive on his apartment building balcony because of the risk the bees pose to the general population. In other places, beehives are illegal in urban spaces in much the same way that keeping cows, goats and sheep is illegal. Other cities are incredibly lenient in regulating beekeeping practices, and anyone who wants a hive can set one up. Some municipalities require beekeepers to register their hives, like dog owners who have to register their pups. And elsewhere, the idea of urban beekeeping is so new that the city council hasn’t had to deal with regulating it yet.
New York, for instance, lifted a ban on beekeeping in 2010, and amended a city health code to allow residents to keep hives of the common, nonaggressive honeybee. Beekeepers must register their hives and adhere to other standards, such as maintaining a certain distance from property lines, providing water sources, and being able to control swarms, said Andrew Coté, president of the New York City Beekeepers Association.
City bees in Barcelona. Photo: Jennifer Baljko
“I think things need to be regulated to some extent. We need licenses for our dogs, or to drive a car, or to operate a hotdog cart,” he said. “And, I think when you’re talking about a box of 75,000 flying, stinging, venomous insects, I think, it’s reasonable that they’re registered and that there is some sort of regulation because not everyone is as courteous as perhaps they need to be.”
City officials in San Francisco, a city where social leanings traditionally bend to the left and city-improvement ideas are experimented with more liberally, foster an open dialog about urban beekeeping, said Terry Oxford, a San Francisco beekeeper, artist, and environmental activist.
“San Francisco is a joy and a gift. It’s so advanced and ahead of the curve in terms of really understanding really important issues and in offering a platform for those issues. Sustainability is part of the local conversation all the time,” she said. “Beekeeping is not illegal here. The way it’s written in the books is that if someone complains, you have to move your bees. So, what I’ve learned, is how to be very, very nimble as a rooftop beekeeper and how to get 60,000 bees off a roof if I have to.”
Barcelona’s local government and the Catalan regional parliament are also reviewing the issue, said Jaume Clotet, a beekeeper who runs Mel.lis Serveis Apícoles.
Photo: Jennifer Baljko
Clotet manages 90 beehives in Barcelona’s metropolitan area and nearby rural areas, and, in addition to the Museu de Ciències Naturals’ (Museum of Natural Sciences) rooftop hives, he helps manage Barcelona’s two municipal-run apiaries at a city park and community garden. Along with Apicultura Urbana, Clotet has proposed plans to Barcelona city officials to install hives in eight other locations around the city.
Recently, there has been increased sensitivity around expanding an urban beekeeping footprint, he added. Barcelona has a law that protects bees, and the city is collaborating with beekeeping advocates to better understand how more beekeeping efforts can work within the city limits. Also, in March 2014 the Generalitat (the Catalan government) changed a regulation prohibiting animal-production activity within 400 meters of a city; the original rule included all sorts of animals such as cows, chicken, pig, sheep, and, yes, bees. Now, residents can ask each city hall for permission to install beehives; if permission is granted, beekeeping efforts can move forward without the province’s minimum distance requirement, Clotet said.
“Individuals citizens shouldn’t be the ones deciding if they can keep beehives at home. This should be controlled. The ones who should be primarily concerned about this—and who should set the first examples of how it could work within a city—should be the local authorities and local city halls,” he said. “They should start with this and check how it goes and how it grows, and how much it grows. Hopefully, next year, there will be one or two new beehive facilities in the city. Of course, I would like to install as many beehives as possible, but, like everywhere, we live in cities and towns, and the opinions of citizens should absolutely be considered.”
What is your city’s approach to monitoring and regulating beekeeping activities? Tell us on Twitter (@TNatureOfCities) or in the comments section below.
Do you believe city governments should regulate urban beekeeping?
When it comes to urban beekeeping, would you prefer… —Strict regulation? —A minimum amount of regulation?
—No regulation at all?
—Something in the middle?
Should urban beekeeping regulations lean more toward…
—Supporting sustainable city pollination efforts?
—Protecting humans?
—Protecting bees?
—None of these things?
—Something else?
Nairobi is a bustling city of over 3 million people, many of whom are stuck in traffic for hours each day. One effort to mitigate these wasteful jams involves construction of additional motorways. But with little space specifically reserved for these new arteries, their proposed routes involve some delicate tradeoffs. One such road, the proposed Southern Bypass, is planned to run along the eastern boundary of Nairobi National Park. As presently designed, 150 acres of park land would need to be degazetted (i.e., lost) to accommodate the new road. Several nature conservation organizations have joined together to oppose the project, and a pending legal action has provisionally halted all construction.
In passing, one might understand this story as a tale of local conservation organizations banding together to “hold the line” — protecting a parcel of wilderness from the bulldozers of urban expansion. But in an urban system as complicated as Nairobi, context truly matters. Managing urban nature requires flexible and forward-looking perspectives, and I argue here that the issue is much more intricate than first meets the eye.
In fact, the project presents a rare opportunity, if leveraged aggressively, to expand and strengthen the integrity of Park while letting the Bypass go forward.
A Giraffe in Nairobi National Park. Photo: Wikipedia Commons
Nairobi National Park: a brief introduction
Situated just outside Kenya’s capital, the 117km² Nairobi National Park is a relatively small protected area (IUCN Category II). Managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service, this urban protected area is home to a wide range of wildlife, such as lion, leopard, cheetah, buffalo, giraffe, and the critically endangered black rhinoceros.
Nairobi and its urban national park, Credit: Quentin Fleuret, 2012
The formally protected area is itself an integral part of a 2000km² semi-arid savannah ecosystem, marked by characteristic seasonal wildlife migration from as far south as Tanzania. In the dry-season months of June to November, herbivores such as zebra and wildebeest take their annual refuge within park boundaries. From December, when rains return, this wildlife quickly disperses back to the open plains, where food will have become more plentiful and predators are more easily avoided.
Beyond serving as important habitat for wildlife, these plains south of Nairobi are also the traditional home of Maasai pastoralists, who have long adapted their practices to the natural rhythms of seasonal migration. For example, these herdsmen judiciously move away from migration routes at times when predators and calving wildlife posed risk to their cattle.
Back in 1946, when this national park was first established, these migrations were largely undisturbed by human activity. The city of Nairobi was much smaller then — about 120,000 residents — and the park was an unfenced wilderness somewhat beyond the urban horizon. Residential and industrial activity remained largely concentrated around Nairobi’s core, and a wide buffer remained between built-up and protected areas. Beyond the boundaries, with but little competition for land, wildlife, pastoralists, and city-dwellers all managed to live together.
However, Nairobi’s formerly modest urban center has now grown to a city of over 3 million inhabitants, and the functional distance between park and city has dramatically decreased. Residential development has progressively expanded against many of the park’s edges, including both informal townships and luxury accommodation.
Luxury Housing along NNP edge, 2010. Photo: Glen HymanHousing built just beyond the NNP fence; Southern Bypass is to be built along the dirt strip that still separates them. In the foreground is Michael Wanjau, then-Senior Warden for NNP. Photo: Glen Hyman
Especially along the eastern boundary, heavy industrial activity like cement factories and an oil refinery contribute to a noxious environment where neither wildlife nor people can easily flourish. Clogged roadways now border the park on several sides, and works are underway to widen these to relieve congested traffic conditions.
Such intense urban activity just beside the national park has direct impacts for the health of this natural environment. Industrial and residential effluent require constant monitoring; windblown waste and illegal dumping pollute protected habitat; wildlife are increasingly killed along the heavily trafficked roads that now surround the park; while fence vandalism, illegal encroachment, and bush-meat poaching are other urban problems faced by park managers.
Expansion of Langata Road – NNP on the left, March 2012. Photo: Glen HymanDust from a cement factory adjacent to NNP renders vegetation unpalatable to wildlife, 2011. Photo: Glen Hyman
To separate the national park from the urban fabric, electric fences were progressively installed to the west, north, and east. Further reinforcing park boundaries, a public-private partnership called Nairobi GreenLine has been working to grow a 50m wide forest of native trees, along 30km of the park’s eastern edge.
As the initiative simple puts it: Nairobi National Park is Under Siege — It’s Time to Draw the Line.
GreenLine MAP: Credit: Nairobi GreenLine , 2010
It’s important to remember that the initial boundaries of the National Park were fixed by arbitrary conveniences such as a river, a road, and railway. Though only a small portion of the broader ecosystem was included for protection, seasonal wildlife movement was nonetheless able to continue precisely because of the strong connectivity between the park and its wildlife dispersal area. Explicitly for this purpose, the southern edge still retains an open border, allowing free movement of wildlife across the broader landscape. However, the growth of Nairobi shows no sign of slowing, and the long-term viability of these migrations is far from certain.
Fast-growing settlements of Rongai and Kitengela have respectively become established at the southeast and southwest corners of the park. Their persistent expansion continues to consume land that had previously been available for transiting wildlife. Similarly, land-speculation along the entire southern boundary is driving land-prices up, increasing the incentive for owners to subdivide. Over time, the park is slowly being encircled.
Because of the deep interdependence between the Nairobi National Park and the wildlife dispersal area to its south, a southern boundary fence would forever sever the protected area from its ecosystem. Though if privately built fences south of the park were to become sufficiently dense — as they seem on track to become — wildlife would similarly be inhibited from migrating, and the park would become totally isolated from the broader ecosystem it is supposed to support and protect.
Plots for Sale, Kitengela, 2011. Photo: James Canonge
In an attempt to preserve the needed migration corridors, several important efforts are ongoing. One initiative, known as the “Wildlife Lease Program” works to identify unprotected parcels of land most important for migration, and pays a nominal rent to the landowners in exchange for their commitment to neither subdivide, nor sell, nor fence the property. The lengthy waiting list of individuals that have applied to participate in the scheme is an indication both of this project’s potential, as well as just how much of the migration corridor remains unprotected.
A more general tool for preserving an unfenced landscape, the Kitengela-Isinya-Kipeto Land Use Management Plan is a community-developed planning regulation that restricts the minimum plot-size in much of the dispersal area. Here, the interests of the local community align with conservation aims, and collective efforts are underway to implement this scheme which simultaneously supports pastoral activity and wildlife migration.
While these and other efforts are laudable, urban pressures continue to increase the potential value of land this land south of the park – and the area remains especially and increasingly vulnerable to irreversible change.
On the importance of boundaries
In a sense, the 67-year history of Nairobi National Park can be summarized by two observations about its boundaries. First, the borders of this national park have proven to be a largely effective barrier to landuse change within the protected area. Spatial images illustrate this quite well: the unmistakable growth of urban Nairobi abruptly stops precisely where the national park begins.
Nairobi is small in 1976, and remains away from the park. NNP Landsat. 1976. Credit: UNEP, 2009, “Kenya: Atlas of Our Changing Environment.” pp. 146-147.By 2005, Nairobi urbanization extends all the way to the park border. NNP Landsat, 2005. Credit: UNEP, 2009, “Kenya: Atlas of Our Changing Environment.” pp. 146-147.
Second, however, the area that was protected in 1946 doesn’t very well correspond to the most vulnerable places in 2013. This should not be surprising. After all, this was Kenya’s first protected area — and it was designated at a time when the scale of today’s Nairobi was simply unimaginable. As the capital has expanded — both in terms of its physical footprint and its indirect influence — the mismatch has become all the more consequential.
To secure permanent protection for ecosystem function in this rapidly evolving urban landscape – a reimagining is in order.
The Southern Bypass: a conservation threat?
Traffic congestion is a ubiquitous feature of daily life in Nairobi. Narrow roads are plied each day by an increasing number of private cars, heavy trucks, public busses and mini-van taxis. Crossing town can take hours — wasting human and energy resources, worsening air quality, and generally deteriorating the quality of urban life.
The Government of Kenya is mobilizing many resources to address this problem throughout the Nairobi metro region. These efforts include a network of so-called “bypass” roads, providing alternative routes to especially clogged arteries. One of these projects, the “Southern Bypass,” was approved in 2012 and will run parallel to the boundary of Nairobi National Park.
Under Kenyan law, this project required an Environmental Impact Assessment and a special license from the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA). A standard and unsurprising condition of this license is that “the proponent shall not encroach on gazetted parks,” specifically Nairobi National Park. However, this condition is being tested in two related respects.
First, over time, the land just beside Nairobi National Park has been occupied by a range of different residential and industrial land uses. While a narrow strip remains available for road construction, the proposed route is insufficiently wide. Second, in one specific place, the proposed road will run perpendicular to the runway of Nairobi’s domestic airport. There, flight safety regulations require more distance between the bypass than is presently available. Together, these reasons have obliged road engineers to design a route that at some points would traverse parts of Nairobi National Park. Accordingly, to comply with the conditions of the NEMA licence, the Kenyan Parliament would need to excise about 150 acres from the park. Local press reports that the loss would eventually be compensated by some 1.8 billion shillings (≈ US$21 million).
On the surface, transforming National Park land into a highway seems like a terrible outcome for nature. To stop this from happening, several local conservation organizations have begun legal proceedings at the National Environmental Tribunal, and indeed, construction has halted while the appeal is under review.
The main arguments of these organizations are as follows:
The road would illegally encroach on the currently gazetted Nairobi National Park
The project has become much larger than what was evaluated for the EIA
The Kenya Wildlife Service has no mandate to negotiate the disposal of park land
The integrity of national park boundaries must be respected, forever.
Alternative means could allow road construction without traversing the National Park
Degazetting park land would set a dangerous precedent and would damage Kenya’s reputation
Land has already been allocated for a road; it must be reclaimed from other users.
Some of these arguments raise very important issues, especially the substantive questions about how the proposed transportation project is evolving on the ground. Others appear more tactical in nature, mobilizing political or procedural claims to prevent the proposed construction from going forward. Taken together, their unambiguous objective is to prevent Nairobi National Park from being harmed.
Of course, a vigilant and engaged civil society is an important part of conserving nature. With more and more people concentrated in cities, it is only natural that threats to urban protected areas are so vigorously resisted. However, these very same urban places are also subject to much more complex tradeoffs than wilderness settings would require. Such tradeoffs are politically delicate, but crucial for effective and adaptive stewardship of urban nature.
In this particular case, most arguments against the Southern Bypass also appear to be rooted in an absolute commitment to protecting the integrity of the park boundaries, no matter what. In light of the ever-growing threats that protected areas face, such a conservative position is often quite justified. But again, context truly matters — and maintaining pre-existing boundaries isn’t always the best deal for nature. Given how degraded certain sections of the park have become, how arbitrary the initial boundaries seem to have been, and the mismatch between the areas under protection and those essential for ecosystem function — if leveraged aggressively, this Southern Bypass could also be seen as a conservation opportunity.
The Southern Bypass: A Conservation Opportunity?
Like any policy, nature conservation does not and cannot exist in a vacuum. The hard reality is that, in many respects, the GreenLine initiative has it right: Nairobi National Park is under siege. Along the urban-facing edges, negative impacts are increasingly degrading the protected habitat; and along the southern boundary, if the status quo persists, growing pressure from an expanding city will totally isolate this protected area from its natural ecosystem. Though the current park boundaries are fairly effective at preventing land use change within them — the surrounding landscape is evolving in ways that undermine the sense of that protection.
When viewed in this way, the proposed Southern Bypass should be seen not only as a threat to the National Park — but also as a multifaceted opportunity.
Remaining focused for a moment on the narrow strip of land that might be excised: the traffic congestion in Nairobi truly is dire, and resolving this problem is a top urban priority. With virtually no alternative routes available, this land along the Nairobi National Park boundary is tremendously valuable. It is a true asset, which can shrewdly be leveraged to support the park’s overall conservation.
Looking more broadly at edge conditions, decades of relaxed planning regulation seem to have allowed areas beside the National Park to be occupied by a land uses that are entirely inappropriate neighbors for a protected area. The negative impacts they cause are in some cases so severe that neither wildlife nor people are able to occupy the areas. With no real hope of moving these industries away from the park, one viable solution for better edge protection is to create a new buffer from existing park land. In some places, the forest proposed by Nairobi GreenLine is an example of how this is being done. In other sections, it’s worth asking whether and how an appropriately built roadway could serve a similar function.
Unsurprisingly, the land within protected area boundaries is often coveted for other uses, and this is not the kind of tradeoff to be made lightly. Decisions should be informed by the best available science, and in case of doubt over the conservation value of affected areas, the precautionary principle should prevail. But if it turns out such a bargain would yield significant, permanent gains for conservation it would be foolish to dismiss the opportunity out of hand.
From a landscape perspective, the most pressing threat to Nairobi National Park does not really depend on the exact location of its northern boundaries. Rather, the future of this protected area hinges instead on how the area south to its south will develop. As it looks now, the prognosis is fairly bleak.
In this light, the real opportunity of the Southern Bypass is to reimagine the size and shape of Nairobi National Park — expanding its protection to the most vulnerable places, thanks to the value of some its most degraded parcels.
In so rapidly changing an urban setting — where events are quickly overtaking the existing conservation geography — what sense does it really make to tightly preserve the precise locations of historical park boundaries? By virtue of the resources available for constructing this road infrastructure, the proposed Southern Bypass offers a rare opportunity to broadly renegotiate the form and function of Nairobi National Park. This opportunity should be seized, and the net gains for conservation should be measured not in terms of individual parcels, but rather, in terms of long-term ecosystem function.
How broad a migration corridor would need protection to permanently facilitate seasonal wildlife movement?
What other benefits would this protection have for the practice of traditional pastoralism in the dispersal area?
Would such gains make for a worthwhile tradeoff?
For the future health of Nairobi National Park — and by extension, the wellbeing of all Nairobians — I’d strongly suggest that such questions are worth considering.
“Réinventer Paris”, or “Reinventing Paris”, the architectural program initiated by Anne Hildago (the Socialist mayor of the French capital) in autumn 2014 does not lack ambition.
Though the diverse composition of Réinventer Paris’ contemporary urban planning teams should be the norm, in reality, it is a novelty.
When I first heard about it, I was surprised and couldn’t really believe it until spring 2015, when I was convoked by two teams to support them in designing a visionary project with biodiverse green infrastructure for this competition.
What was the content of this program? The objectives were to highlight innovation and to “do better and differently”. Let us remember Hildago’s fascinating words relating to the program—that she wants diverse teams, and that those teams should propose visionary projects that surpass any existing standards:
“The teams will consist of original and unconventional groups in which all disciplines can be represented, reinventing our ways of living, working, exchanging and sharing in Paris”.
This statement, like many others of hers, opens a new area and perception of how a city can make demands and, therefore, drive changes.
The architectural competition focused on the transformation of 23 areas of Paris. The council received 650 proposals for projects. At the end of the process, 22 sites (the 23rd was abandoned) found winners. The first achievements should be completed between 2018 and 2020, as part of the entry requirements for the competition included having willing investors from the get-go. The projects are diverse, as one of the requirements of this program was that the teams be diverse and inter-/transdisciplinary. Architecture offices had to look for team members if they wanted to apply for this competition, including: sociologists, ecologists, biologists, philosophers, engineers, agro-urban ecologists, social associations, NGOs, and others. Though in theory this should be the normal composition for contemporary urban planning teams, in reality, it is absolutely a novelty.
While many star architects answered the call of this competition, only a few of them won a project. Some of the projects will set precedents for new architectural models, while others will show existing technologies in new combinations or multifunctional usages.
Project examples
Some of the projects will be built on bare plots; others will replace existing infrastructure, such as parking lots or warehouses. Finally, a number of projects will modify and retrofit existing buildings. Some of the sites contemplate goals such as zero waste, zero carbon neighbourhoods; organic agriculture (such as ecological agriculture and permaculture); and green infrastructures. Green infrastructure will be designed in almost all of the 22 sites, bringing one form of nature back into the city.
Several buildings will be constructed of wood, such as the project planning to rehabilitate the railway station Masséna in the 13th borough (arrondissement), already named “Babel’s ecological tower“ by several news media outlets.
Several projects will be carried out near the ring road that encircles the center of Paris. Thus, a thousand trees will connect Porte Maillot in Neuilly. It will have a milfoil structure. The upper floors will be for housing, while the lower ones will be offices.
Milles arbres / A thousand trees — Conception: Sou Fujimoto Architects / Manal Rachdi, Oxo Architectes / Moz Landscape / Atelier Paul Arène, landscaper / Pierre-Alexandre Risser Horticulture & Jardins, paysagiste. Image: http://www.reinventer.paris
At another site, Ternes-Villiers, vegetated towers will be constructed along the bitumen, in an arboreal environment.
La ville Multi strate / The Multi Strata City — Ternes-Villiers-Champeret. Conception: Jacques Ferrier Architectures / Chartier Dalix Architectes / SLA Landscapers. Image: http://www.reinventer.paris
La Ferme du Rail
I’m going to present one of the laureates for which I know some of the team members. The project is called “La Ferme du Rail” (The Railway Farmhouse). In my opinion, it is one of the most interesting projects. Situated in the 19th arrondissement, a socially challenging borough, this team is going to create a space for encounters around urban agriculture (organic and permaculture), a space for education and further education; accommodation; and food production. It revolves around a community of people in integration (professional / social) as well as horticulture students. It develops market-gardening activities in short circuits, valuing the organic waste in the city. Its goal is to minimize the need for energy resources, food, and financial resources by the implementation of a circular economy.
La ferme du Rail / Railway Farmhouse. Conception: Clara Simay, architecte et Amo développement durable / Link architecte / Mélanie Drevet paysagiste / Philippe Pieger, agro-écologue urbain. Image: http://www.reinventer.paris
Borne out of the desire of residents and associations of the 19th arrondissement, which want to grow a place that combines urban agriculture and solidarity, “La Ferme du Rail” is the integration of people who fall between the cracks of the social grid. It integrates into the social tissue of the neighborhood and generates a service—agricultural production—that simultaneously creates jobs.
In theory, “La Ferme du Rail” represents a model of sustainable economy and social solidarity linked to the interdependence between project stakeholders and residents. It relies on the skills of each, which are known to reinforce each other, for the benefit of the neighborhood.
The activities of the farm will be organized in local and territorial exchange networks. Farmers offer the residents a range of services: collection and treatment of local organic waste, gardening, catering, selling vegetables, organizing workshops and events, and maintaining green, biodiverse spaces.
Welcoming everyone, “La Ferme du Rail” will feature a restaurant and a grocery-primeur, places for the tasting and sale of products of the farm and partner farmers. It is also intended to be a place of awareness that addresses the urgent need for meetings and discussions around nature in the city and the alternative food supply.
Whether training in gardening and composting activities, disseminating information on reasoned agriculture or organic farming, or the exchange of best practices around urban ecology, “La Ferme du Rail” will be a resource for social and cultural exchanges, whose residents—and those throughout Paris—can enter freely.
Writing history, changing paradigms?
Why do I write about this? My motivation is my ongoing thinking and concerns about how we can transform today’s society today into a sustainable society for the 21st century: whose responsibility is it to take the first step? Why do we still have so many blockages?
When I see what is going to happen in the next few years in Paris, and what has already happened, I keep believing and keep hoping that it is possible to change and that one person can be the engine to start such a shift; not everything within the proposed “La Ferme du Rail” is going to work, but the project may serve as a model for more possibilities, acting as one part in a new sustainable and visionary chapter in history.
Of course, it is also a big, challenging project in the sense that not all techniques of construction or productions (urban farms, urban permaculture, etc.), or complex levels of participation, were “tested” or experienced until very recently. But this is completely part of the project—to have a model and to enter into new territories of trials and errors. It is not possible to know already all the answers and solutions to such projects, which have never happened before. The projects need now to enact their first steps; they will encounter problems, but will also find solutions and grow as a result. The multidisciplinary nature of the teams will further support finding solutions, because different perspectives will be involved and will be discussed: technical, logistical, economical, ecological, and social.
The city of Paris will accompany the realizations of these projects, document them, and monitor the projects to keep them on track to fulfill what they promised as laureates. It’s not going to be an easy path for all these winner teams, but I believe that this process of debate and discussion is vital in order to start to make changes together.
I believe that this program will have an emblematic role and support a change in planning in the future, and will successfully integrate solutions for supporting “Nature in the City“, because it is comparable, at some levels, with what happened in Basel City—my city—with the biodiverse Green Roof initiative and, later, the law for Green Roofs. It was the city that decided to bring in this change, with several steps over several years. What was very important in all these initiatives was to show examples of realized biodiverse green roofs, to prove that it is absolutely possible to design and install biodiverse green roofs. The key to this is, as soon as people see that the green product or solution works, it will start a movement of changes, which will have a positive impact on citizens, the economy and education.
Beijing, China’s capital, has been experiencing serious air pollution in recent years.
Industrial relocation is an effective way to reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality—as long as employees are well cared for in the transition.
Greenhouse gas emissions from industry, coal heating, and vehicles are believed to be three major causes of the city’s air pollution.
Beginning over a decade ago, Beijing Municipal Government began to take targeted actions to control air pollution. Among different measures adopted, relocating polluting industries out of town is a major climate action that I’d like to highlight here.
Fig. 1 Contribution of major causes of air pollution in Beijing (2013). Image: news.cnr.cn
The government is taking stringent actions
According to the “Beijing Clean Air Action Plan 2013-2017”, polluting industries should be phased out in the city by 2017 via different measures, such as relocation, structural readjustment, and shutting down. By the end of 2016, more than 1,200 polluting plants were removed from Beijing. These plants are primarily engaged in heavy industry, such as steel and cement manufacturing; chemical and petrochemical production; and building materials in foundries. China’s steel making giant, the Shougang Steel Group [1], was one of the first plants to be relocated out of the city.
Fig. 2 A corner of the Shougang Steel Group before relocation. Image: tech.hexun.com
Challenges and solutions of industrial relocation: the case of Shougang
Established in 1919 in Beijing, the Shougang Steel Group is one of the biggest steel manufacturing companies in China. It employs over 80,000 workers, with an annual production capacity of steel exceeding 15 million tons. The proposal of relocating the steel giant from Beijing to other regions was raised and approved by the government in the early 2000s. Formal relocation processes began in 2005, and were accomplished by 2012. Now, the main parts of the company—the steel manufacturing plants—have been moved to two other places in surrounding Hebei Province: Cao Feidian and Qianan, over 200 kilometers away from Beijing. The vacated land in Beijing was renamed the High-End Comprehensive Industrial Service Area of New Shougang (HECISANS). The managers of HECISANS are committed to taking a pathway of low-carbon and green development—it was recognized as China’s first Climate Positive Program by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group at the second US-China Climate Leaders Summit in Beijing. HECISANS occupies an area of 8.63km2, and aims to transform into clusters of cultural and creative industry, service industry, and high-end manufacturing. There are many challenges for the relocation of such a big company. The greatest challenge of all is the distribution and allocation of employees, as Mr. Zhu Jimin, former president of Shougang Steel Group, acknowledged.
This challenge is especially poignant because of a loss of jobs due to structural adjustment and the reduction of steel output. To distribute and allocate employees properly, the Shougang management team adopted the following strategies: 1) Mobilize the backbone, moving skilled and young workers to the new factories in Cao Feidian and Qianan, offering to give appropriately increased wages and better housing conditions. 2) Use the vacated land in Beijing to develop clusters of high-end, non-polluting industries, which can then absorb part of the employees. 3) Allocate those who are old, weak, ill, and disabled to work in logistics positions. 4) Terminate the employment of some workers on a voluntary basis, and pay financial compensation to the laid-off workers in accordance with national laws and regulations. Once Shougang took these approaches, the relocation of employees proceeded smoothly, without causing major social unrest in Beijing.
Fig. 4 The launch of China Animation City Program in the steelmaking plant of Shougang Image: www.gov.cn
Observations
Industry is, in many cities and especially in the developing world, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. For this reason, industrial relocation is regarded as an effective way to reduce urban carbon emissions and improve air quality. However, in completing such relocations, we need to bear in mind some common principles that can make the program more demonstrably successful in the long run.
It’s critical that the relocated companies meet emissions standards and environmental protection norms in their new locations, and not simply shift pollution problems to the new locations. Air pollution problems should be addressed in a regional manner; air quality can only be controlled and, ultimately, solved by coordinated regional efforts.
Companies must properly distribute and allocate employees, especially disadvantaged workers and those who are laid off. It’s important to have consensus among various stakeholders that companies need to pay a resettlement compensation reflecting the real market value of their employees, and they have a responsibility to provide necessary help to assist the unemployed in getting back in the workforce again, for example, by offering vocational training, job fairs, guidance for private business, and so on.
Companies must make full use of the land they are vacating. The previous land occupied by the polluting companies should be assessed and meticulously planned. It should be renovated and restored according to the degree of contamination, and to the extent that it shall not cause any damage to future users. The reclaimed land might be utilized for open and public space, or for high-end and non-polluting industries, such as is exemplified by Shougang Steel Group.
According to statistics, the relocation of the Shougang Steel Group contributes to the reduction of 18,000 tons of inhalable particles (pm) every year, which accounts for about 20 percent of the total pm emissions in the city [2]. Citizens in Beijing feel that industrial relocation does have some effect in addressing air pollution. However, the effect is not obvious, as previously expected. The main reason for this is that air pollution is caused by multiple factors, and it should also be addressed by comprehensive approaches. For Beijing, the strategy of industrial relocation should combine with other measures—such as control of vehicles, restriction of coal heating, and management of the dust—to ensure a consistent result.
This context makes Malta an interesting case-study for the study of urban ecosystems and cultural landscapes. With greater competition for space between urban and industrial development, the need to assess the availability for green infrastructure has become more pressing. How does accessibility to green infrastructure, and the benefits it provides to people, vary in different spaces? What are the impacts on human well-being and do these affect one part of society more than another? These are some of the questions that researchers have been working on in Malta.
Valletta, the capital city of Malta and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is located in an urban agglomeration characterised with a high population density and strong tourism and commercial development. Photo: Mario Balzan
A recent study has looked at access to green infrastructure and how the use of these services has led to social, economic, and environmental benefits. This study found a strong gradient in terms of green infrastructure availability from rural to urban areas. And, as a consequence, the capacity of ecosystems to provide benefits to society is lower in urban centres. In contrast, research suggests various important contributions derived from urban green spaces. These include the reduction of ambient temperatures through shading and evapotranspiration, opportunities for recreation, reduction of flooding by limiting stormwater runoff, and the removal of air pollutants by vegetation. A recent study using the outdoor game Geocaching, described as the world’s largest treasure hunt, has shown the importance of these spaces for recreation. Results from Malta indicate that the highest number of caches were placed and searched for in urban areas, and that geocaching is strongly associated with the presence and accessibility of urban green infrastructure.
The Lower Barrakka Gardens in Valletta. A historical urban garden and a recreational and touristic site in the capital city. Photo: Mario BalzanHundreds of residents have recently gathered in Valletta in a demonstration in favour of the environment and the protection of trees and green spaces. Photo: Mario Balzan
The implication is that there is a strong need for land use planning to promote the use of nature-based solutions to develop a green infrastructure network in urban areas, and by doing so, significantly contribute to support biodiversity and ecosystem services flows leading to benefits to society.
The need for improved use of nature-based solutions also appears to be strongly felt by Maltese citizens, who were the most likely in the EU be in favour of the promotion and use of nature-based solutions with 95% of the Maltese participants in a recent Eurobarometer survey being favour of the EU promoting nature-based solutions throughout Europe. This was higher than the EU average of 83% of the respondents. In the same survey, Malta was also the EU member state with the highest fraction of citizens favouring urban greening measures. When asked whether there are enough natural features in the area where the respondent lives, and if they would like more or if they would not mind if there were less, 81% of the Maltese respondents wanted more natural features whilst only 18% said that there is enough of them (only 1% would not mind if there were less). This is higher than the EU average of 53% of the participants favouring more natural features in their residential areas. The Maltese respondents were also more likely (76%) to favour the use of nature-based solutions over technological solutions to improve the environment and the economy, and to address social issues, when compared with the EU average (60%).
Researchers at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) saw this as an opportunity to launch a research initiative—by working closely with policy-makers, businesses and stakeholders, they will develop a research strategy and build a research and innovation cluster to advance the development and uptake of nature-based solutions.
These are some of the goals of the recently funded project ReNature “Promoting research excellence in nature-based solutions for innovation, sustainable economic growth and human well-being in Malta”. ReNature is a Twinning project of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. This twinning collaboration aims at significantly strengthening nature-based solutions research at the MCAST as the coordinator of the project by linking it with internationally-leading research institutions in other EU Member States.
The ReNature project partners: ReNature brings together researchers from a total of five countries to establish twinning collaborations to stimulate knowledge exchange and nurture a new generation of scientists and practitioners around an emerging nature-based solutions cluster for Malta. Photo: Pensoft
During ReNature, Maltese researchers collaborate with partners from Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. This collaboration is expected to offer an opportunity to increase the institution and national research capacity within this sector, link up with existing initiatives and projects, develop a national research community with strong international collaborations, and develop new practical solutions.
Through capacity-building and knowledge synthesis about nature’s benefits and nature-based solutions, and by developing a strong collaboration with policy and businesses, the ReNature researchers aim to foster a culture of evidence-based environmental decision-making and planning for human well-being.This ambitious project aims to make Malta a strong research and innovation player in the emerging field of nature-based solutions, thereby providing an opportunity to develop and test new technical and policy solutions in an urbanised island environment.
The Kick-Off meeting of the ReNature project was held on the 25 October 2018 at the Institute of Applied Sciences of the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology. During the meeting, the project was introduced to stakeholders through a number of thematic talks focusing on the need for research excellence for nature-based solutions, the integration of ecosystem services and knowledge synthesis in urban planning and environmental decision-making, and the steps to transform research outcomes into practice in policy and business. This was followed by an open discussion about the contributions of research to the development and application of nature-based solutions and actions required for the development of a network of researchers, practitioners and interested members of the public. The ReNature kick-off meeting also offered an opportunity for practitioners to exchange knowledge and discuss collaborations in less formal settings.
The ReNature Kick-Off meeting, held in October 2018, has offered the first opportunity for knowledge exchange between the project partners and Maltese stakeholders, researchers and students. Photo: MCAST
Given the complexity of the environmental systems, which increase the risk of inadequate or contested decisions or of not properly implementing policies, a stronger knowledge and evidence base is considered as being crucial for the design and implementation of decisions, credibility, and uptake by stakeholders and citizens. ReNature brings together individuals and organisations possessing relevant knowledge in various areas of expertise to participate in a research and innovation nature-based solutions cluster of interconnected companies and institutions linked by commonalities and complementarities. Clustering at a local and regional levels enables the contributing stakeholders to exploit their synergies and complementarity, leading to benefits such as knowledge transfer, preservation of community values and lifestyle improvement.
The creation of the research and innovation nature-based solutions cluster, which collaborates within a strong international network of stakeholders and adopts research-to-practice approaches, is a long-term goal of the ReNature partners and collaborators. This will be achieved through a series of meetings and workshops that identify knowledge needs whilst supporting collaborative research with stakeholders from the national and international scientific and practitioner communities. The development of strong collaborations with stakeholders from policy and business is therefore seen as being critical for the development of a research and innovation nature-based solutions cluster for knowledge co-creation and sharing, thus promoting the mainstreaming of nature-based solutions across all policy-relevant sectors.
The creation of a continuous and iterative cycle of innovation, based on the needs of society for new knowledge and applications, is critical for renaturing cities. Within this cycle, the importance of sharing of knowledge and scientific outcomes in open-source repositories and the role of young researchers to foster the long-term capacity for innovation and new ideas should not be underestimated. Essentially, ReNature wants to renature Malta through collaborations that promote the long-term use of nature-based solutions and thus to have an amplified impact on environmental decisions, landscape planning and the uptake of solutions in businesses.
Follow us on twitter @ReNature_H2020 for more details and updated information about the ReNature events. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 809988.
Renewable Rikers is an opportunity to end an old, but ongoing wrong. For too long, New York City has disproportionately sited its polluting infrastructure in low-income communities and communities of color.
On 29 January 2019, New York City Council held a hearing on a trio of bills collectively known as “Renewable Rikers”. Rikers is currently home to the most infamous prison in New York City—the Rikers Island correctional facility an island penal colony with one lone bridge connecting it to the rest of the City. Introduced by the Council’s Environmental Committee Chair Costa Constantinides, these bills would remove Rikers Island from the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections, while simultaneously authorizing two feasibility studies: one on the feasibility of locating solar generation and battery storage on Rikers island, and the other on the feasibility of relocating four aging waste water treatment facilities to the island. A New York city council meeting.
The idea behind these three bills is to tie the pending shutdown of the Rikers Island correctional facility to restorative environmental justice in the communities most impacted by incarceration on the island. Calling Rikers Island “a symbol of brutality and inhumanity” for many New Yorkers, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson opened the Renewable Rikers hearing with a full-throated support for the proposal. Not to be outdone, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his intention to issue an executive order detailing a “participatory planning effort” for re-imagining Rikers Island.
The journey to this moment was more than a century in the making.
Rikers Island has been associated with some of the most racially problematic aspects of New York history. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USGS_Rikers_Island.png
Part of the traditional territory of the Rockaway Tribe, the island bears the name of a slaveholding Dutch family (originally Rycken but anglicized to Rikers) who exploited enslaved people to build a fortune, which they then parlayed into social prominence. Yet even as the Rikers socialized with New York’s political elite, their name cast a dark shadow over New York City. Richard Riker, New York City’s first district attorney and City Recorder (the municipal officer in charge of the criminal courts) was infamous for abusing the Fugitive Slave Act and using his position to sell black New Yorkers into slavery.
Abolitionist David Ruggles, head of the New York Vigilance Committee,frequently condemned Recorder Riker for his willingness to find that free New Yorkers were actually slaves, and for his role in returning escaped slaves to the South.
1835 cartoon by Edward Clay. Image Courtesy of Periodyssey.com [Ruggles is the center figure]Riker’s activities were so notorious that he and his police confederates became known as “the kidnapping club”. Even as black New York saw Rikers as “the spider at the center of a web of injustice” his abusive conduct did not put a dent his good name among white New Yorkers. After his death, the New York Times described Riker as a “good, kind-hearted judge,” and in the eyes of his white contemporaries, Riker was a near saintly man.
The parallel between Recorder Rikers’ conduct and the racially-charged abuses of power at the present-day Rikers Island correctional facility are striking. The era of mass incarceration saw black and brown New Yorkers imprisoned and abused at Rikers Island while for too long the white portions of the City largely noticed nothing amiss.
In recent years, Riker’s Island gained notoriety because of the shockingly high levels of violence, abuse, and neglect that inmates suffered there. In 2013, Mother Jones ranked Rikers as one of the ten worst prisons in the United States. Numerous reports and exposes documented gratuitous and excessive patterns of violence at Rikers, with force being used in a fashion “intended to harm rather than restrain and control inmates”.
The tragic case of 16 year old Kalief Browder came to symbolize the Lord of the Flies nature of the “cycle of unchecked violence” at Rikers. Browder was held for three years at Rikers, from 2010 to 2013, awaiting his constitutionally-guaranteed “speedy” trial on a minor theft charge. Browder spent two of those years in solitary confinement. Surveillance footage showed Browder suffering assaults at the hands of prison guards and inmates alike. When the charges against him were dropped, Brower was released. But his Rikers experience had been so traumatizing that Browder later committed suicide. Browder’s experience galvanized public calls for reform, and became a rallying cry for advocates bent on closing Rikers.
The next year, then-US Attorney Preet Bharara issued a scathing report on the “deep-seated culture of violence” among the guards and staff at Rikers Island. Bharara characterized the jail as “broken”, with a pattern and practice that violates constitutional rights. Bharara’s Report gave added impetus to a grass roots movement organized under the banner #CloseRikers.
Closing Rikers became seen as “a moral imperative”. The Report of Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform (the Lippman Report) characterized Riker’s Island as “a stain on our great City,” and recommended permanently ending the use of Rikers Island as a jail facility.
The Commission explicitly acknowledged that racial injustice played a significant role in the harms done at Rikers Island.
In Fall of 2019, New York City Council voted to close Rikers Island and replace it with four smaller jails by 2026. Mayor de Blasio declared “The era of mass incarceration is OVER in New York City.”
The Lippman Report called for any post-prison planning for Rikers Island to take restorative justice into account. The Report also raised the possibility that Rikers Island could contribute to the sustainability of New York City.
Starting from that rather vague suggestion, a coalition of scholars, politicians and advocates developed the Renewable Rikers proposal as a way to promote restorative environmental justice.
The proposal would dedicate Rikers Island to wastewater treatment and sustainable energy generation in order to phase out noxious facilities sited in the environmental justice communities most impacted by incarceration on Rikers.
After two years of work and advocacy, New York City Council held its historic “Renewable Rikers” hearing. Environmental justice groups, formerly incarcerated individuals, and various lawyers and academics testified in favor of the proposal. Nobody testified against it.
Closing Rikers will be a transformative moment for the City. Renewable Rikers could make that moment an environmental justice transformation as well. These proposed laws are a critical first step. By enacting them, City Council will launch a visioning process for truly restorative environmental justice.
Renewable Rikers is a path to a more sustainable, more equitable City. New York State recently committed to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. To reach that goal, the City will have to transition away from fossil fuels. Replacing the City’s dirty and aging Peaker plants with clean energy is a good start. Peaker plants are gas-fired power plants that only turn on during peak power demand. They start and shut frequently, rarely running for more than a few hours at a time. Startup and shutdown are the moments in which power plants emissions are the dirtiest. These Peaker plants disproportionately sited in marginalized communities, and their replacement is both an environmental necessity and a public health imperative. Peaker plants contribute to the localized air pollution that harms people’s health in overburdened, frontline communities. Some South Bronx neighborhoods that host Peaker plants have childhood asthma hospitalization rates double the City’s average. For example, pollution-related emergency department visits and asthma hospitalizations in Mott Haven and Melrose are triple the NYC average. Replacing dirty Peaker plants with renewable generation and storage on Rikers would improve air quality in these front-line communities.
Harlem River Yard Peaker plant http://cdn.nycitynewsservice.com/blogs.dir/8/files/2015/09/Harlem-River-Yard-web.jpg
Renewable Rikers is an opportunity to end an old, but ongoing wrong. For too long, New York City has disproportionately sited its polluting infrastructure in low-income communities and communities of color. The 2000 Power Now! Project is a clear example. The New York Power Authority used Enron’s engineered brown outs across California to justify adding 10 peaker plants in New York City on an emergency basis—running roughshod over frontline communities to do so. These plants were all sited in environmental justice communities with no community engagement, virtually no environmental due diligence, and over vociferous community objections. Although these plants were pitched as temporary, a 3-year emergency solution to a manufactured crisis—they are still there. Anyone born the year they were installed is eligible to vote and nearly old enough to drink.
By seizing this opportunity to transform Rikers Island into sustainable infrastructure, New York City can right this old wrong. The Peaker plants could be shuttered and the land currently devoted to energy generation returned to these front-line communities for greenspace, affordable housing, or other locally-determined priorities. A recent Ravenswood power plant project shows that 316 MW of storage can be sited on 7 acres of land. Two such storage sites could provide more capacity than all the Power Now! plants combined.
Image from Ravenswood Energy Storage Project Expanded Environmental Assessment, submitted to the NY Public Service Commission.
By siting battery storage, solar generation, and wastewater treatment facilities on Rikers Island and moving these facilities out of environmental justice communities, Renewable Rikers leverages the transformation of the criminal justice system into wider transformation across multiple axes of justice. It benefits the City as a whole, while specifically benefiting the communities most impacted by mass incarceration, and incarceration at Rikers.
Enacting Renewable Rikers would be a moment for environmental justice. The proposed bills before the New York City Council would improve air quality for environmental justice communities, which are frequently the same communities most impacted by mass incarceration, and by incarceration at Rikers.
Enacting Renewable Rikers would be a moment for climate justice. The proposed bills would help ensure a just transition that reduces the burdens on frontline communities.
Enacting Renewable Rikers would be a moment for restorative justice. Solar installer and wind turbine technician are the two fastest growing job categories in the United States (albeit from a small base.) Renewable Rikers can create jobs with a pathway to prosperity for everyone—specifically for those most impacted by mass incarceration, and by incarceration at Rikers.
As plans for Rikers’ future mature, appropriate oversight mechanisms will be key to making sure that this project benefits the communities most impacted by Rikers and by environmental racism. Enacting the proposals currently before City Council would help ensure that closing Rikers does not devolve into a privatization land grab. The communities most impacted by incarceration at Rikers, and by environmental racism, must be part of the process. If these communities are consulted early and often, and that their representatives are part of whatever decision-making bodies will ultimately make choices about Renewable Rikers, it might indeed be the dawn of a new day for New York City energy generation.
Repenser la protection de la nature dans le contexte des Objectifs du Développement Durable en articulant action locale et régionale avec les politiques nationales et internationales
Aujourd’hui, les zones de nature ordinaire — parfois appelées paysages productifs — sont les plus menacées par la pollution, par des systèmes d’exploitation non durables, mais aussi par notre négligence.
Un constat sans appel
Sur la base des listes rouges produites par l’UICN, le Chief scientist de l’IUCN, Thomas Brooks alerte sur le rythme sans précédent de l’érosion de la biodiversité auquel nous assistons. Nous savons également qu’alors que notre subsistance dépend pour 95% de sols cultivés, 52% d’entre eux sont dégradés ou terriblement dégradés. C’est dans ce contexte, alors que la première partie du dernier rapport du GIEC vient d’être rendue publique, que va s’ouvrir à Marseille, le Congrès mondial de la Nature. A cette occasion, lors de l’Assemblée de ses membres, l’UICN se prononcera sur la possible adhésion des collectivités locales à l’Union. Ce Congrès s’inscrit sur la route qui relie Edimbourg à la 15ème Conférence des Parties à la Convention sur la Diversité Biologique (CoP15 de la CBD) et au 7ème Sommet Mondial de la Biodiversité des Gouvernements Locaux et Infranationaux, à l’heure où les discussions sur le renouvellement, le renforcement des plans d’actions des gouvernements infranationaux, des villes et des autres autorités locales vont bon train.
Pour préparer le Congrés de l’UICN, quatre webinaires ont été organisés avec le soutien du projet Post 2020 Biodiversity Framework – EU support, financé par l’Union européenne et mis en œuvre par Expertise France, et de l’Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB). Ils se sont tenus les 22, 23, 29 et 30 juin, chacun correspondant à une thématique.
Foret Fontainebleau. Photo: Mairie de Fontainebleau
Des territoires de nature ?
Les trois premiers webinaires traitent des différents types de territoires[1] du point de vue de la nature qui les recouvre. Ils s’intéressent à la nature en termes d’actions à conduire par les gouvernements locaux et infranationaux pour la protéger, la maintenir en bon état et la restaurer quand elle est trop dégradée.
1. Les territoires de nature exceptionnelle
Les territoires de nature exceptionnelle sont tous ceux qui font l’objet d’une protection. Quand les premières protections sont mises en place à la fin du XIXème siècle, on voit déjà que ce qui les motive est lié aux usages. Ainsi, la première zone de nature protégée au monde, est Fontainebleau en 1861, où est créée une réserve artistique – pour que les Peintres de Barbizon puissent continuer de capturer la beauté du monde et la fixer sur une toile. Vient ensuite Yellowstone en 1872, le premier parc national créé pour protéger cette étendue de toute exploitation et prédation. Depuis plus d’un siècle, ces espaces recouvrent une surface de plus en plus importante. Leur gestion nous en apprend tous les jours sur le fonctionnement du vivant. Ce sont des espaces « pilotes », des « laboratoires » où l’on apprend à protéger la nature, à en prendre soin, à la restaurer aussi.
Crédit : Yellowstone par James St-John
Des témoignages des intervenants disponibles ici ressortent trois enseignements majeurs :
a) Protéger durablement les espaces naturels remarquables nécessite de prendre en compte tous les besoins des personnes qui vivent sur ces territoires. Ainsi en est-il de la fréquentation touristique, qui doit être encadrée pour maintenir un équilibre durable entre préservation de la nature et emploi pour les populations locales. C’est également vrai pour les espaces verts de la Ville du Cap qui veille à associer les citadins dès la conception de ses projets urbains.
b) Pour être efficaces, les labels de protection les plus prestigieux, décernés par des organes ou institutions internationaux devraient prévoir d’associer plus étroitement et de façon pérenne les gouvernements infranationaux à même de mettre en place les modes de gestion pragmatiques permettant d’encadrer la fréquentation des sites ou leur accessibilité par exemple.
c) Quand les gouvernements infranationaux sont impliqués dans la protection des espaces remarquables, les protéger créée une dynamique pour l’ensemble du territoire. Ainsi en est-il de la Ville de Saint François qui, partant de la protection du site de la Pointe des Châteaux, a engagé une politique de protection de la nature qui dépasse le seul périmètre de ce lieu remarquable.
Crédit : Parc Naturel mondial, Richard Weller
Toutefois, la rapidité avec laquelle le changement climatique affecte les écosystèmes planétaires impose d’accélérer la reconnexion des espaces naturels protégés. Richard Weller, titulaire de la Chaire Meyerson d’urbanisme à la Weitzman School of Design de l’Université de Pennsylvanie, souligne ce paradoxe : alors que les humains ont déployé des trésors d’intelligence pour assurer leurs déplacements et ceux de leurs biens et marchandises, la connexion des espaces protégés est inexistante, interdisant aux espèces tout déplacement. Tandis que nous nous sommes fixés comme objectif de protéger 17% des aires terrestres avec les cibles d’Aichi, Richard Weller rappelle qu’il existe aujourd’hui 867 zones protégées dans le monde. Ensemble, elles représentent environ 15% de la surface terrestre, soit une différence de 1 ou 2% avec l’objectif fixé. Toutefois, ce sont autant d’archipels isolés les uns des autres. A travers le projet de Parc Naturel mondial, le chercheur propose de créer une ligne du nord au sud du continent américain (la « Pataska », allant de la Patagonie à l’Alaska), une autre de la Libye à l’Afrique du Sud, et une troisième du Maroc jusqu’à l’Asie centrale et l’Australie. Ces trois lignes permettraient de regrouper 19 des 36 hotspots, ce qui recouvre 55 nations et 160 000 km au total. Ce nouvel ensemble constituerait un parc naturel mondial : le « World Park Project ». Ces lignes rouges pourraient devenir des chemins de randonnée et former une sorte d’infrastructure verte : des routes ou des chemins dans une ville pourraient mener à des parcs, conduisant à des zones cultivées puis à des zones protégées, etc.
Dans la vision de Richard Weller, il ne s’agit pas simplement de zones de promenade ou de randonnée, mais aussi d’espaces où l’on peut travailler, amener les gens à voir ce qu’il se passe – à l’inverse des parcs naturels tels qu’on les concevait autrefois, dont les visiteurs étaient exclus. Ce parc naturel mondial ne vise pas à renforcer les zones protégées actuelles mais à protéger celles qui se situent dans les zones intermédiaires, sur lesquelles nous devons travailler pour pouvoir restaurer les connexions – et de le faire à l’échelle mondiale pour lutter contre la crise climatique. Cette vision originale conduit à repenser les deux autres types de territoire que nous avons identifiés : les territoires urbains et ceux de « nature ordinaire ».
2. Les territoires urbains
En effet, à l’autre bout du spectre, se trouvent des espaces qui nous ont permis de nous affranchir des aléas de la nature. Il s’agit des espaces urbains. Depuis le début de ce siècle et les premiers effets du changement climatique, la demande de nature en ville s’accentue et conduit à un vaste mouvement qui voit nos villes et nos grandes métropoles se verdir. Mais aussi — parce que ces zones urbaines s’étendent et accueillent une part croissante d’une population mondiale qui va augmentant — ces espaces urbains viennent empiéter sur les espaces de nature protégés et leur empreinte affecte toutes les zones du globe.
Travaillant actuellement avec un réseau de 33 villes situées sur des territoires de zones « à risque », Richard Weller a réalisé une cartographie précise indiquant à quels endroits exactement la ville – ou ses infrastructures – va entrer en conflit avec la biodiversité. Selon lui, l’objectif n’est pas de stopper le développement de ces villes mais plutôt de le concevoir en l’orientant vers certaines zones de façon à en éviter, contourner d’autres pour maintenir les continuités écologiques nécessaires à la préservation de la biodiversité. Le chercheur nous invite à une autre vision des villes et de la nature, où les unes et l’autre se développent en symbiose et non en opposition : « Il va falloir reprogrammer le développement urbain pour que les villes entrent en symbiose avec leur habitat et ne soient plus des parasites. Nous n’avons pas d’autre choix que de planifier et de concevoir un autre développement urbain et de rendre des comptes à tous types de vie sur Terre. »
Des témoignages des intervenants, il ressort que les villes pèsent d’un poids de moins en moins soutenable sur l’ensemble des écosystèmes de la planète. Et les inégalités se creusent : l’accès à la nature dans les villes les plus riches est inégalement réparti. Le développement anarchique des villes dans les pays du Sud menace des zones de biodiversité remarquables, indispensables au bon fonctionnement de l’ensemble des écosystèmes qui constituent ces espaces urbains. Les plus démunis sont aussi ceux qui vivent dans les environnements les plus dégradés. Toutefois, depuis le début de ce siècle, la prise de conscience qu’un autre modèle est possible gagne du terrain. Quatre points donnent des raisons d’espérer :
a) La mobilisation des réseaux de collectivités locales, des ONG, des citoyens, des élus et des gestionnaires pousse nombre de villes à agir. Diagnostic partagé, planification urbaine privilégiant la création et l’accès aux espaces verts, gestion différenciée de ces espaces de nature en ville, désartificialisation et renaturation des sols, mise en place de dispositifs favorisant le retour des espèces de flore, de faune (dont les pollinisateurs) en ville se développent.
b) Pour gagner encore en efficacité, la collaboration entre les municipalités et les acteurs privés – ie. entreprises, commerces, ensembles d’habitation, etc. – permet de gagner de nouveaux espaces verts sans étendre encore la surface des villes notamment par la végétalisation des toits, des murs ou l’ouverture au public d’espaces verts privés. Réglementations encourageant les pratiques vertueuses, labels, référentiels se mettent en place et concourent à une dynamique positive.
c) Certaines municipalités travaillent déjà à élargir leur action au-delà de leur territoire pour aider les agriculteurs à produire de façon plus soutenable, en encourageant l’agriculture bio, à préserver la ressource en eau.
d) Parce qu’elles accueillent une part croissante de la population, que ce sont des lieux de culture, d’innovation et d’échanges, c’est aussi dans les villes que peuvent advenir les solutions qui permettront l’avènement d’une véritable civilisation écologique à travers la mise en place des solutions fondées sur la nature.
3. Les territoires de nature ordinaire
Entre les espaces protégés et les villes, il reste ce qui fait l’essentiel des écosystèmes de notre planète : qu’en France nous appelons la « nature ordinaire ». Cette nature est dite « ordinaire » parce qu’elle est commune – au sens où elle n’est pas « rare ». Par ce terme on désigne aussi bien les champs cultivés que les forêts ou les déserts. C’est ce qui n’est pas protégé, pas défini comme « exceptionnel » mais qui n’est pas non plus de l’urbain. Aujourd’hui, ce sont les espaces les plus menacés par les changements d’usage, la surexploitation, le changement climatique, la pollution, etc. et ce, également à cause de notre négligence.La concentration de la population dans les villes nous conduit à les déserter, et ce faisant à les délaisser alors même qu’ils nous fournissent notre nourriture, l’eau, l’air, l’essentiel de nos ressources.
Tous les intervenants se sont accordés sur l’urgence à protéger ces espaces qui assurent le maintien de notre vie sur terre et sont pourtant aujourd’hui mis en grand danger par nos pratiques, notamment agricoles. La difficulté à les nommer – le concept de « nature ordinaire » est difficile à traduire en anglais : le terme utilisé « productive landscape » n’en désigne qu’une partie est à mettre en regard de notre difficulté à les gérer durablement.
a) La nécessité de repenser entièrement notre agriculture ne pourra se faire qu’en articulant action locale et globale. Il s’agit par exemple de revoir à la fois les pratiques agricoles et l’organisation même des marchés et nos modes de consommation pour réduire la part de produits animaux et le gaspillage de denrées alimentaires. Pour cela, il faut sortir de la logique des politiques « en silo » : articuler production agricole et protection de la nature. Plus globalement, repenser tous nos systèmes d’exploitation des ressources naturelles pour qu’ils ne détruisent pas irrémédiablement nos écosystèmes, ce à quoi nous invitent les objectifs du développement durable (ODD).
b) Les gouvernements locaux et infranationaux sont moteurs dans la restauration des écosystèmes de nature ordinaire pour le bénéfice des populations qui y vivent et en vivent.
c) Plus encore que pour les aires protégées, la mobilisation de tous les acteurs est indispensable à la protection effective de cette nature ordinaire qui participe à la préservation de la nature extraordinaire. Chacun doit s’y atteler en fonction de ses compétences et ses moyens. Aucune entreprise ne peut considérer cela comme accessoire.
Systèmes de financement et gouvernance ?
S’il est évident que la préservation d’un espace de nature protégé ne relève pas des mêmes règles, ni du même type de financements que ceux qui utilisés pour gérer les espaces verts en ville, les zones agricoles, l’océan, les déserts ou les forêts par exemple, la nature est UNE, et tous ces types de nature s’entrecroisent, s’entremêlent.
Aussi, le quatrième et dernier volet de cette série a-t-il été consacré aux questions de finance et gouvernance. Les gouvernements infranationaux sont aux avant-postes du combat contre le changement climatique et pour la biodiversité : ils sont proches d’une population en demande de nature, d’une population qui prend conscience que nous ne pouvons pas continuer à sacrifier notre futur et celui de nos enfants à un présent de plus en plus incertain, d’une population qui supporte de plus en plus mal d’être la victime de l’exploitation intensive, des pollutions, de tout ce qui dégrade notre environnement. C’est peut-être ce qui conduit les gouvernements infranationaux à innover, à proposer des solutions qui sont ensuite reprises par les États nationaux et les institutions internationales. Ainsi, rappelons-nous qu’une des toutes premières Obligations Vertes – les fameux Green bonds – a été lancée – en 2001 ! – par la ville de San Francisco pour financer la mise en œuvre d’un vaste plan d’installation d’énergie solaire – en réponse à la crise énergétique qui touchait alors la Californie. Les obligations vertes sont aujourd’hui mises en œuvre par les états et remportent un vrai succès.
Cependant, les questions de financement ne peuvent pas être considérées indépendamment des questions de gouvernance. Plus que jamais, les décisions des uns impactent le devenir des autres. Les effets du changement climatique causent plus de morts au Sud qu’au Nord alors même que le Sud n’est que marginalement responsable des émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Que va-t-il se passer quand les glaciers de l’Himalaya, troisième réservoir planétaire d’eau douce qui alimentent les principaux fleuves d’Asie : Indus, Gange, Brahmapoutre, Mékong, (Yangtsé), Fleuve jaune – vont disparaître ? La vie de près d’un tiers de l’Humanité en dépend.
Aussi, pour le futur de l’humanité, nous ne pouvons laisser les seuls pays riches accéder aux financements. Edgar Morin nous le rappelle : « la crise climatique, l’érosion de la biodiversité rappelle à la grande famille humaine la communauté de destin qui est la sienne. » Les questions de gouvernance et de finance sont étroitement liées. L’accès aux financements pour les gouvernements infranationaux est facilité quand il s’inscrit dans des coopérations avec leurs Etats, les institutions ou projets régionaux, ou encore en lien avec le privé.
Tous les intervenants partagent le même constat résumé en 4 points :
a) Nos modèles de développement ne sont pas durables, ils épuisent nos ressources naturelles.
b) La crise climatique met en danger nos économies au nord comme au sud.
c) Changer de modèle suppose des investissements massifs. Les plans de relance post-Covid constituent une réelle opportunité pour investir dans la réalisation d‘infrastructures vertes et bleues.
d) Les villes, en particulier, doivent se saisir de cette opportunité pour mettre en œuvre les solutions fondées sur la nature et recréer ainsi les emplois perdus pendant la pandémie.
En termes de financement, quatre leviers doivent être actionnés concomitamment pour relever ce fantastique défi :
a) Des réformes politiques : l’organisation des marchés, les réglementations et les critères d’attribution des aides et subventions n’encouragent pas le financement des infrastructures vertes et bleues, des systèmes de production durables ou des solutions fondées sur la nature.
b) Un renforcement de la coopération entre gouvernements infranationaux et secteur privé : Les solutions fondées sur la nature, les infrastructures vertes et bleues comme les systèmes de production durable nécessitent d’être conçus et mis en œuvre localement. En ce sens, les gouvernements infranationaux sont bien placés pour proposer leur mise en œuvre. Mais bien souvent, leur accès aux financements est limité par le montant de leurs demandes de crédits, considéré comme trop faible pour accéder aux fonds délivrés par les bailleurs publics. Une piste consiste pour les gouvernements infranationaux à renforcer leurs coopérations avec le secteur privé pour solliciter les bailleurs publics.
c) Un accroissement du nombre de projets réellement et durablement vertueux : si les projets liés à la production d’énergies renouvelables sont bien documentés et techniquement murs, ce n’est pas encore le cas pour les solutions fondées sur la nature, les infrastructures vertes et bleues ou les modes de production durable. Il existe un réel besoin de connaissances sur les bénéfices tirés à moyen et long terme de la mise en œuvre de ces innovations. Les gouvernements infranationaux constituent des territoires d’expérimentation qui pourraient gagner à coopérer avec les entreprises et la communauté scientifique.
d) Des synergies accrues entre le niveau de gouvernance infranational et mondial pour combiner changements de modes de production et de consommation avec les nécessaires réformes de l’organisation des marchés.
Mettre en œuvre ces leviers nécessite également une réforme de gouvernance qui articule étroitement l’action locale et les politiques nationales et globales, la recherche d’un équilibre entre systèmes politiques centralisés et décentralisés, à travers le concept développé par Bob Jessop et rappelé par Gaël Giraud de « Colibration ». Ce concept définit l’apprentissage d’une « collaboration » qui soit en même temps une « calibration », à savoir la recherche permanente d’interactions intelligentes et adaptées aux décisions, entre échelle locale et échelles centrales – étatiques et internationales. Retrouver de la « directionnalité » en politique sans réduire de manière artificielle la complexité des interactions entre société, économie et biodiversité, tel est selon Gaël Giraud le premier des grands défis de gouvernance que nous devons relever. Autre grand défi concernant l’administration des biens communs telle que définie par Elinor Ostrom – la biodiversité, comme la santé, en est un – la recherche de « méta-règles » qui s’imposent en cas de désaccord, afin d’arbitrer les conflits en conservant l’objectif défini ensemble auparavant.
Réconcilier 100% de l’humanité avec notre planète
Meriem Bouamrane, responsable scientifique du Programme MAB de l’UNESCO, nous rappelle que la pandémie de COVID 19 ouvre une période de transformation invitant à revoir notre relation à la nature, aux autres, à nos modes de vie et façons de travailler. Elle offre également des opportunités de financement sans précédent. Toutefois, et tous les intervenants l’ont souligné, nous ne pourrons relever ces défis qu’ensemble. Ensemble… Cela suppose de tenir compte des besoins de chacun, de casser les politiques opérant en silo qui perdurent malgré la feuille de route fixée collectivement avec les Objectifs du Développement durable, de penser la préservation de la biodiversité, toute la biodiversité, en cherchant dans le même temps à créer un futur plus juste, plus solidaire.
Pour ce faire, nous ne pourrons nous passer de la force extraordinaire d’action qui est celle des gouvernements locaux et infranationaux dont Christophe Nuttal, Directeur du R20, nous rappelle qu’ils détiennent 75% des solutions en termes de lutte contre le changement climatique. La Convention pour la Diversité biologique a été pionnière. Comme nous l’a rappelé Oliver Hillel, elle a été la première à reconnaître leur rôle aux côtés des Etats dans la lutte contre l’érosion de la biodiversité et l’utilisation durable des ressources naturelles. Puisse la CoP15 de la CBD nous donner les moyens de renforcer et d’institutionnaliser cette nécessaire coopération.
Stéphanie Lux, Elisabeth Chouraki, and Ingrid Coetzee Paris, Paris, et Cape Town
Rethinking Nature Protection in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by Linking Local and Regional Action with National and International Policies
Today, areas of ordinary nature — sometimes referred to as productive landscapes — are the most threatened by pollution, by unsustainable exploitation systems, and also by our negligence.
A Clear Statement
Based on the IUCN red list, the IUCN Chief Scientist, Thomas Brooks, warns of the unprecedented rate of biodiversity loss we are witnessing. We also know that while 95% of our livelihoods depend on cultivated soils, 52% of them are degraded or severely degraded.
It is within this context, while the first part of the latest IPCC report has just been made public, that the World Conservation Congress will open in Marseille. On this occasion, during the Assembly of its members, IUCN will decide on the possible membership of local authorities in the Union.
This Congress is part of the road between Edinburgh and the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CoP15 of the CBD) and the 7th Global Biodiversity Summit of Local and Subnational Governments, an official parallel event to the COP, at a time when discussions on renewing and strengthening the action plan on sub-national governments, cities, and other local authorities are well underway.
In preparation for the IUCN Congress, four webinars were organized with the support of the Post 2020 Biodiversity Framework – EU support project, financed by the European Union and implemented by Expertise France, and the French Office for Biodiversity (Office Français de la Biodiversité -OFB). They were held on June 22, 23, 29 and 30, each corresponding to a relevant theme.
Fontainebleau forest. Photo: Mairie de Fontainebleau
Diverse Domains of Nature
The first three webinars deal with the vast differences between lands and territories from the point of view of the natural landscapes that cover them. They focus on nature in terms of actions to be taken by local and sub-national governments to protect it, maintain it in good condition, and restore it when these lands are degraded.
1. Exceptional Nature
The lands and territories of the natural world which are exceptional or indispensable are all those which are most often needing to be subject to protection. Protective conservationist policies have a long history. The very first set of protections were put in place at the end of the 19th century and were predominantly motivated by a desire for them to be used. For example, the first protected natural area in the world was Fontainebleau in 1861, where an artistic reserve was created so that the Barbizon painters could continue to capture the beauty of the world for all to see through their paintings.
Then came Yellowstone in 1872, the first national park ever created to protect this area from exploitation and predation. For more than a century, these protected areas have been growing in size. Our management of these areas teaches us about diverse ways of life in nature. They can act as “pilot” areas or “laboratories” where we learn to protect nature, to take care of it, and to restore it too.
Credit: Yellowstone by James St-John
From the testimonies of the webinar participants, we can draw three important lessons:
a) Sustainably protecting exceptional natural areas requires taking into account all the needs of the people who live in and around these areas. When it comes to traffic on account of tourism, for example, this must be controlled to maintain a sustainable balance between nature conservation, and employment for local populations. This is also true for the green spaces of the City of Cape Town, which is careful to involve city dwellers right from the outset of its urban projects.
b) Prestigious protection labels, awarded by international bodies or institutions, should provide for a closer and more permanent involvement of sub-national governments, which are able to put in place pragmatic management methods to control the use of natural area sites and their accessibility, for example.
c)When sub-national governments are involved in the protection of exceptional natural spaces, protecting them creates dynamic benefit for the entire region. This is the case for the City of Saint François, which, starting with the protection of the Pointe des Châteaux site, has initiated a nature protection policy that goes beyond the perimeter of this remarkable place.
Credit: World Nature Park, Richard Weller
The rapidity with which climate change is affecting planetary ecosystems makes it necessary to accelerate the reconnection of protected natural areas. Richard Weller, Meyerson Chair in Urban Planning at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, points out the paradox that while humans have been very apt at driving connections and networking human life, technology, goods, and cargo, protected areas suffer from disconnection making it impossible for species to move and migrate, in some cases. While we have set ourselves the goal of protecting 17% of terrestrial areas with the Aichi targets, Richard Weller reminds us that there are currently 867 protected areas in the world. Together, they represent about 15% of the Earth’s surface, which is a difference of 1 or 2% with the target.
However, these protected lands are like archipelagos in that they are isolated from each other. With the World Natural Park project, Weller proposes we create lines of connection that could alleviate this problem. For example, a pathway running from north to south on the American continent (the “Pataska”, from Patagonia to Alaska); another running from Libya to South Africa, and a third from Morocco to Central Asia and Australia. Just these three pathways would bring together 19 of the 36 hotspots, covering 55 nations and 160,000 km in total. This new ensemble of pathways could constitute a world natural park: the “World Park Project”. These pathways could become hiking trails and form a kind of green infrastructure: roads or paths in a city could lead to parks, leading to cultivated areas and then to protected areas, etc.
In Weller’s vision, these are not just areas for walking or hiking, but also spaces where you can work, and gather – unlike some traditionally conceived conservation and protected areas, where visitors are often excluded. This world nature park does not aim to reinforce the current protected areas but to protect those teleconnections in between, which we need to work on to ultimately protect earth’s ecosystems and habitats from extinction. Moreover, to do so on a global scale to additionally fight this threat that has only increased due to the climate crisis.
This original vision leads us to rethink the two other types of lands and territories we have identified: urban environments and those of ordinary nature.
2. Urban Environments
Apart from exceptional nature, on the other side of the spectrum, the urban environment is a vastly different space. Since the beginning of this century, and with the first effects of climate change, the demand for nature in the city has increased and led to a vast movement that is working ever harder to make our cities and major metropolises greener in an effort to curb global warming and other effects of climate change. Due to the fact that urban areas are expanding and a rapidly increasing share of the world’s growing population now lives in cities – these urban spaces are encroaching on protected nature areas, and their footprint is affecting all areas of the globe.
Currently working with a network of 33 cities located in “at risk” areas, Richard Weller has produced a precise map showing exactly where the city – or its infrastructure – will conflict with biodiversity. According to him, the objective is not to stop the development of these cities but rather to design it by orienting it towards certain zones in order to avoid or bypass others in order to maintain the ecological continuities necessary for the preservation of biodiversity. Weller invites us to imagine another vision of cities and nature, where both develop in symbiosis and not in opposition. Weller says, “We will have to reprogram urban development so that cities enter into symbiosis with their habitat and are no longer parasites. We have no choice but to plan and design a different kind of urban development and be accountable to all types of life on Earth.”
From the testimonies of the speakers, it is clear that cities are weighing more and more unsustainably on the planet’s ecosystems as a whole. And inequalities are growing: access to nature in the richest cities is unevenly distributed. The often-informal development of cities in the countries of the South threatens remarkable areas of biodiversity, which are essential to the proper functioning of all the ecosystems that make up these urban areas. The poorest people are also those who live in the most degraded environments. However, since the beginning of this century, awareness that another model is possible has been gaining ground.
Three points give us reason for hope:
a) The mobilization of local government networks, NGOs, citizens, elected officials, and managers is pushing many cities to act. Shared diagnoses, urban planning that favors the creation of and access to green spaces, differentiated management of these natural spaces in the city, reconstituting soils, and setting up systems that encourage the return of species of flora and fauna (including pollinators) to the city are all developing. To gain even more efficiency, collaboration between municipalities and private actors – i.e. companies, businesses, housing estates, etc. – makes it possible to gain new green spaces without the need for big budgets.
b) To gain further efficiency, collaboration between municipalities and private actors – i.e. companies, businesses, housing estates, etc. – makes it possible to gain new green spaces without extending the surface of the cities, in particular through the greening of roofs, walls, or the opening of private green spaces to the public. Regulations encouraging ecological practices, labels, and reference systems are being put in place and contribute to a positive dynamic.
c) Some municipalities are already working to extend their action beyond their territory to help farmers produce in a more sustainable way, by encouraging organic farming, to preserve water resources. Because they are home to a growing share of the population and are places of culture, innovation, and exchange, it is also in cities that solutions can be found that will allow the advent of a true ecological civilization through the implementation of nature-based solutions.
3. Ordinary Nature
Between protected areas and the cities, there remains another essential part of our planet’s ecosystems: which in France we call “ordinary nature”. This nature is called “ordinary” because it is part of most people’s common experience. Such nature is not rare or remarkable; people encounter it every day. This may include cultivated fields, as well as forests or deserts, depending on the landscape and lands of that region. It is what is not protected, not defined as “exceptional” but which is not urban either. Today, these are the spaces that are most threatened by changes in use, overexploitation, climate change, pollution, and also by negligence. The concentration of a growing population in cities leads us to desert them, and in so doing to neglect them, even though they provide us with our food, water, air, and most of our resources.
All the speakers agreed on the urgency of protecting these spaces which ensure the maintenance of our life on earth and which are increasingly endangered by our practices, especially agricultural. The concept of “ordinary nature” is difficult to translate into English: the term “productive landscape” is another common usage, but only designates a part of what the term ordinary nature encompasses. Important points that resulted include:
a) The need to completely rethink agricultural practices can only be done by articulating local and global action. For example, it is necessary to review both agricultural practices and the very organization of markets and our consumption patterns to reduce the share of animal products and food waste. To do this, we must break out of the logic of “silo” policies: articulate agricultural production and nature protection. More globally, we need to rethink all our natural resource exploitation systems so that they do not irreparably destroy our ecosystems, which is what the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) invite us to do.
b) Local and sub-national governments are driving the restoration of ordinary ecosystems for the benefit of the people who live in and from them.
c) Even more than just for protected areas, the mobilization of all stakeholders is essential for the effective protection of ordinary nature, which contributes to the preservation of extraordinary nature. Everyone must work on this according to their skills and means. No company can consider this as an accessory.
Financing systems and governance?
The preservation of a protected nature area does not fall under the same rules, nor the same type of financing as those used to manage green spaces in the city, in agricultural areas, or the ocean, deserts, and forests, for example. Yet, all of these ecosystems are connected and nature is ONE, so all of these types of nature intertwine, and intermingle. Therefore, the fourth and final part of this series was devoted to the issues of finance and governance. Sub-national and local governments are at the forefront of the fight against climate change and for biodiversity: they are close to a population in demand for nature, a population that is becoming aware that we cannot continue to sacrifice our future and that of our children to an increasingly uncertain present, a population that is increasingly resentful of being the victim of intensive exploitation, pollution, and everything that degrades our environment. This is perhaps what leads all levels of sub-national governments to innovate, to propose solutions that are then taken up by national states and international institutions. Thus, let us remember that one of the very first Green Bonds was launched – in 2001! – by the City of San Francisco to finance the implementation of a vast solar energy installation plan – in response to the energy crisis that was affecting California at the time. Green bonds are now being implemented by states and are proving to be a real success. However, financing issues cannot be considered in isolation from governance issues. More than ever, the decisions of some affect the future of others. The effects of climate change cause more deaths in the South than in the North, even though the South is only marginally responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.
What future do we want?
What will happen when the Himalayan glaciers, the third largest reservoir of fresh water in the world, which feed the main rivers of Asia: Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, (Yangtze), Yellow River – disappear? The lives of nearly a third of humanity depend on it.
Also, for the future of humanity, we cannot let richer countries alone have access to financing. Edgar Morin reminds us that “the climate crisis and the erosion of biodiversity remind humanity of its common destiny.” The issues of governance and finance are closely linked. Access to financing for sub-national governments is facilitated when it is part of cooperation with their states, regional institutions or projects, or in connection with the private sector.
All the speakers drew the following collective conclusions:
a) Our development models are not sustainable, they exhaust our natural resources.
b) The climate crisis is endangering our economies in the North and in the South.
c) Changing our model requires massive investments. The post-Covid recovery plans are a real opportunity to invest in green and blue infrastructure.
d) Cities, in particular, must seize this opportunity to implement nature-based solutions and thus recreate the jobs lost during the pandemic.
In terms of financing, four levers need to be activated concomitantly to meet this fantastic challenge:
a) Policy reforms: the organization of markets, regulations, and criteria for granting subsidies and grants do not encourage the financing of green and blue infrastructure, sustainable production systems, or nature-based solutions, are not enough alone.
b) Strengthening cooperation between all levels of sub-national governments and the private sector: Nature-based solutions, green and blue infrastructure, and sustainable production systems need to be designed and implemented locally. In this sense, subnational governments are well-positioned to design their implementation. But often, their access to funding is limited by the size of their loan applications, which are considered too small to access funds from public donors. One approach is for sub-national governments to strengthen their cooperation with the private sector to solicit public donors.
c) An increase in the number of truly and sustainably ecological projects: while projects related to renewable energy production are well documented and proven to be technically feasible, this is not yet the case for nature-based solutions, green and blue infrastructure, or sustainable production methods. There is a real need for knowledge on the medium and long-term benefits of implementing these innovations. Sub-national and local governments are territories of experimentation that could benefit from cooperation with businesses and the scientific community.
d) Increased synergies between the sub-national and global levels of governance to combine changes in production and consumption patterns with the necessary reforms in market organization.
Implementing these levers also requires a reform of governance that closely articulates local action and national and global policies, the search for a balance between centralized and decentralized political systems, through the concept developed by Bob Jessop and recalled by Gaël Giraud of “Colibration”. This concept defines the learning of a “collaboration” that is at the same time a “calibration”, i.e. the permanent search for intelligent interactions adapted to decisions, between local and central scales – state and international. According to Gaël Giraud, the first of the major governance challenges we must meet is to rediscover “directionality” in politics without artificially reducing the complexity of interactions between society, the economy, and biodiversity. Another major challenge concerning the administration of common goods as defined by Elinor Ostrom – biodiversity, like health, is one of them – is the search for “meta-rules” that can be imposed in the event of disagreement, in order to arbitrate conflicts while preserving the objective defined together beforehand.
Reconciling 100% of humanity with nature
Meriem Bouamrane, Chief scientist of the programme MAB UNESCO, reminds us that the COVID-19 pandemic opens a period of transformation inviting us to rethink our relationship with nature, with others, with our lifestyles, and our ways of working. It also offers unprecedented funding opportunities. However, as all the speakers emphasized, we can only meet these challenges together. Together… This implies taking into account the needs of everyone, breaking down policies operating in silos that persist despite the roadmap set-out collectively with the Sustainable Development Goals, thinking about the preservation of biodiversity, all biodiversity, while at the same time seeking to create a fairer, more united future.
To do this, we cannot do without the extraordinary force of action of local and sub-national governments, of which Christophe Nuttal, Director of the R20, reminds us that they hold 75% of the solutions in terms of the fight against climate change. The Convention on Biological Diversity was a pioneer. As Oliver Hillel reminded us in one of the webinars, the convention was the first to recognize the role of subnational governments alongside States in the fight against biodiversity loss and the sustainable use of natural resources. May the CoP15 of the CBD give us the means to strengthen and institutionalize this necessary cooperation.
Stéphanie Lux, Elisabeth Chouraki, and Ingrid Coetzee Paris, Paris, and Cape Town
Elisabeth Chouraki coordinates the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework - EU support project implemented by Expertise France and funded by the European Union.
Ingrid has more than 30 years’ experience in sustainability and governance. Her work focuses on mainstreaming nature, its benefits, and nature-based solutions into urban planning and decision-making in cities and city regions thereby helping them become healthier, and more resilient and liveable places.
Edward Lorenz’s application of chaos theory to weather forecasting is better known to the general public as “the butterfly effect”, thanks to his conference presentation, “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Lorenz’s law explains to us that there are unknown and invisible (to us) chains of interlinked effects such that any small variation in a system can induce big changes in the long term. One of the meanings of this idea is the assumption that real word phenomena are too complex to be explained or to have their consequences forecasted through simplistic, cause-effects dynamics. In this sense, any small decision can influence the long chains of interactions which will constitute the big picture we see.
It isn’t yet clear what food market booms imply in the long term for rural villages from the perspectives of ecology, socio-cultural changes, regional population movements, and infrastructure.
While I’m writing this, I’m in an organic restaurant in Barcelona, in front of a quinoa salad. I know I’m the final consumer placed at the end of a long food chain.
Maybe some readers already know, or remember, the incredible wave of newspaper articles on quinoa in 2013, when the United Nations General Assembly declared 2013 as the International Year of Quinoa. For a few months, dozens of authors wrote about this super grain’s healthy, beneficial effects. Others complained about quinoa farming’s dramatic environmental consequences in the remote areas of developing countries, where it is produced. Others talked about how it was driving prices up so that Andean people could no longer afford it.
Then, silence.
This is our social attention span.
I’d like to share with you some thoughts on the relationship between consumers choices in cities and the related, emerging resilience and vulnerabilities trade-offs, which link far-flung territories. By resilience trade-offs, I refer to different leverage mechanisms by which increasing resilience in one place could lead to increasing vulnerability in other far-away places, due to unclear, enchained effects. By doing this, I want also to challenge both the negative bias of vulnerability and the positive one of resilience. How does the butterfly effect relate to this? Stay with me: there is something to learn about resilience, vulnerability, and cities from the quinoa revolution.
But what is the quinoa revolution?
Quinoa (but it could have been Ethiopian teff, the next super-grain, or coconut water, or oil palm, since quinoa just serves as an example) is a highly nutritious grain-like crop cultivated by the farmers of the Andes for over 7,000 years, mainly for subsistence purposes. This “peasant food” has adapted to grow under the most harsh environmental conditions (drought, salinity, hail, wind, frost) and is the only vegetable food that possesses all of the amino acids essential to humans. However, it has never had any market or commercial value. Or, at least, not before the 1980s. In fact, in 1983, the establishment of the National Association of Quinoa Producers, or ANAPQUI, and, a few years later (in 1986) the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ identifying quinoa as a strategic food for the Andean region, contributed to launching quinoa in the regional and Latin American markets. As a result, in 1996, FAO acknowledged the nutritional importance of quinoa and catalogued it among the promising crops of humanity and, along with other underutilized food crops, as a potential solution to human malnutrition. Recognizing quinoa as a highly nutritious food caught the interest of American and European consumers. Today, quinoa can be found in any organic shop of any global city.
The world-wide market for quinoa. Bolivia’s export of quinoa in tons and its evolution from 2008 to 2012. Image: Chelleri, L, Minucci, G. and Skrimizea E. (under review) “On quinoa revolution and vulnerability trade-offs”, Regional Environmental Change.
Vulnerability and resilience trade-offs
We could review the wave of scholarly and press articles presenting the general public pros (health effects) and cons (environmental degradation in Bolivia, or equity concerns regarding access to productive lands) of such a crop market boom. However, to me, this is not the most interesting issue. If you want to get to why, in cities, we should be aware of such cross-scale food market phenomena, you should take a step beyond the simplistic perceptions linking environmental degradation in Bolivia, food market speculations, and increasing quality of life in rich cities. From globalization, from the virtual shrinkage of distances and the related increased links among very faraway territories, emerges a complicated (and very dynamic) cocktail of opportunities and threats for both producers and consumers. The quinoa revolution falls into a category of opportunities that could empower both producers and consumers, building resilience into the food system. But such a rosy outcome is only theoretical, not realistic, given that new adaptations to these opportunities create new power dynamics and, inevitably, winners and losers.
We have become used to seeing resilience as a positive set of adaptive capacities (mainly related to diminishing risks and adapting to climate change or natural hazards), and vulnerability as the danger of been exposed to risky situations. Also, we have been told that increasing resilience corresponds to a proportional decrease in vulnerability. This is, generally speaking, true, and it does make sense. However, it is also too simplistic and not always adequate for describing our complex, hyper-connected, and fast-changing circumstances. In this regard, myself and other scholars have been recently working on emphasizing the policy nature of resilience (see these links for stepping from the classic ecological issue of “resilience of what to what”, to the critical geographers concern of “resilience for whom” and the “politics of resilient cities”). The emerging concept of “resilience trade-offs” explains such cross-scales and cross-systems leverage mechanisms between resilience and vulnerability, proposing that resilience, per se, is not always good, nor vulnerability bad. Increasing vulnerability to environmental degradation (take the case of quinoa mono-cropping, for instance) could indirectly mean increasing a set of capacities boosting well-being, knowledge, connections, and new development trajectories.
Take a look at Figure 2. These are very tiny villages, placed in remote areas at more than 4,000 m above sea levels, that have survived harsh climatic conditions for millennia. In order to survive these extreme climatic conditions, locals must know how to perfectly manage local resources, without eroding soil fertility or threatening groundwater reservoirs. Figure 2 explains the astonishing growth of quinoa-cropped lands in just 4 years, which in some cases now occupy most of the available arable land of the municipalities.
Quinoa field growth of selected Bolivian Altiplano villages. Image: Chelleri, L, Minucci, G. and Skrimizea E. (under review) “On quinoa revolution and vulnerability trade-offs”, Regional Environmental Change
Can you imagine what this food market boom implies for such rural villages from the perspectives of ecology, socio-cultural changes, regional population movements, infrastructural building opportunities, emerging technological solutions, and multinational partnerships?
In a recent study, I’ve addressed these complex consequences with my colleagues Guido Minucci and Eirini Skrimizea. The results of our five years of observations were:
a specialization of villages in (and a general increase of) llamas and sheep livestock, since the manure is used as the main fertilizer for quinoa in accordance with traditions and organic farming requirements;
emerging technological and mechanical innovations related to the use and management of water and to emerging national and international partnerships with NGOs;
increasing internal (regional) mobility and skills related to marketing strategies to diversify quinoa crops;
generational behavioural changes, which are both generating shocks among groups (urban versus rural people or different villages) and re-framing land-tenure rules, challenging the traditional common management of the lands.
While adapting to global food market stimuli brought Andean farmers a set of benefits and emerging capacities, we also observed a simultaneous increase of new threats and stresses, such as:
the previously unknown risk of “water scarcity” (because of the intensive cropping and breeding);
increasing social tensions and conflicts;
increasing dependencies on external markets and mono-cropping (exposure to economic failure because of lack of diversification);
increasing losses of rare ecosystems and biodiversity; and
the loss of traditional social capital and cultural landscapes.
Can you get a clear picture, from this transition, of whether the Andean farmers are now more resilient or more vulnerable?
A simple answer is that they are no longer exposed and vulnerable to hunger and isolation, since they are no longer completely dependent on natural and climatic processes, as they were used for millennia. However, one of the side effects of this transition is that they are now entirely dependent on exogenous markets dynamics.
We don’t know if the quinoa market boom—which is threatening the Bolivia Altiplano fresh-water reservoir and biodiversity, apparently increasing villages’ vulnerability to climate change—is definitely a bad thing, or if these increasing vulnerabilities are temporary side-effects of establishing the basis for a development revolution in which locals will truly benefit in the near future, thanks to technical innovations and more sustainable cropping strategies. In this sense, a very minor change in some villages (a technical innovation related to water management, for example) could set the ground for a regional transition, which could have future implications for the quinoa market, and feedback loops again on producer threats or opportunities.
This potential recalls a recent and brilliant paper by Lauer et al., which helps us to challenge the common understanding of resilience as good and vulnerability as bad by stating that communities must inevitably negotiate different trade-offs as they manage resilience. The key step here is to understand such complexity, the uncertain system of evolution, and moving from the mainstream of “resilience building” to emergent “resilience and vulnerability management”.
Quinoa and the butterfly effect: how can a grain from Bolivia influence urban resilience in Barcelona?
Far from its geographical origins, quinoa (synergistically with other exotic organic super healthy products) is contributing, in cities, to a boost in business opportunities and quality of life. Writing this post from Barcelona, a city which is smoothly recovering from years of hard economic crisis, the only sectors which have definitely not shrunk, but have grown in the last few years, are the luxury sector, tourism, second-hand markets, and organic farming. In interviewing local organic farmers, nobody fears the competition of exotic healthy superfoods. On the contrary—they know that the organic market is just 3 percent (2015 data) of the total food market of the region, and almost any (local and exotic) organic product boom can contribute to promoting consumers’ behavioral change towards a more organic, healthy, and sustainability-oriented life style.
When, a few months ago, I was working on a paper assessing all the different facets of Barcelona’s “resiliency” (from the most classic risk reduction-oriented ones, to the urban ecosystem services or social ones), a key insight was realizing that the city’s “generic” and core resilience feature was the Catalan people’s business capacity and ambitions, which are strongly linked to their identity (being Catalan, and proud of their city). When referring to city resilience, we mostly look to the built environment: critical infrastructures, urban services supply (business continuity), and people’s safety from different hazards. However, in time and across city history, the resilience of a city is also based on its capacity to stay alive, and to stay alive means to maintain your economic performance.
Figure 3. A quinoa shop. Photo: Lorenzo Chelleri
From being a small city just a century ago, Barcelona has attracted big events and has invested in its infrastructure, public spaces and, therefore, in its image as a trendy and vibrant Mediterranean city. The success of its urban governance is known to planners as the “Barcelona Model”. Based on effective public-private partnerships (although these are contested by most scholars because of the social bias of this model, which is mainly oriented towards city branding for enhancing city attractiveness and competitiveness), the city reinvented itself many times, pretending (and creating different brands) to be: after the Olympics, Barcelona the Green city, Barcelona the Smart City (thanks to its massive investment in technology and infrastructures) and, currently, Barcelona the Resilient City (since it was recognized by the UNISDR in 2013 as a resilient city role model, and in 2015 by the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Challenge).
I lived in Barcelona for 6 years before returning to Italy, and in my neighbourhood I was impressed by the speed at which new trends and investments opened new activities and constantly kept change alive. Within the latest smart, green, resilient city moods, and under the current “Barcelona Inspires” city brand—launched from the Municipality to self-promote the creativity and business opportunities of the city—the emerging hipster, organic, handmade, healthy food lifestyle paradigm brought quinoa to me and, to the city, one of the many innovations playing their roles in the urban economy’s resilience. But how is this key economic resilience engine in Barcelona related to quinoa, and other emerging super-grains? How are these related to global commodity chains, and those chains to the mechanisms redistributing worldwide, temporary windows of opportunity, as well as related threats, to remote areas?
I cannot say definitively that a grain of quinoa from Bolivia can influence the success of Barcelona city resilience, but this grain from Bolivia, like teff from Ethiopia, or coconut water from the Philippines, is, indeed, a small player in interlinked global processes, which shape opportunities and innovations, vulnerabilities and resilience, in cities everywhere.
Chelleri, L., Waters, J.J., Olazabal, M. and Minucci, G. (2015). “Resilience trade-offs: addressing multiple scales and temporal aspects of urban resilience.” Environment and Urbanization, 27 (1) pp 181-198
Chelleri, L, Minucci, G. and Skrimizea E. (under review) “On quinoa revolution and vulnerability trade-offs”, Regional Environmental Change
Improvements towards more sustainable urban management in developing countries may require breaking the resilience of the existing systems that resist long-term change and are structured to adhere to states of ineffectiveness and inefficiency.
Many practitioners and scholars have emphasized the importance of strengthening urban system resilience. However, a less explored area of work is the resilience that affects urban areas but in adverse ways. Weak governance, conflicts and lack of resources and capacity in many cities have detrimental environmental and human outcomes that have existed for long periods and are reinforced by the strong resilience of the urban system. Thus, breaking the resilience of urban systems in the first place is necessary to advance the agenda of sustainability and not return to their initial (unsustainable) state.
I argue that the use of resilience in urban systems can be controversial, particularly in the context of developing countries. In the developed and rich world, where the idea of resilience for socio-economic systems has found fertile intellectual ground, the positive meaning reflects the efforts to maintain the status quo of the socio-economic systems that have kept the localities developed and the high quality of life of their inhabitants. However, resilience is not a desirable feature for urban systems that result in unsustainable and unproductive outcomes. Management for resilience can emphasize short-term stability over long-term adaptive strategies. Thus, resilience does not have a straightforward positive meaning for socio-economic systems in the developing world that need a change in the first place. Many cities are stuck with low socio-economic-environmental indicators because of the resilience of their socio-economic systems, which tend to reflect a state of inefficiency, inequity, and ineffectiveness in the use of resources and prevent the improvements in the lives of the most vulnerable part of their populations. Indeed, the biggest challenge for cities in developing countries may be to break the resilient pattern of the socio-economic system in order to advance the development agenda in the first place. A radical transformation may be more desirable than the traditional meaning of resilience.
Penang cityscape. Photo: José Puppim
Case of solid waste in Malaysia
The municipalities held the responsibility for solid waste management (SWM) in Malaysia. This was in keeping with the Local Agenda 21 initiative and trends in other parts of the world. However, the urban SWM systems evolved irregularly across the country and municipalities strived to improve and increase the capacity of the waste disposal facilities. While some wealthier municipalities, such as Penang Island, developed reasonable systems for collection and final disposal of waste, others struggled to keep up even the basic responsibilities for collection. Waste management was funded by the assessment fee paid by each property, which also funds other growing needs of the urban centers. Overall, the disposal systems were completely inadequate. Controlled landfills were unheard of in Malaysia until 2000, recycling initiatives were almost all done informally and urban composting at large scales was not done.
Thus, the federal government decided to recentralize SWM at the end of the 2000s. For most of the municipalities and states, the centralization of SWM was a relief given the growing fiscal pressure in the local budgets. Municipalities struggled to keep up with the rising costs of SWM system and lacked the means to upgrade them. Thus, there was not much resistance to centralization. However, Penang State decided not to join the centralization process in waste management. The state kept its own SWM system managed by the municipalities, which was already working reasonably. This left the burden in the budget of Penang State’s municipalities but pushed them to be more effective and efficient, developing many innovative initiatives for recycling, composting and waste reduction.
Urban Farm Project, Penang. Photo: José Puppim
Breaking the resilience: lessons from Penang
A key factor in the high rates of recycling and composting in Penang is the decentralized SWM system. Having the municipal government in charge of paying for the SWM kept the pressure on the local budget, incentivizing the municipality to find creative ways to reduce the amount of waste going to the final destination and always improving the SWM system. The two municipalities in Penang State (Seberang Perai and Penang Island) work closely with the civil society organizations and the private sector to support their SWM initiatives, a situation that is unique to this area of Malaysia.
There is often a tremendous resilience in keeping the SWM system inefficient when the contracts are given to the private sector. In general, private contracts are paid according to the route of collection and/or amount of waste disposed of in the landfill, or just a lump-sum based on certain quality indicators. There are few incentives to reduce waste at the source, as this would reduce the final waste volume or eliminate collection routes for which the SWM companies are paid (consequently would reducing their revenues). In the case of lump-sum contracts, reduction in the waste stream would not affect results. In the case of Penang, because the municipality has to pay for the SWM services itself and has limited space for disposal, there is a growing pressure to reduce the total amount of waste.
The forces that helped to break the resilience in Penang were a combination factors, both internal and external to the system. Civil society organizations started the changes with urban innovations from the bottom (internal to the system), such as recycling initiatives, that were scaled up by external factors to the system (from the top), including state support for buying equipment or subsidized rent. Having the SWM system under the control of the state/local government delineated the boundaries of the system making possible for internal and external pressures (bottom-up and top-down efforts) to catalyze change. Budgetary restrictions on the local government improved resource efficiency and encouraged the development of innovations from the civil society and private sector to increase recycling and composting rates, and thus breaking the resilience of the SWM system.
What are the implications for policy? Improvements towards more sustainable urban management in developing countries may require breaking the resilience of the existing systems that resist long-term change and are structured to adhere to states of ineffectiveness and inefficiency. However, three lessons from Penang can provide an understanding of the changes in the system to break resilience and inform policy:
Build local capabilities to catalyze internal pressures for change. Firstly, efforts for breaking resilience from the bottom, or internal to the system, are needed. Capabilities in the local organizations, in government and civil society, to mobilize resources and knowledge to make urban innovations are fundamental to create change. For example, incentives for business and civil society, in the form of small grants or leases of government land, can encourage them to push for changes in the system to improve resource efficiency, such as the case of waste management in Penang Island (e.g., grants for composting initiatives and land lease for the Tzu Chi recycling center).
Bring in external pressures to break the resilience. Secondly, scale up the external factors that can change the system to break resilience or support internal change. External changes, such as a new regulatory framework, can create the conditions to spur innovations in the system if there is enough pressure from the bottom or resources from the top. In many cases, external efforts alone will not have any effect in the long-term or would become expensive to break the resilience solely from the top. For example, the centralization of SWM in most of Malaysia brought resources from the federal government improving the SWM system in many localities around the country. However, there are increasing costs to upgrading SWM systems and their resource efficiency, but recycling rates are not on par with the decentralized system such as in Penang.
Define the boundaries of the system. Thirdly, defining the right boundaries of the system can help the mix of external and internal forces to play out their combined roles and break the resilience. If the boundaries are too large, internal forces may not have the capacity to make the necessary changes or spread the urban innovation at such a large scale; alternatively, there may be no external forces great enough to press for resource efficiency, except international organizations or opposition parties, which can keep in check the groups in government. If the boundaries are too small, there may be difficulty achieving a critical mass of internal pressure to break the resilience. For example, civil society groups may be too small and lack the resources or civic mobilization to spur the internal changes. The case of Malaysia before SWM recentralization is an example. Many localities did not have enough mobilization capacity in the civil society or private sector to improve resource efficiency and develop urban innovations.
Thus, defining the right boundaries of the system to allow a combination of external and internal pressures over the system can help to break the resilience to improve resource efficiency.
José A. Puppim de Oliveira Rio de Janeiro
For more information:
This essay is based on the article: Puppim de Oliveira, Jose A. (2017). Breaking resilience in the urban system for improving resource efficiency: the case of the waste sector in Penang, Malaysia. International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development. 9(2): 170-183. DOI: 10.1080/19463138.2016.1236027 https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2016.1236027
Video: Urban Innovations: The Case of the Waste Sector in Penang Island, Malaysia
Every month we feature a Global Roundtable in which a group of people respond to a specific question in The Nature of Cities.
show/hide list of writers
Hover over a name to see an excerpt of their response…click on the name to see their full response.
Weston Brinkley, SeattleTo help cities perform their core function as social networks, we must support grassroots stewardship, foster true empowerment, and advance equity.
Katerina Elias-Trotsmann, Rio de JaneiroRio is trying to support community-based environmental stewardship by assessing community resilience, enhancing response, and accelerating recovery.
Sumetee Gajjar, BangaloreThe biggest disaster being averted by community initiatives is that of non-engagement with nature by city residents.
Jonathan Halfon, New YorkIn the face of unprecedented challenges such as climate change and sea level rise, we need to transition back to an empowerment model focused on finding local, creative solutions.
Heather McMillen, Honolulu & New YorkWhat would the world look like if we worked to solve problems by acknowledging local adaptations as social innovations?
Luciana Nery, Rio de JaneiroRio is trying to support community-based environmental stewardship by assessing community resilience, enhancing response, and accelerating recovery.
Raul Pacheco-Vega, AguascalientesWe need to think beyond climate policy and create an integrated urban development set of policy tools, programs, and projects that will then build resilience.
Renae Reynolds, New YorkLevees break and barriers fail, yet what endures is the will and persistence of people.
Hita Unnikrishnan, BangaloreEnabling the inclusion of urban commons in planning measures is a gap that must be filled for greater resilience of cities.
Paula Villagra, ValdiviaLand use planning must accommodate specific land use types—such as urban wetlands—to increase community resilience.
Karen Zumach, MinneapolisIn North Minneapolis, the community views replacing the trees lost in a 2011 tornado as a duty. It’s about their community.
David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director.
Abundant evidence attests to the key importance of green infrastructure in protection from and resilience to disturbance events—hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, wildfire, and other disasters. Now, there is growing focus on the periods between disturbance events: the time of recovery from the last disturbance that grades into preparation for the next. There is likewise a growing appreciation for the role communities play. Natural resource stewardship activities, including tree planting and other community greening efforts, can help restore nature, facilitate healing, and revitalize neighborhoods. While the immediate aftermath of an event necessitates a focus on swift response and mitigation, mid- to long-term recovery efforts offer an opportunity to adapt, learn, and cultivate community resilience.
This is the focus of the current roundtable: what can we do to better support—or in some cases, start supporting—communities as they recover and build resilience through engaging with nature? The recommendations might include the kinds of things we are not currently doing, but should. And they might also be the things we are already doing, but should do more of. What is the way forward for building community resilience with programs in green infrastructure and nature-based solutions?
This roundtable is an outgrowth of a workshop held in 2016, convened by the U.S. Forest Service and supported by TKF and others.
Weston is as a policy and research consultant working on the social dimensions of urban natural resources. He currently chairs the City of Seattle's Urban Forestry Commission and holds adjunct teaching positions at Seattle University, the University of Washington, and Antioch University, Seattle.
Community social networks are the strongest representation of our human systems. However, we too often act as if the manifestation of our societies is our built infrastructure, instead. Treating our cities and towns as a series of physical infrastructure features limits our ability to sustain their core, enduring function as social networks. Resiliency is maintaining and fostering these community and social networks in the face of disturbances.
To help cities perform their core function as social networks, we must support grassroots stewardship, foster true empowerment, and advance equity.
Traditional infrastructure is too discrete to be completely resilient. It is also expensive and insufficiently redundant in the necessary way—namely, to handle disturbance shocks to our systems. Not only are human systems networked, they can help network hard infrastructure, conferring resilience on other systems.
Communities provide the mechanisms for such resiliency. Networked social systems are bolstered by increased diversity, density, and interaction. These drivers maximize the effectiveness which has generated resilient resource mechanisms such as community solar power, tool libraries, and, of course, community gardens. While each of these is a physical feature, the real innovation that sparked their successes was an advancement in social organization and empowerment. These examples of empowering communities to develop their own resilient, networked systems could be realized in countless ways.
This type of social collaborative achievement is perhaps only just beginning. We’ve recently seen dozens of “disruptions” to typical urban functions through new technology, providing services and added capacity using existing infrastructure, such as vehicles and homes. A prime example is the development of neighborhood scaled Buy-nothing Groups. These social networks allow for extremely efficient distribution of goods, and the additional capacity and preference matching facilitated by such social networks could be a critical tool in advancing resilient communities.
Support grassroots stewardship
We know that the most enduring social networks are those that have formed naturally through reinforcement of our existing social structures. The expression of these ingrained social structures are grassroots efforts. The appeal of such efforts includes their reach and depth within communities. Research has shown that environmental efforts are often undertaken out of social desires for community building and personal connection. The ability to connect to the core of community needs and express those needs through community driven action is what sets grassroots efforts apart, and perhaps positions them to be major contributors to environmental resiliency.
It’s important to remember that movements don’t start from government offices, and are rarely generated from within formal organizations of any kind. Fostering environments that not only allow, but encourage and incentivize organic community networks, is critical. Therefore, we must support effective, community-generated networks and social structures before imposing new ones.
Foster true empowerment
For community-level social networks to advance in the face of institutional inertia that perpetuates infrastructure systems, we have to develop a community first approach. We must allow communities to do more. Ongoing development of global advances in urban-based democracy, such as the Right to the City and Participatory Budgeting movements, are prime examples of fostering effective community empowerment. These approaches should have both strong application and new corollaries when it comes to resiliency and disturbance preparedness.
In another example, volunteer environmental stewardship efforts are already massive forces for change in our communities. Forest restoration, trail maintenance, and community garden development are salient examples of resiliency efforts supporting flood protection, access and mobility, and food security in the face of disturbance. Civic tree planting and stewardship has repeatedly been shown to be the most cost effective approach to tackling many water and public health challenges.
Civic or environmental volunteerism is a social network that provides tremendous resiliency to communities. Yet the range of activities we let communities or volunteers engage in is currently limited. Communities should be empowered to do far more than plant a tree or adopt a drain. Our infrastructure, from energy to food to transportation, is ripe for additional community involvement. Beyond involvement in planning decisions, citizen participation should run the spectrum from learning, to doing, to taking ownership. Therefore, we must expand the type of projects and level of participation that communities are allowed to undertake when it comes to community infrastructure and the environment.
Advance equity
Vulnerable and unique communities are the ones shown to be most susceptible to disturbance, and therefore most in need of resiliency solutions. Traditional infrastructure doesn’t respond well to identifying vulnerable populations or prioritizing opportunities for community development. Its inflexibility, even its impartiality, underserve too many communities, while failing to take advantage of new ideas or advancements developing from unique places. However, social networks are ripe for not only being developed within and amongst a wide range of communities—they are necessarily malleable, providing better matches for community needs.
If networked social systems are bolstered by increased diversity, density, and interaction, then a diversity of ideas more easily transferred will strengthen social networks and increase resiliency. Networking new communities into our resiliency and disturbance preparedness conversations is critical to increasing the diversity of solutions and approaches. This not only provides stronger and more effective networks overall, but broadens our opportunities for solutions. For these reasons, investing in community driven social systems first is critical for resilience. Therefore, we must remove gaps in equity by first supporting communities with the greatest resilient growth opportunities.
Communities are both the first to be affected and the first to respond to climate impacts; as such, communities are key agents and multipliers of urban resilience. Community preparedness is a necessary aspect of urban resilience that cities are beginning to prioritize as a solution to bolster climate resilience. Encouraging and enabling a culture of resilience enhances the preparation capacities of citizens and their community as a whole. They are able to maintain core functions during shocks and, most importantly, to rebound and flourish after them.
Rio is trying to support community-based environmental stewardship by assessing community resilience, enhancing response, and accelerating recovery.
As climate change impacts are felt differently according to geography, topology, infrastructure provision and social inequality, effective climate-resilience strategies are therefore place-based, suitable to neighborhood qualities and characteristics. The role of communities is thus essential to successful climate change adaptation and resilience building. To that effect, city plans should aim to enhance citizens’ and community resilience to climate change.
Why should cities invest and encourage a culture of community resilience?
Investing in communities vulnerable to climate change impacts can reduce the damage brought on by extreme weather events and the need for government relief funding, and can mobilize more resources within and into communities. It is estimated that every $1 spent on resilience efforts yields $4 in economic benefits, not including the thousands of prevented injuries and hundreds of saved lives.
The need for urban resilience in Rio de Janeiro became clear in April 2010, when heavy rains hit the city; 66 people died in landslides and thousands were displaced. The storm that hit the city had not been detected by any radar, and even if it had been, it would not have been possible to warn the population and give them instructions for evacuation so late at night. That tragedy prompted the updating of slope-safety maps, the installation of early warning systems in many favelas, frequent drills for disasters, and the creation of the Rio Operations Center, intended to integrate all the crisis management teams.
The city of Rio de Janeiro was chosen to be part of the 100 Resilient Cities initiative in 2013 and released its resilience strategy in 2016. However, engaging communities in environmental stewardship remains a challenge; a lack of understanding of local capacity, existing social tensions within and between communities, and the need to increase community capacity to manage risks are key obstacles to overcome in promoting environmental stewardship.
For a city such as Rio, investing in local community capacity is the first step in encouraging a culture of community-led resilience. Below, we outline three ways the city is trying to support community-based environmental stewardship with the focus on improving local community capacity: assessing community resilience, enhancing response, and accelerating recovery.
Assessing resilience
A key innovation of the Resilience Plan of the City of Rio entails measuring community resilience. The Urban Community Resilience Assessment (or UCRA), developed by the World Resources Institute, helps cities include individual citizen and community capacities into broader assessments of urban resilience. This tool was developed with the input of community leaders, and a pilot trial has already run, with 400 respondents from two favelas in Rio de Janeiro. By assessing social cohesion, familiarity with local risks, warning systems, proximity to ecosystems, and disaster readiness, the UCRA provides a snapshot on preparedness behaviors, risk perception, and strength of community relations. This helps cities rapidly identify public policies and concrete actions that they can take in relation to the specific traits of each community, considering its geography, history, culture, and habits.
Enhancing community relations
The second point concerns governance, trust, and participation between the communities and the local government. Rio has placed strong emphasis on building relationships of trust between the local at-risk communities, the Civil Defence (the disaster risk reduction agency) and the Rio Operations Center. The Civil Defence, for instance, has developed a Resilient Communities program together with the UN’s Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and 22 community groups from 13 favelas. One effective strategy has been organizing and running emergency simulations in local schools, along with a one-year curriculum on crisis preparedness, first-aid, and resilience.
Investing in local capacity
Finally, Rio’s municipal resilience plan extensively emphasizes the need to invest in local community capacity to deal with climate change and local risk management, with year-round measures and the commitment of community leaders.
For example, the city of Rio de Janeiro has been working with over 100 informal communities over two decades to plant trees to reduce the impacts from the urban heat island effect, strong rains, and landslides in a program known as the Reforestation Team Effort (Mutirão de Reflorestamento). To date, more than 4 million trees have been planted, equivalent to an area of 2,500 football fields. The city government works directly with local communities through a remuneration scheme, engaging them in the entire process from cultivating seedlings to planting and managing restored areas. This government-run scheme therefore not only contributes to risk reduction, but enhances livelihoods.
Luciana Nery is Deputy Chief Resilience Officer of Rio de Janeiro and wishes to incorporate the lessons learned at the Olympics for the resilience of the city.
Sumetee Pahwa Gajjar, PhD, is a Cape-Town based climate change professional who has contributed to scientific knowledge on transformative adaptation, climate justice, urban EbA and nature-based solutions. I currently work at the science-policy-research interface of climate change, biodiversity and vulnerability reduction, in the Global South.
My research interests continue to be focused on urban sustainability transitions, through collaborative governance, just innovations and climate technologies.
Resilience through caring for nature in times of transition
Resilience is often discussed in terms of recovery from or response to disasters, and of communities which are more vulnerable to the impacts of a range of environmental disasters. However, there are aspects of city living, especially in developing countries, which expose residents across different social groups to ongoing and daily environmental stresses. These may not fall immediately in the category of disasters, but their cumulative impact over a few years can have disastrous impacts on city residents’ health and well-being. Urban floods affect several city wards and garner significant media coverage and political commitments to avoid similar events in the future. City planners and decision-makers’ response to urban floods in India rarely encompasses nature-based solutions. Real estate development continues unabated, drains are cleared and their capacity is increased, and other technical solutions are sought—solutions in which communities have a minor role to play.
The biggest disaster being averted by community initiatives is that of non-engagement with nature by city residents.
At the same time, communities continue to face lower-intensity, chronic risks through consumption of polluted water; water scarcity during drought years; dangerous road conditions; and poor air quality due to vehicular emissions in established parts of a city, and to new construction and open fires in fast urbanizing city peripheries. Given the way in which rapidly transforming cities of the Global South are managed and governed, it is hard, if not impossible, to hold specific institutions accountable, or to expect redressal. In particular, pollution of ground water is of critical concern, as it is linked to practices and behaviours of multiple actors, some of whom benefit from regulatory slippage, while others are unaware of their contribution to poor water quality.
How, then, do we support communities, who embattle city conditions to avert disaster, in building resilience? Resilience is certainly not just about infrastructure. In fact, aspects of resilience such as flexibility, adaptability, safe failure, and learning are to be found in solutions that are, at their best, a combination of infrastructural approaches and sustained human engagement around a matter of public concern. Such initiatives end up creating a sense of place and ownership towards nature in the city, and can be leveraged to approach environmental issues which are otherwise difficult to raise and discuss.
New apartment buildings encroach unashamedly, increasing flood risk for the entire area. Real estate development at this scale is mostly beyond citizen groups’ sphere of influence. Photo: Sumetee Gajjar
To reflect a bit more on this, I draw upon my experience of being part of Jal Mitra, a volunteer group established to conserve a lake and its surrounds in North Bangalore. Initially called Guardians of the Rachenahalli Lake, this group was convened for the first time on August 1, 2015. The last year has produced multiple lessons on channeling the positive force of citizens’ time and commitment to cope with the stresses of living on the expanding edge of an Indian megacity. A humble endeavour, which thrives on volunteered weekend time, Jal Mitra has grown to more than 100 members and has executed quarterly plantation drives involving school children, cleared alien vegetation, constructed a perambulatory dirt track for joggers and cyclists around the lake, facilitated multiple users of the lake waters, and hosted awareness events on public holidays. Volunteers monitor breaks in the fence, encroachments by builders, instances of waste dumping, and other forms of pollution; they also take it upon themselves to inform relevant government agencies in the event of such activities.
Jal Mitra continually notifies additional residents of local apartment buildings to help grow the circle of awareness. Jal Mitra engages with the private sector to contribute through corporate social responsibility, and with local landlords to build sanitation facilities for residents of informal settlements. The neighbourhood has witnessed major public works, including the laying of high capacity storm water drains, bridge construction, and the resurfacing of roads over a period of two years. During this period of diverted routes over muddy lanes and around dug up ditches, residents were regularly exposed to vehicular congestion and potential accidents, including life-threatening falls. The potential risk of a disaster in these circumstances was a deeply erosive force on collective well-being. In this context, the existence of a community group that is dedicated to sustaining a local natural asset, for no personal gain, is as strong and positive a force as the lack on such a group during infrastructural upheaval.
Plantation drive on a Sunday morning, organised by Legacy school teachers and parents. Photo: Sumetee Gajjar
Environmental stewardship at a local scale in Bangalore is rarely able to shift development pathways that continue to isolate lakes from natural streams, or to prevent tree-felling for road expansion. Disturbances to nature are common, and usually irreversible. The biggest disaster being averted by community initiatives is that of non-engagement with nature by city residents. Because when that happens, the remnants of open spaces (green and blue), which are yet being cared for, will finally disappear.
Jonathan Halfon is a Community Planning and Capacity Building Coordinator based at FEMA Region 2 in New York City, where he has focused on integrating nature-based systems and Smart Growth concepts into local long-term recovery and resilience planning.
In the 1960s, United States President Johnson used the idea of the Great Society as the basis for a set of ambitious federal initiatives aimed at rebuilding urban centers, protecting natural resources, and reforming education. Like many movements, the Great Society employed a simple idea to drive forward a host of corollary activities. The country’s material progress, impressive infrastructure achievements, economic prosperity, and scientific advancement were not goals unto themselves, but rather a reflection of the many ways a progressive society can lead to advancement for all.
In the face of unprecedented challenges such as climate change and sea level rise, we need to transition back to an empowerment model focused on finding local, creative solutions.
The Great Society Johnson envisioned empowered everyday citizens to make a difference. The federal programs associated with the Great Society hinged on the idea that local progress would come, not through Washington pushing out one-size-fits-all solutions, but from a creative federalism that relied on cooperation between the federal government and local leaders. Many of the programs developed were designed to empower local leaders to take more ownership in their communities, and in doing so build local capacity to find creative, place-based solutions to the challenges of the day.
For much of the latter half of the 20th century, public policy shifted away from this model in favor of a more hands-off approach to local issues. The time is right to transition back to this local empowerment model of the Great Society. In the face of unprecedented challenges such as climate change and sea level rise, finding homegrown creative solutions and investing in local leaders is more imperative than ever.
Resilience should not be seen as a static, singular goal. Just as the Great Society fostered a broad array of policy ideals, community resilience cannot be achieved by focusing only on the built environment. To truly build resilience at the local level, we need to broaden the definition to include the many interdependencies between social and natural systems and the built environment. The dynamic nature of these systems make them inherently unstable. We cannot set up rigid structures to manage them, and certainly not in a post-disaster environment where many systemic inputs have been rearranged by new, outside forces.
Because of their disruptive nature, disasters generate a tremendous opportunity for creativity. Nonprofits step into the breach. Private interests reach out to new partners. New ideas take hold in communities and unexpected leaders find a voice. We need to build structures, locally and nationally, that are always adapting and incorporating the needs of the whole community and that are able to harness post-disaster opportunities to improve upon the status quo.
To that end, the National Disaster Recovery Framework (one of five National Planning Frameworks established by President Obama to achieve a more resilient nation) was developed. The NDRF was deployed for the first time on a large scale after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The NDRF creates a coordination structure for the federal government that is in effect at all times with the express goal of empowering communities, accelerating the local recovery process and helping communities better prepare. Among other things, the NDRF can bridge the divide that often exists between local government and federal agencies, escalate community recovery concerns and help deliver resources that are not traditionally thought of as part of recovery, including funding work related to green infrastructure and the incorporation of nature-based solutions.
Too often, the protection of natural resources, the consideration of open public spaces and the inclusion of green infrastructure are seen as secondary considerations (or in some cases as oppositional) to traditional disaster response and recovery activities. The NDRF offers a valuable mechanism to provide federal resources and tools that encourage the incorporation of nature-based solutions into disaster recovery planning at the local level. Local communities can outline the role that natural systems and spaces play in the larger fabric of their community before a disaster strikes by including provisions that account for their protection in a local pre-disaster recovery ordinance. This is one of the most effective ways communities can avoid adverse impacts to natural resources and preserve open space after a disaster. More robust community involvement in the development of local hazard mitigation plans, the identification of co-beneficial projects and the integration of these plans into other local, non-recovery and resilience efforts can also help.
Traditional infrastructure (sea walls, etc.) is often seen as the principal driver of local recovery and of recovery success. By rethinking what we gain from our natural and social systems, we can start to reform recovery. If we consider things such as the eco-systems services co-benefits a modified recovery project could have, rather than only planning to put right what was damaged, we are on the path to smarter recovery. Another small change that can lead to improvements involves finding new ways to organize and incorporate existing local stewardship and advocacy groups into the recovery process. Connecting such stakeholders to national organizations with resources will further augment recovery gains.
Community resilience all starts with the insistence at the local level that including social and natural projects and programs is important to the long-term health and sustainability of a community before a disaster strikes. Doing this can open up funding opportunities not traditionally associated with disaster recovery. By broadening our definition of resiliency, adding to the systems we use to deliver aid, and rethinking who can and should be involved in planning for disaster recovery, we will have taken our first steps towards empowering citizens to have a more active role in protecting and enhancing their communities.
Some of the most resilient communities I know are in places with little infrastructure. This struck me when I read about the City Resilience Index (a project supported by the Rockefeller Foundation), which highlighted how the utility systems and services in Arusha, Tanzania are unable to keep up with population growth, leaving water, sanitation, electricity, and other services challenged. Having spent some time in Arusha, I had a different perspective.
What would the world look like if we worked to solve problems by acknowledging local adaptations as social innovations?
I had observed the water and power going out and staying out for extended periods. I also observed that people seemed unfazed by this. They had reserves of water and fuel and were prepared with buckets, kerosene lanterns, and charcoal. They were familiar enough with their natural environments, despite being in a city, that they also knew how and where to find alternative sources of water and fuel. They had close connections to their neighbors and family members who functioned as support networks and shared and pooled resources. I thought about what happens when the water or power goes out in a city with remarkable infrastructure, such as New York, and how much more disruptive it is to daily life. Indeed, resilience is about more than infrastructure. It’s about relationships. What would the world look like if we worked to solve problems by acknowledging local adaptations as social innovations and/or part of existing and important social cultural norms? When we think about strengthening urban resilience, how can we recognize and build upon the flexible, innovative adaptations that many people live by?
Community-based environmental stewardship is an avenue for strengthening resilience because of its power to strengthen peoples’ relationships to place and to each other. An underlying hypothesis for my work is: strong relationships among people and place can promote community resilience because the feedback loops in tightly coupled systems are more effective at recognizing and responding to change. To strengthen community resilience through environmental stewardship, I believe it is important to:
Keep feedback loops and linkages in mind
These connections can be surprising. Liu and coauthors described the connections between the divorce rate in China and the degradation of panda habitat. My colleagues and I have written about how the experience of 9/11 affected and enhanced some communities’ ability to respond to Superstorm Sandy. Thinking outside the box, beyond the boundaries of the site and the community at hand, is critical. With a broad view, we have seen how the processes of creating and maintaining living memorials and community gardens helped stewards develop new or strengthen existing relationships at both the interpersonal level and the organizational level (McMillen et al. 2016). These become resources that are engaged in times of need.
Learn together
We need to broaden who we share experiences, insights, and lessons with about stewardship. We need to be open to other ways of knowing. This includes exchanges that are urban-rural, temperate-tropical, north-south. We also need to get better at listening to and learning from place (not just from people). This means being attuned to one’s environment, aware of its normal cycles and rhythms, and receptive to changes in those patterns. Learning together also means more cross-agency collaboration, including those that have not historically focused on greening or stewardship (e.g., FEMA). One local resident deeply involved in stewardship and disaster recovery suggested to me that FEMA recovery kits include planting materials and tools for communities so they can more quickly begin the work of re-greening together.
Engage the spirit
Although spirituality is typically left out of public discussions of environmental stewardship, for many people, these are inseparable. Spirituality is an important issue for resource managers and first responders because it can promote community resilience to cope with disasters and disturbances (Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2012; Berkes & Ross 2013). What if we more directly engaged or at least acknowledged the spiritual dimensions of environmental stewardship? Some of us are working toward this. In NYC, my colleagues and I described the material and verbal expressions of park visitors that demonstrated the value of urban green space for psycho-social-spiritual wellbeing (Svendsen et al. In Press). We have also documented how stewards of living memorial sites describe the therapeutic value of environmental stewardship. One woman reported “feeling good” through weeding, watering, and engaging in horticulture as a therapeutic outlet. Another steward referred to the sacred nature of the collaborative tree planting following 9/11, saying, “we were grieving. . . all of us felt like we needed to do something . . . Digging by hand was a manifestation of some kind of spirituality”. A better understanding of the sacred relationships with nature as a foundation for sustainable resource management and response to disturbance has great potential for strengthening stewardship specifically and resilience more broadly.
While communities I have worked with see the hypothesis I introduced above as an accepted truth, some of my colleagues question it because it has not been tested with an experimental research design. Is it enough to accept these other ways of knowing and proceed with a “no regrets” or “precautionary principle” approach that fully supports community-based environmental stewardship even if we have not rejected the null hypothesis that it does not support resilience? Or must this be proven in order to get the support of large agencies, institutions, and municipalities? If so, what would such a study look like? Would it be worth doing? Or shall we simply, in the words of Candide, “take care of our garden”?
Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Public Policy at CIDE in Mexico. Raul’s research is interdisciplinary by nature, lying at the intersection of space, public policy, environment, and society. He is primarily interested in understanding the factors that contribute to (or hinder) cooperation in natural resource governance.
When I think about resilience, I think of the work of Buzz Holling and Lance Gunderson, who coined the notion of panarchy. This concept borrows heavily from the biological sciences’ literature and offers a framework to think about how we approach external shocks and their impact on living organisms within an ecosystem of interest. According to the panarchy conceptual framework, systems can withstand external shocks by adapting through periods of slow and fast change. Different components of the system have different roles in this adaptive process, and operate at various scales.
We need to think beyond climate policy and create an integrated urban development set of policy tools, programs, and projects that will then build resilience.
Resilient organisms are able to adapt to stressors by learning how to cope and survive. Applying resilience thinking to urban systems, in particular cities, has become one of the most exciting (although perhaps over-used) models of urban governance. Adaptive urban governance seems at times a fad in the literature on cities. Given the realities of climatic change, if cities aren’t able to adapt to global environmental change, they will face the stark reality of droughts, sea level rise, abrupt changes in weather conditions, floods, and others types of disasters. Thus, it is imperative for cities to develop the ability to protect their citizens from these external shocks.
There are several elements to applying resilience thinking to adaptive urban governance. First off, we need to think about intelligent urban design that allows for the creation of buffer zones, robust infrastructure development that can withstand extreme weather events, a population that is well prepared for disasters, as well as mechanisms for timely triggering and deployment of disaster response teams. If a city isn’t properly planned from the start, and has zero information about the degrees and types of vulnerability that it faces, this city will demonstrate very little capacity to adapt, and thus we can’t expect it to be resilient.
Secondly, properly implemented resilience thinking necessitates a long-range, long-term plan not only for disaster response, but for general urban planning. Much of what cities do at the moment when facing extreme climatic events is in response to the emergency at hand, but they tend to continue planning for horizontal urban expansion without sufficiently considering that the more extended and expanded the urban boundaries are, the more challenging it will become for disaster response teams to reach beyond the urban perimeter to the peripheries.
Third, resilient cities can’t solely be driven by climate politics at the domestic and international levels. I’ve often frowned at (and complained about) the notion that climate change is THE single most important and most relevant environmental issue facing our planet. The case of contaminated water in Flint, Michigan (and recent similar cases in Pittsburgh and other cities across the United States) have clearly demonstrated that cities face multiple challenges, and that they need to rethink their approach to urban governance AND solve multiple problems, instead of focusing on adaptive capacity to climatic change. If municipal water utilities are unable to provide safe drinking water for their communities, how able will they be to adapt to climatic change? I believe that in order for resilience thinking to be properly applied to cities, we need to think beyond climate policy and create an integrated urban development set of policy tools, programs, and projects that will then build resilience.
Only then can we start thinking about building community resilience. First, we need to galvanize communities to understand that the environmental challenges facing cities are enormous, and THEN we can expect them to collaborate with the government at all three levels across the country in the construction of a robust, resilient city-national strategy.
Socially resilient people = resilient systems and cities
Drawing on the experience of the past year and 4 months, as a coordinator of a research project titled the Landscapes of Resilience, I begin my answer to this question by reflecting on what my notion of resilience was at the start of the position and how my understanding changed over time. The vision of resilience I began with was, indeed, one that encompassed physical infrastructural change. Thinking about the physical devastation to people and property in previous natural disturbance events such as Hurricane Sandy and Katrina quite reasonably led to an internal reaction that would call for the elevation of structures, a fortifying of systems; indeed, I could easily conjure up imaginative and innovative ways that cities could become resilient to future disturbance.
Levees break and barriers fail, yet what endures is the will and persistence of people.
However, that image was very quickly tempered by the reality and challenges associated with achieving such enormous transformations to our built environment here in the U.S., as well as globally—the current state of our infrastructure can attest to how tremendously difficult such changes would be. Two years prior to working on the Landscapes of Resilience, I took a trip to Rotterdam as part of a group of community-based organizations and urban planning students who would explore and engage the ways that Rotterdam—a city built on land reclaimed from the ocean—and its citizens live with water. That trip allowed me to recognize the kinship of Rotterdam to New Orleans; for example, both lie below sea level. Both owe their existence to massive technological inventions: levees in New Orleans, and polders, dikes, surge barriers such as Oosterschelde, and water plazas in Rotterdam. Rotterdam was not short on highly technological solutions to resilience. Yet these two cities have another thing in common; at times, all the technological know-how we can muster cannot withstand the immense power of nature. Levees break and barriers fail, if they ever get built at all. Yet what endures is the will and persistence of people and the social resilience that we must recognize, value, and cultivate in the future.
Understanding the social dimensions of resilience was the main objective in the Landscapes of Resilience initiative. I was not only a member of a research team engaging people who live on the peninsula between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean in New York City—as a fellow resident in this vulnerable landscape, I shared a common identity with them. I was not there when Hurricane Sandy hit, but I understand the pinprick of anxiety in the back of the mind when one considers the potential for another storm of its magnitude. This common understanding is what framed my work with the group of gardeners and land stewards that the project engaged. Through close and constant contact, I began to understand the importance not just of the internal motivations one gardener might possess to keep gardening after disaster, but the equal importance of the relationships and social connections a group of gardeners forges among themselves, and how those relationships can be fostered through collective decision-making, how commitment to a common pursuit can develop mutual trust, and how that trust can allow people to go beyond their initially conceived realm of possibility. An intimate understanding and will to invest in and support the social dimensions of resilience is key to supporting readiness, response, and recovery from disturbance.
A Newton International Fellow at the Urban Institute, The University of Sheffield, Hita studies histories of lost urban commons among the networked lakes of Bengaluru, India.
As I am penning this piece, the population of the metropolitan south Indian city of Bengaluru, where I come from, is rather divided in their opinions on a burning question: whether a proposed steel flyover—supposedly to be built to global standards in a globalized city—is really that crucial to Bengaluru’s image. The flyover connecting some nodal regions of Bengaluru is to be built by sacrificing more than 800 old, often-irreplaceable trees.
Community-managed structures, whether conceived with resilience as a goal or not, are integral to building a city’s adaptability.
This is not a new phenomenon, however. Infrastructural projects have historically been undertaken at the cost of damaging the fragile urban ecosystem, often with little thought to how both humans and animals may be drawing benefits from what is scheduled to be sacrificed. Grandiose promises of replacing the lost ecosystem, frequently at other, more distant locations, are made (the plan for the proposed steel flyover claims it will replace the more than 800 trees estimated to be lost with over 60,000 ornamentals), but these rarely come to fruition in a city starved for space. Other such examples of urban planning include the colonially pervasive fascination with bourgeois notions of aesthetics and recreation over more utilitarian uses of lakes and similar water bodies, modern privatization of those very lakes, and the chopping of old, valuable trees for projects such as the widening of roads. All of these activities share the hallmark of being non-inclusive and are potentially worrying in a city ill prepared to deal with adversity. For instance, Bengaluru today relies on water pumped from the river Cauvery, over 100 kilometres away, greatly reducing its water security. There exists an implicit notion that decision-makers know what is best for the city, as opposed to citizens who live and make a living out of the very resources that are being ill managed or sacrificed.
A thriving home garden in one of the slums of Bengaluru—the plants grown include vegetables, fruits, ornamentals, and medicinal plants, as well as those that are culturally important. Photo: Hita UnnikrishnanA community well in a slum of Bengaluru—serves to meet domestic purposes of families living in the locality. Photo: Hita Unnikrishnan
Yet, if one were to be a flaneur walking rather aimlessly, observing what the streets of the city—both the old as well as the new—have to offer by way of visual experience, it is not hard to spot examples of communities nurturing and caring for nature in their own ways. While not on such large scales as the proposed infrastructural advancements, these relics of engagement with nature can nevertheless make one realize the immense potential of community-led stewardship in enhancing resilience of the city. For example, in walking through some of the more densely populated slums in Bengaluru, one would be hard-pressed to find a single home devoid of greenery in the form of medicinal or ornamental trees and shrubs, as well as those holding cultural significance. For many of these marginalized residents, these plants provide a first step towards treating minor ailments such as cuts and burns as well as for serious illness.
An Ashwathkatte—a form of urban commons consisting of a raised platform with two peepal trees (sometimes also associated with a neem) and used for religious purposes. Photo: Hita Unnikrishnan
Remains of old, magnificent, formerly community-managed wells that, in some cases, still provide water to nearby localities, attest to the former success of these structures in enhancing the water security of the city. As our research has shown, the heart of Bengaluru once boasted over 1,500 wells, which have sadly dwindled down to about 49 (as of 2014) because of the pressures of urbanization and development. Remnants of urban commons such as village forests as well as communal grazing lands also provide a much needed green oasis in the concrete dominated city. Once managed by communities, with informal rules and regulations governing their access and use, they are integral to providing both utilitarian benefits to people as well as in sustaining local biodiversity and microclimates. In other words, community-managed structures such as these, though not conceived with the direct intention of enhancing urban resilience, nevertheless are integral to building the city’s adaptability.
Still, despite their critical roles, such spaces remain largely ignored by developmental processes, and far removed from the consciousness of larger urban populations. Thus, change must be brought about by factoring in the role of such urban commons in enhancing the strength and capacity of the city to withstand adverse changes—both at the level of urban populations as well as in larger processes of urban planning.
Paula Villagra, PhD, is a Landscape Architect that researches the transactions between people and landscapes in environments affected by natural disturbances.
Resilience is also about binding and inclusive planning tools
Urban planners should consider facilitating access to diverse ecosystem services, particularly in coastal areas, which are characterized by a rich diversity of natural resources useful for mitigation, regulation, provisioning, and restoration purposes. However, natural resources outside and within urban areas have been largely overlooked in urban planning and are often unregulated due to the limitations of regulation plans that function only up to the urban edge. Outside such political borders, rural areas lack regulations that can enhance recovery from disturbances.
Land use planning must accommodate specific land use types, such as urban wetlands, to increase community resilience.
This issue has been observed widely in Chile, were I developed studies on this subject and found that there are no statutory planning instruments to regulate land located outside of urban areas. This is especially problematic for enhancing coastal resilience, since many relevant natural resources are often located adjacent to coastal settlements but outside urban boundaries. For example, wetlands and dunes that act as flood buffers; forest and prairies that can provide food resources; and nearby hills that give refuge and security typically exist outside urban areas and within natural environments that cannot be regulated in a binding way.
We have also found that natural resources within urban environments have a restorative potential that is crucial for recovery in disaster-prone environments. For example, urban wetlands, including water presence, open space, and landscape design interventions, can be restorative to people subjected to a high level of stress after disaster. Hence, access to natural restorative environments may be crucial in cities prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, since catastrophic events can change one’s relationship to the landscape, with important implications for health and well-being. However, urban pressures often threaten the conservation of nature within urban areas. The need to build new highways and to increase housing provisions, and changes in land use that promote urban density, deteriorate urban nature as well as people’s relationship with it. This occurs due to the lack of regulations that specifically consider, for example, urban wetlands as a specific land use within urban planning. In the case of Chile, urban wetlands fall within the category of green areas, and thus lack the adequate regulation both for their conservation and for their use in recovery after a disaster.
Natural resources that provide buffers, food, water, refuge, security, and restoration after a disaster, within and outside of urban areas, need to be urgently acknowledged, considered, and protected through statutory urban planning documents at regional and local scales to improve community resilience after disturbances.
Karen Zumach is the Director of Community Forestry for the non-profit Tree Trust, whose mission is to improve the community environment by investing in people.
The streets of North Minneapolis were once graced with a tree canopy that rivaled other parts of the city. People purchased homes in North Minneapolis because of the large trees that lined the streets. Beneath the amazing canopy, there grew an ever-larger disparity between those that have and those that have not. Once a burgeoning oasis for the middle class, North Minneapolis, a section of the city bisected by more than just a major highway, has also become the de facto “forgotten side of town”. Crime rates are high there. Poverty is more abundant. Houses are now owned by people who don’t live in them and the neighborhoods here have changed.
In North Minneapolis, the community views replacing the trees lost in a 2011 tornado as a duty. It’s about their community.
On May 22, 2011 the neighborhoods of North Minneapolis changed in a way that never could have been predicted. When the EF-1 tornado came through on that May afternoon, everything was altered. The green, leafy canopy that covered the societal issues of North Minneapolis was removed and people were forced to take notice. Resilience had been just a word to the residents and decision makers of this community. Now it had context. Community resilience came alive immediately after the storm: neighbors helped neighbors, people showed up. They were going to bounce back—together.
For me, the day after the tornado came through; I had to learn to talk about trees in a different way. Our organization had plans to plant trees that following week at an elementary school just on the outskirts of the path the tornado took. To the people (and most importantly, to the children) affected by the storm, they weren’t towering superheroes cleaning our air and mitigating stormwater runoff, sequestering carbon and keeping our homes cool. These trees that I revered had become weapons of mass destruction: destroying cars and homes and things that people relied upon every day. All I wanted to do was replant the trees—the sky in North Minneapolis was so big now, the residents there would be so hot in the summer, there would be no respite from the noise and the pollution and the concrete. But the residents of this area affected by the storm needed a roof that didn’t leak or a car that could take them to and from work. We all had to learn to talk about the recovery of this area in a different way. And we had to learn to wait.
Thomas Avenue N, Minneapolis, 2010.Thomas Avenue N, Minneapolis, 2015
Tree Trust began offering trees to residents impacted by the storm within months. At first, the interest was strong, especially amongst the residents that had minimal property damage but significant tree loss. Over 3,500 properties experienced some type of damage due to the storm. 6,000 trees were lost on public property and an untold amount was lost on private property. As I said, the sky became so big, and I just wanted to find a way to fill it.
Five years later, I feel like we’re able to talk about trees and their importance in our communities with these neighborhoods in a way we couldn’t before. Trees are missed now. The summers are hotter. The noise from the road is louder. Air pollution in this part of the city is being studied more and the results are making people take notice. For the people in these communities affected by the tornado, trees now matter. There have been over 5,000 trees planted in North Minneapolis since the tornado, many of them just starting to cast shade in areas where large trees once stood. It will be a generation before these trees are back to their reigning glory of covering the streets, cooling the homes and purifying the air as those did before the storm.
Tree Trust continues to offer trees to property owners affected by the storm. As each year goes by, we hear the stories: “We need trees”. Some residents want two trees, some want ten. Some know full well that they will never live to see their towering beauty, but they insist on planting because they know that someone planted the trees that graced their streets before the storm and it’s their duty to try to bring them back. It’s about their community.
Once the necessities are tended to—that is the time to connect with the communities more directly at the neighborhood huddles and church groups to talk about trees, while those who can recall the green, leafy streets and the feelings they induced are most able to talk about them and fight for their return. Their experiences of loss should not be understated and those are the stories that create the narrative of a community’s resilience.
What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to a consumer. And all consumers know that when the producer names the tune, the consumer has got to dance. That’s the way it is. We used to be a producer—very inflexible at that, and now we are consumers and, finding it difficult to understand. Natural resources and minerals will change your world. The Arabs used to be in the third world. They have bought the second world and put a firm down payment on the first one. Controlling your resources will control your world. This country has been surprised by the way the world looks now. They don’t know if they want to be Matt Dillon or Bob Dylan. They don’t know if they want to be diplomats or continue the same policy—of nuclear nightmare diplomacy. John Foster Dulles ain’t nothing but the name of an airport now…The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as far as they can—even if it’s only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of the man in the white hat or the man on the white horse—or the man who always came to save America at the last moment—someone always came to save America at the last moment—especially in “B” movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at like a “B” movie.” Gil Scot Heron, “B-Movie,” 1981
If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it. Ultimately it will do us very little good to simply get more opportunities in the Global South or elsewhere if we do not ask ourselves and resolve the question, “Do we really want to continue to design while mimicking the kinds of socio-political society that marginalized us in the first place?” —Marcus Garvey
To build a just city, we must turn to equitable social education as an alternative to police power, for such power will always tend towards corruption and abuse.
What makes great buildings, spaces and places? It is when those structures or spaces reflect and serve the people of the community for which they are intended. It is when they lift the spirit while providing shelter and functional use; when they foster positive aesthetic and tactile relationships between the buildings, spaces and/or places themselves and the people they are intended to serve.
I penned that statement more than 20 years ago at a moment when I was striving to define my practice as an architect and interior designer. It was relevant then and remains so today as we struggle to imagine a just city being born out of the troubled world we occupy today.
I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada during the 1950s and ‘60s. Nowhere on earth, I am convinced, is there a clearer sense of injustice towards black and minority peoples—Native Americans, Mexicans, Jews and Mormons. I learned early that the real architects building community in Las Vegas didn’t have degrees, weren’t of pedigree and didn’t work in an ivory tower. Rather, they were those laborers, dishwashers, maids, porters and nannies of color who worked sometimes two or more jobs and still found the time to confront the challenges of building community in the city that scorned them.
I never forgot the lesson of Las Vegas while attending and ultimately graduating from “majority” schools with two architecture degrees. Throughout these years of study, I never encountered peers or professors who seemed to know or care about the reality that I knew only too well.
Today my practice centers around culture, community and education—no doubt as a direct result of the revelations of my intuitive knowlege combined with the insensitivity of my formal training. I have heard, over the course of my 30 years of practice, many other black architects utter similar instances in their own lives—and more so than not I might add. Architecture remains one of the most segregated old boy professions amongst many in our present society.
The troubled composer and song writer Gil Scott Heron got it right in the 1980s, commenting on Ronald Reagan’s election, voting apathy and the politics of governance in the most powerful and advanced nation in the history of man, when he reminded us that one cannot make a “classic” out of a “B Movie.”
Emergence of a viable model for a just city capable of serving a world population projected to rise to between 9 and 12 billion people (if not more) in the next 70 or so years must begin with a new way of existing as a collective humanity.
As I have espoused before in lectures across the country, “The problem lies not in our abilities, but in our humanity.” What would it take to create a place where the rights of virtually every single citizen is not debated but guaranteed? A guarantee not mandated by laws, but by a collective will of the general populous as right and just and in the best interest of all who live in that community? How can a society realize and maintain a healthy sense of “justice” once conflict arises out of misunderstanding, personal or selfish interests? What does resolution and mediation look like in a just city? Well, one vision of conflict resolution that comes to mind is this notion of instilling each member of the collective with a strong understanding of assured consistent justice for all. This can only be done through an early, open education that is offered to all coupled with development of accountable agencies equally representative of the populous.
In a review of Paul Chevigny’s book Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas, Jerome H. Skolnick offers the following: “The dilemma of civil society is that the police are both essential and mistrusted, because they enjoy the power of exercising force. . . . Civil society has limited the legal powers of the police precisely because people mistrust and sometimes fear them.”
Skolnick then goes on to say, “At the same time, society must ask those whom we fear to protect us against criminals. That dilemma sets a challenge to a civil, liberal and democratic order. To achieve public safety we must offer the police instruments of violence. But we also need to develop institutions of accountability to limit inevitable abuses of legal authority, which will vary depending on the social order that we of the larger polity expect police to reproduce.”
To build a just city, we must turn to equitable social education as an alternative to police power, for such power will always tend towards corruption and abuse.
But we can’t stop with restructuring structures of power. As a trained architect, I am interested in defining intersections between design and culture. My teaching methodology explores justice and culture as potential place makers and form drivers along with issues of design. This vein of exploration is the virtual key for conceptualizing and deploying design solutions in my practice and especially in my academic studio, where students often are exposed to cultures of color for the very first time. Providing a broader learning experience in design is the goal here.
All of the above comes into play for me when envisioning the making of a just city. I believe we must begin with two primary, essential ingredients, three foundational rights and a collective will. The first ingredient is resistance to the norms and practices that have so far prevented justice from prevailing. The second is a quality and equitable education that is free by right to the average citizen.
Resistance
A true democratic vision for society is often blurred if not derailed by the very forces that are put in place to assure the viability of its survival. Resistance, of the collective citizenry, enough to provide a pathway for a true democratic model to emerge, is the first and foremost of the two main ingredients. The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti made these remarks as he responded to a student’s question, “if everyone was in revolt, would there not be chaos in the world?”
“…Is the present society in such perfect order that chaos would result if everyone revolted against it? Is there not chaos now? Is everything beautiful, uncorrupted? Is everyone living happily, fully, richly? Is man not against man? Is there not ambition, ruthless competition? So the world is already in chaos that is the first thing to realize…It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition…”
Inherent in the equation for defining the just city is confronting the unjust structures that make up our world and challenging them with a collective resolve.
Education
Resistance can only evolve if the average citizen has the tools and knowledge needed to advocate for meaningful change. The will of an educated citizenry is needed to protect the rights of the collective. Only with a quality education guaranteed to each of its citizens can a community begin to value those social obligations that are the cornerstones in the construction of the just city.
This right to a quality education for all cannot be shifted, modified or changed in any way that could diminish its power. However this initiative also should not be and cannot be mandated in a just city. Today, U.S. schools are more segregated than they were in the late 1960s. Three generations after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education, black children still attend separate and unequal schools. As this failure of our legal system demonstrates, the right of everyone to a quality and free education cannot be set in motion through government. Rather, this understanding must lie in the hearts of the collective.
“We must create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you become intelligent, so that you are able to face the world and understand it, not just conform to it, so that inwardly, deeply, psychologically you are in constant revolt,” says Jiddu Krishamurti.
The educational system of the just city must be representative and inclusive as must be all other systems. Children need to see faces that look like their own in the defining, governing, designing, construction and maintaining of the places and spaces that they live, work, play and grow.”
Foundational rights of the just city
Citizens are guaranteed the basic human services for quality of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, such as quality air, clean water, nourishing food, proper clothing and adequate shelter.
—Individual rights are not mandated by law. Rather, they are supported by an informed leadership ably prepared to make compelling arguments to a well-educated general populous which can understand the plight of others and empathize with them.
—Diversity is respected while at the same time there is an understanding of the value of collective identity.
The collective will of the Just City
—Works tirelessly in maintaining a proper balance between economic, political, social and ecological concerns.
—Understands the importance of having a political consciousness that supports progressive movements at national and local levels toward respect for others and greater equality.
—Assures all its citizens equity in representation across the boards and at all levels.
—Seeks a balance between economic growth and social obligation.
—Assures allocation of adequate resources for desired outcomes.
—Supports a system of maintenance and of checks and balances that is clearly understood and respected.
—Maintains a high respect for maintenance, accountability and stewardship of the planet and all its living inhabitants.
Towards the just city of the future
Any society is only as strong as its average citizen. With that in mind, life in a just city will focus more on the health, safety and welfare of the average citizen than on the elite. A just city is a “bottom up” proposition where the majority of the citizens are well-educated. In this model, the average citizen is informed, empowered and has a clear understanding of a broader sense of purpose amongst a wider diversity of community inhabitants.
Whether or not we will be able to strive towards the highest ideal of a just city is largely a question of our humanity. It is up to each of us to determine whether we are up to the challenge.
We attended the 22nd session of the United Nations Climate Conference (also called COP22) as “Observers” in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. 2016 presidential election. Since 1995, the COP has served as the annual UN climate conference, providing an opportunity to assess progress, negotiate agreements, and disseminate information regarding global climate change action. This year’s COP was simultaneously exhilarating and uplifting, a message that we are determined to bring home to a country still reeling from an election that has elevated someone who called climate change a hoax to our nation’s highest office.
At COP22, even the recent election of Donald Trump could not quash the sense of momentum building around widespread action on climate change.
Thanks to its official Observer status, our employer, Drexel University, was one of hundreds of civil society institutions from around the world permitted to send a delegation to the two-week meeting in Marrakech, Morocco (7-18 November 2016). Our Office of International Programs and our Institute for Energy and the Environment sent an envoy of 10 faculty and students to this meeting, five each week. Our role as “observers” was none other than to attend the various summits, official meetings, and side events and to report on the actions that nation-states, indigenous peoples, businesses, mayors, and individuals are taking to address the challenges posed by climate change. We networked with other civil-service institutions, conducted an informal survey, listened to talks, and were interviewed by National Public Radio (11/21/16, State Impact NPR, “Pennsylvania Academics Find Inspiration at Climate Conference”).
A scene from COP22, held in Marrakech, Morocco. Photo: Franco Montalto
The ongoing actions being discussed in Morocco would not have been possible if not for the historic agreement reached last year in Paris at COP21. The so-called “Paris Agreement” represented the first time that world leaders achieved global consensus regarding the need to work collaboratively to hold future global temperature increases to under 2 degrees Celsius. Over the last year, national governments had to formally ratify the agreement. Only 55 countries, accounting for 55 percent of global greenhouse gas (or GHG) emissions, needed to formally ratify the historic agreement for it to go into force; however, according to U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, speaking at the meeting in Marrakech, more than 109 countries—collectively responsible for 75 percent of global GHGs—had already signed prior to COP22, a much faster pace of ratification than anyone expected. Clearly, the need for global climate action has become a widely-held international value, shared not just by scientists and environmentalists, but also by governmental leaders, their rank and file governing bodies and agencies, and the private sector, whose interests underlie many political decisions.
With the signed agreement in force, conversations in the restricted Blue Zone of this year’s COP, focused on implementation strategies, identifying knowledge gaps, networking, and financing. The various meetings highlighted the efforts that individual countries have undertaken to identify the sources of their existing emissions, and gave them a platform to articulate their specific strategies for achieving their nationally determined contributions (or NDCs) to global GHG emission reductions. Discussions also addressed how specific countries, cities, and other sub-national actors are planning to nurture, manage, or shape forecasted economic and population growth, peacekeeping, and advances in human rights while keeping their emissions under control. Again according to Secretary Kerry, each nation is now in the process of developing its own plan, tailored to its own circumstances, and according to its own abilities. It is an example of common but “differentiated responsibilities”, with the most vulnerable nations being helped along by those most equipped to address this challenge.
In the publicly-accessible Green Zone of the meeting, attendees were largely focused on the role that the private sector and civil society can and must play. In small and large booths, vivid displays highlighted everything from the voluntary emission reduction goals of large multi-national corporations to small-scale entrepreneurial efforts to innovate new ways of deriving fuel from waste, or to create new market opportunities for existing technologies such as the “Nigerian Refrigerator,” which can cool a pot of fruit from 40°C to 4°C relying solely on evaporative processes. The Green Zone included interactive meetings where individuals could spontaneously join group discussions focusing on climate justice, racism, and other struggles intimately related to climate change. It also featured an international, socially-engaged art exhibit.
Photo: Franco Montalto
Marrakech, a beautiful city situated at the foot of the Atlas Mountains and at the edge of the Sahara Desert, was the perfect backdrop for this kind of multi-faceted exchange of ideas. Each day, as our group walked through its central square, the Jemaa el-Fna, a dynamic urban space packed with storytellers and snake charmers, musicians and dancers, traders and merchants, street food vendors, and children, we thought, what better setting to host the growing cross-cultural, global dialogue regarding the planet’s future? The square’s air is full of smoke, smells, sounds, and slang; its perimeter is lined with shops, rooftop restaurants, and street-level cafés. A vibrant, multi-actor, pulsating center of contrasts between old and new, of negotiation and of barter, it represents, in miniature, what is now happening on the world stage between global leaders, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and other vested individuals.
But what was most exhilarating to witness was how integrated the global response to climate change has become inside other contemporary efforts to improve the human condition. COP22 is just the most recent of a historic string of new pacts and agreements that will collectively guide the next phase of global human development. It began in 2015, when the United Nations officially replaced its Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs) with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs), and 169 carefully articulated and intimately-related targets. The SDGs point the way to the next wave of progress on poverty alleviation, environmental protection, and the spreading of economic prosperity. A few months later, in March 2015, and at the request of the UN General Assembly, the Sendai Agreement for Disaster Risk Reduction—another global pact focusing on resilience and reducing the impacts of disasters on lives, livelihoods, health, and economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets—was adopted. The Paris Agreement was signed on December 12, 2015, and went into effect less than one year later on 5 October 2016. On October 15, 2016, after the conclusion of all-night negotiations in Kigali, Rwanda, an agreement was reached to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons (or HFCs) resulting in the largest potential temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement, as much as 0.5 C. Later in October of 2016, in Quito, Ecuador, the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (called Habitat III) concluded with the adoption of the New Urban Agenda, a document that establishes new global standards for sustainable urban development, focusing on the collaborations necessary to more sustainably build, manage, and live in cities.
The “conversation” in Marrakech focused on how policymakers, planners, designers, business leaders, and individuals from all corners of the globe can integrate all of these different goals and aspirations into actionable initiatives at local, regional, national, and international scales. How can we design safe, accessible cities, with low-carbon transport systems, stable governing bodies, and equitable access to resources? How can we re-imagine our coastlines as multifunctional living landscapes, equipped to adapt to rising sea levels, but also supportive of critical fisheries, emergent habitats, and other forms of biodiversity? Where and how, in geographical and economic terms, will we feed ourselves, live, earn a living, and play, as both the global and urban populations of the world reach historical proportions? What successful models have been piloted, and what can we learn from them? These and other related, intellectually stimulating, and fundamentally important questions were on the lips of just about everyone we bumped shoulders with on the sprawling conference grounds.
Personally, we were reassured to witness this important conversation elaborated in so many different ways, by so many different people, in so many different languages, at COP22, even as the U.S. prepares for a new president. President-elect Donald Trump’s dismissive rhetoric during the campaign, and the expressed views of many individuals he appears poised to appoint as part of his Cabinet, suggest that this administration may not instinctively understand the urgency of global collaboration on any of these issues. Where the Obama administration has lead, the incoming administration seems, at least initially, to want to close the door. Like many other Americans attending the meeting, we used phrases like “angrily charged” and “disillusioned, but determined” to describe our post-election feelings at a workshop organized at the conference by Mediators Without Borders (or MWB) as an outlet for attendees to express our emotional reactions to the election results, and to convert these into a constructive reorientation of our professional activities.
To elicit global perspectives on the election, our Week Two delegation designed an informal survey to conduct after the MWB workshop, as we circulated among the tens of thousands of conference attendees. It featured two core questions: “What was your reaction when you heard the results of the U.S. election?” and, “Do you have a message for the incoming U.S. Administration regarding climate change?” Though we would be remiss not to mention that among the conference attendees were certainly a small group individuals who were unsurprised, or even satisfied, by Mr. Trump’s victory, responses to the first question overwhelmingly reflected many of the same feelings of shock, horror, and devastation articulated in the MWB workshop. But regardless of their feelings about Mr. Trump, and without exception, respondents to the second survey question urged the President Elect to follow his predecessor’s example by collaborating with the international community on efforts to battle climate change and to also lead in related struggles for sustainable development.
Leaders from all levels of government have expressed the same sentiment, tinged with optimism that significant backpeddling may no longer be tenable. UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said he counts “on the U.S.’s continued engagement and leadership to make this world better for all…” Brian Deese, Senior Climate Advisor to President Obama, reported in Marrakech that for the first time in human history, carbon emissions are now completely decoupled from economic growth. And Jonathan Pershing, the U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change, stated confidently that, “The transition to clean energy is now inevitable.” While we still have many profound challenges, “the momentum is insurmountable: there is no stopping,” he said. Indeed, the recent open letters from more than 300 companies and from 37 red band blue state mayors asking President-Elect Trump not to abandon the Paris Agreement is further evidence of the deep roots that this movement now has.
Franco Montalto (far left) and Hugh Johnson (far right) with representatives from Drexel University at COP22. Photo: Franco Montalto
For all these reasons, we returned Stateside full of renewed excitement, resolve, and hope. We are not naïve to the struggles we may have to face domestically, but we feel more energized, focused, and determined than ever before about the importance of the work we are all doing. The time to perfect our analyses, demonstrate our ideas, publish our work, talk to our neighbors, and to let our values drive our personal and professional activities is now. We must be the change and action that we want to see in the world.
This month, Drexel became the North American Hub of the Urban Climate Change Research Network. We have listed two preliminary goals to guide our activities: we will continue to generate and to disseminate scientific knowledge where it can inform sound decisions and policy, and to support our practitioner colleagues in their efforts to implement change. But in other contexts—ones where change must be catalyzed through other means—we are prepared to apply other forms of pressure, drawing from the enormous fountain of energy, creativity, and connections available to us through the growing international demand for climate action, social justice and sustainability. We invite you to join us as we transition from debates to determined action at all levels of our global community.
Hugh has consulted on various aspects of renewable energy and energy efficiency for private, municipal, and federal clients. At Drexel, he contributes technical expertise and manages special projects.
On Sunday, 22 May 2011, a multiple-vortex tornado touched down shortly after 5:00pm and began to rip a path nearly a mile wide across Joplin, Missouri, through the town of Duquesne, and into the rural areas of Jasper County. The Storm was on the ground for 38 minutes and traveled approximately 16 miles.
Joplin’s redefinition results from the large number of community members and volunteers driven by passion and kindness to rebuild.
22 May 2017 will be the sixth anniversary of the tornado and, as I have done every year since the storm, I will attend the community ceremonies remembering the event at Cunningham Park. As a leader of a volunteer group and a reluctant and unexpected repository for survivor’s stories, I would like to share my observations of this community’s successes in response, recovery, and stewardship in the aftermath of the deadliest tornado in a century.
When the monster had lifted, nothing vertical was left. 161 lives were lost; over 5,000 homes and 3,000 businesses had been destroyed.
What happened next was what then-City Manager Mark Rohr described as “The Miracle of the Human Spirit” [i]. The people of these communities lifted themselves out of the rubble, dug their neighbors out, and began the process of helping themselves and one another.
Within minutes, first responders sprang to action and volunteers outside of the tornado zone rushed to aid. And at lightning speed, the radius from which the volunteers came to support the devastated city grew from across town to across the world.
Professionals from a neighboring city lend their expertise
The diversity of volunteers and the talents they offered were wide and deep. On Monday morning, the day after the storm, architect Brandon Dake of Dake-Wells Architecture and American Institute of Architects (or AIA) Springfield, MO president, called four AIA members in Joplin to confirm their safety and to ask if there was anything AIA could do to help them. They said “Not yet, but we will eventually need help re-planning our city” [ii].
This early recognition of the need for collaborative planning to rebuild Joplin ignited the desire in Dake and members of the AIA chapter to take action. In a coordinated effort, architects, Joplin community leaders, and caring citizens gathered to discuss and create a conceptual plan for rebuilding Joplin. The result was a two-day, comprehensive master-planning event whose recommendations were later approved by the Joplin city council [iii].
Timeline of AIA’s involvement:
2 months after the tornado, the City officially requested AIA’s assistance
3 months later, an AIA workshop was organized
3 months after that, the City approved AIA’s recommendations
The AIA invited over 100 professionals to the workshop and the sessions were open to the entire community. Forty-five professionals, city leaders, members of Citizens Advisory Recovery Team (or CART) and individual citizens attended.
Citizens of Joplin organize, take action, and lead
As Joplin leaders were organizing recovery efforts, CART, a team of citizens that had volunteered to help “Build Joplin Strong,” simultaneously organized and inserted themselves into conversations about recovery. Representing caring citizens, CART developed four teams: Economic Development; Schools + Community Facilities; Housing + Neighborhoods; and infrastructure & Environment.
CART heavily influenced the recovery and rebirth of Joplin. Stewardship from this group is alive today and has accompanied the efforts of Joplin leaders as they have navigated recovery and rebirth in a thoughtful, coordinated manner. A 13-page report of community objectives, “Listening to Joplin Progress Report”, was published in 2013 by the Citizens Advisory Recovery Team [iv]. The report shows healthy progress toward the ideas of recovery put forth by the community. As of the date of the report, most of the completed work has occurred in the infrastructure and environment sectors and the economic growth sectors.
AIA master planning charrette. Photo: Courtesy of Springfield, MO AIACommunity redevelopment proposal of medium to high density, walkable neighborhoods centered on mixed-use neighborhood centers (nodes). AIA master planning charrette. Photo: Courtesy of Springfield, MO AIA
By July of 2011, over 150,000 (registered) volunteers had come from across the country and the world to help Joplin in the recovery process. This unprecedented number of volunteers was always met with overwhelming gratitude from every Joplin citizen they encountered.
Stewardship from an unlikely source
In October of 2011, the ABC television network show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition executed a plan to create a second wave of volunteers in Joplin using the show’s “Seven Houses in Seven Days” series finale. Renewed attention and enthusiasm to help the still devastated community generated over 10,000 volunteers for the projects of the episode, as well as millions of dollars in donations for many projects outside of the Extreme Makeover’s scope during their 10-day build. In addition to building homes for seven families in great need, Extreme Makeover shepherded the reconstruction of Cunningham Park—the oldest park in the community, considered ground zero of the storm.
Extreme Makeover documented volunteers from all 50 states and many countries during the build. Volunteers included construction crews, companies, individuals, and impromptu groups such as the “The Mural Team”, an all-female volunteer group of friends from all across Missouri, who painted custom murals in each room of the 12 children of the featured families. Extreme Makeover and The Mural Team hoped the children would smile, finding comfort and security in their new rooms, which had been painted with an outpouring of love and compassion.
In Cunningham Park, three projects and 90 percent of the greenscape were restored, providing relief to the community from the grayness of the land that had been in the tornado’s path, which had been scraped bare during cleanup from the storm.
National corporate sponsors donated to two of the three Cunningham projects; the Drury University Design-Build Program and its architecture students led a third project in partnership with Crossland Construction of Joplin. Over 30 sponsors and volunteer groups supported this team in collaboration with Joplin Parks and Recreation.
The project assigned to Drury Design-Build by the City Manager of Joplin was to design and build a tribute to the volunteers that had come to mean so much to the community. The Volunteer Tribute [v], came to have four concentric rings, representing the four phases of recovery as defined by Mark Rohr, City Manager [vi]. The design also included a butterfly mosaic and touch pedestals of “shards of people’s lives”[vii] put back together in a meaningful way [viii], and a six-foot, stainless steel replica of the wristbands worn by volunteers is inscribed “Miracle of the Human Spirit” [ix]. Bronze tools located within the rings represent the volunteers that helped through all four phases of recovery. In honor of the stories told by many children of butterflies helping them during the storm, a butterfly mosaic sits at the centroid of the garden.
The Drury Design-Build team consisted of 38 architecture students, five professors, many staff, and volunteers of the first-ever Drury SmartMob! A Flash Mob with Purpose [x]. Similar to the spontaneous appearance of a flash mob, volunteers were given clues about the nature of the service project for weeks leading up to the project through social media. Yet, the task of laying 26,000 sq. ft. of sod at Cunningham Park during the Makeover, was only revealed to the SmartMob! volunteers as they arrived at the park on buses. Energized by the opportunity to help, the 120-strong SmartMob! laid sod well beyond their goal in less than 45 minutes and kept greening the park until 90 percent of it was restored.
The Volunteer Tribute, Cunningham Park, Joplin, MO. Photo: Evan MelgrenDrury SmartMob! racing to lend a hand. Photo: Courtesy of Drury University
Joplin Parks and Recreation
Six city parks were destroyed during the storm—more than one third of the parks in Joplin [xi]. Driven to give the weary recovery team much-needed relief, Chris Cotton—a laser-focused Director of Joplin Parks and Recreation and recipient of the Missourian Award for his efforts on the night of the storm—led the proud and passionate Joplin Parks and Recreation department to rebuild not only the six devastated parks, but the entire park system to a grandeur greater than before the tornado. Today, the park system has sports fields, aquatic centers, memories, healing gardens, and amenities many cities in the Midwest would envy. Cotton has built a legacy that will touch and improve lives for decades.
The Butterfly Garden outlines three houses erased by the storm, and couples Worden’s four tasks of processing grief with four architectural elements that appear in all TKF Foundation-funded healing gardens. The threshold of the house symbolizes Worden’s accepting the reality of the loss; a labyrinth-like path supports processing the pain of grief; four sacred spaces tucked within nature become places in which those who need to heal can sit on a provided bench, write in a waterproof journal, and create a new world without what/who was lost; and the three dimensional tracing of the houses creates an enduring connection to what was lost [xiii][xiv].
Father and daughter at the water wall in the Butterfly Garden. Photo: Traci Sooter
Beyond the healing elements of the garden, there are seven stainless steel, student-designed storyboards that tell acts of heroism, children’s butterfly stories, storm statistics, and the intent of the space. A 26-foot concrete water wall is segmented into the 38 minutes the tornado was on the ground. At minute seven, representing 5:41 pm—when the storm hit Cunningham Park and St. Johns Hospital across the street—a void occupies the space. The concrete and stainless steel of the void is broken by the path of the tornado and becomes a water feature in a sacred space. An inscription on the back from a survivor reads, “The biggest and most disastrous moments in a person’s life can be the most defining of a person’s character and a person’s heart”. As you continue along the path, it becomes whole again, with a visible scar and a survivor quote that reads, “I just want people to know that we (Joplin) are strong”. A butterfly pavilion provides a comforting sense of surroundings within nature, shades a TKF-provided bench on one side of the water wall, and a student designed “healing” bench faces the “Hope” inscription on the other [xv].
Butterfly Garden and Overlook, Cunningham Park, Joplin, MO. Houses erased by the tornado are “penciled in” in black steel, creating an enduring connection to what was lost. Photo: Evan MelgrenHouse frame next to rebuilt home reminds visitors that this location was once part of a neighborhood. Photo: Traci Sooter
The void at minute 7 in the water wall. Photo: Evan MelgrenReading a journal in one of the sacred spaces. Photo: Evan MelgrenGirl journaling in sacred space on TKF Foundation bench. Photo: Traci Sooter
Stewardship and Firesouls
Stewardship in Joplin, MO, came in many forms and at times through unusual collaborations. Individual citizens stepped up to do any and all things necessary to rescue and transition into recovery. External organizers and leaders executed planning meetings. Caring citizens organized as a group to steward the city through rebuilding. University faculty used courses to educate while helping the community. A network television show took passionate and caring employees and turned their talents and experience into large, impactful projects. Volunteers came from around the globe and kept coming long after anniversaries of the storm came and went. As of January 30, 2014, AmeriCorps had documented 182,044 volunteers. These are the stories of Firesouls [xvi].
TKF Foundation defines a Firesoul as “an individual compelled to share their vision of the healing power of nature. More than a caretaker, a Firesoul is a person driven by a passion for creating, maintaining and sharing the healing gifts of Open Spaces Sacred Places with others” [xvii]. I believe that the resilience of Joplin is a result of the large number of community members and volunteers who were driven by passion and kindness.
There are so many more stories of heroism, volunteerism, stewardship, and firesouls that will probably never be shared publicly—nevertheless, they exist tangibly because of the lives they have touched and the physical and emotional rebirth of the city they restored. The phenomenon of their actions, character, and heart was truly described well by Mark Rohr as The Miracle of the Human Spirit.
Miracle of the Human Spirit wristband sculpture. Photo: Evan Melgren
[i] Rohr, Mark, (2012), Joplin: The Miracle of the Human Spirit; Tate Publishing
[ii] Dake, Brandon. Sooter, Chikaraishi, Hedges. Architects as Leaders: Best Practices for Engaging Community after the Joplin Tornado. Building Leaders, American Institute of Architects National Convention, June 20-22, 2013, Denver, CO. [email protected].
[iii] Dake, Brandon. Sooter, Chikaraishi, Hedges. Architects as Leaders: Best Practices for Engaging Community after the Joplin Tornado. Building Leaders, American Institute of Architects National Convention, June 20-22, 2013, Denver, CO.
[ix] Rohr, Mark, (2012), Joplin: The Miracle of the Human Spirit; Tate Publishing
[x] Drury SmartMob! A Flash Mob with Purpose. Drury University, Springfield, MO. Dr. Regina Waters. www.drury.edu
[xi] Fact Sheet – City of Joplin May 22, 2011 EF-5 Tornado. Page 1 of 9. Lynn Iliff Onstot. Public Information Office 602 S. Main Street, Joplin, Missouri 64801.
Our planet is at a crossroads. The ecosystems that underpin our economy, well-being, and survival are collapsing, species are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate, and climate change continues unabated.
To mobilize change, it is important to identify the financial returns of investing in nature.
In these times of change, nature-based solutions can offer a way of addressing growing challenges such as climate change (TNC, 2016), natural disasters, and food security. Nature-based solutions focus on protecting key ecosystems, and restoring ecosystems on a massive scale. Forests and other vegetation help stabilise slopes and therefore reduce the risk of landslides. Wetlands can help regulate floods. Nature-based solutions for sequestering carbon, such as avoiding forest loss, reforestation, investing in soil health and coastal ecosystem restoration, can bring us more than a third of the way to emission reductions needed by 2030 (The Nature Conservancy, 2016). Coastal vegetation and natural features, such as sand dunes, can provide protection from storm surges, strong winds, and cyclones. Healthy coral reefs have proven to reduce wave energy during coastal storms (IUCN, 2015). Following Hurricane Katrina, the US Congress approved US$ 500 million to restore and reconnect ecosystems around the Gulf Islands and in the Jean Lafitte National Park on the New Orleans coast. These types of interventions can help reduce the economic damage and loss of lives following disasters (IUCN 2015).
For the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, this is the moment for turning the sustainable development and climate goals, to which nations agreed last year, into action, and to use nature-based solutions to tackle common global challenges. It is the starting point of IUCN’s World Conservation Congress taking place in September 2016, which will bring top scientists together with world leaders and decision-makers from governments, civil society, Indigenous peoples, and the business sector to discuss the way forward.
Slowing the flow
Two-thirds of the planet’s terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are now significantly degraded due to human activity (Global Environment Outlook, 2014). Wetlands, for example, are crucial for the provision of clean, useable water; they provide biodiversity and serve as natural buffers that reduce the occurrences of floods and droughts, as well as critical breeding and nursery grounds for aquatic and terrestrial species. Yet over the last century, an estimated 64 percent of wetlands have been lost.
Fishing, logging, mining, and agriculture are all pushing more and more species to the brink. Failing to account for natural capital is the quickest route to depleting the planet’s resources. And because so many businesses depend on nature, short-term stripping of the planet’s assets is accumulating a substantial backlog of risk for investors.
Europe and many other parts of the world face continued threat from extreme weather caused by climate change. Recent floods in France, Germany, and the Netherlands killed several people and cost millions. In Bavaria, the damage is already over €1bn and governments, insurers, and victims are struggling to find a solution to cover the expenses. The insurance industry indicates that the growing frequency of climate-related claims would result in higher claims and, ultimately, less affordable premiums (Crisp, 2016).
Compelling opportunities are available for restoring the natural strength of the planet for the benefit of people and cities and to counter the widespread degradation of our natural ecosystems worldwide. Speaking at the World Conference of the Society for Ecological Restoration last year, Professor Jungou Liu of the Beijing Forestry University explained that when he was assessing the status of the 50,000 rivers in China based on existing maps, he discovered that 28,000 had disappeared. Some had silted up, while others had dried out completely as a result of a growing population, increasing demand for water, urban development, and climate change.
Restoring the natural capacity of rivers to cope with floods via wetlands, floodplains, and riparian woodlands, can significantly lower the risk of flooding downstream and dramatically reduce the need to build costly concrete defences. Experiences from the River Devon Project in Scotland, set up by WWF Scotland with funding support from HSBC (Slowing the flow – natural solutions to flood problems, WWF Scotland), demonstrate that sustainable flood management can increase the storage capacity and resilience of rivers in wetlands and floodplains in an affordable way. Sustainable flood management approaches include:
Restoring natural dams – Planting native trees and managing woodland in upland gullies encourages woody debris to build up and restores natural dams and ponds, thereby reducing runoff effects.
Investing in the protection and restoration of wetlands – Wetlands are natural sponges that hold immense amounts of water and play a vital role in flood management.
Restoring natural river banks – Grazing along riverbanks increases erosion and coarse sediment build-up in the river, reducing the channel’s ability to cope with heavy flows during floods. Specific tree species, such as willows, create barriers, but also new habitats for wildlife.
Reconnecting rivers with their floodplains – Floodplains can hold colossal volumes of water and release them slowly as the river falls back to its normal height. When water slows down on floodplains, it deposits sediment on the land. This naturally fertilises the soils and prevents a build up of sediment in the river channel, increasing its capacity to hold water.
Restoring riverbank woodland – Riverbank woodland provides one of nature’s most valuable flood defences. In the fertile soil of the floodplain, native woodlands create a rich habitat full of wildlife. During storms, trees trap water, then release it slowly downstream.
Global targets for restoration
Target 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity makes a clear commitment to restoring 15 percent of degraded land across the globe by 2020:
“By 2020, ecosystem resilience and the contribution of biodiversity to carbon stocks have been enhanced, through conservation and restoration, including restoration of at least 15 per cent of degraded ecosystems, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation and to combating desertification” —Convention on Biological Diversity
According to the CBD, restored landscapes and seascapes can improve resilience, including adaptive capacity of ecosystems and societies, and can contribute to climate change adaptation and generate additional benefits for people, particularly indigenous and local communities and the rural poor. While restoration activities are already underway in many parts of the world, the consolidation of policy processes and the wider application of these efforts could contribute significantly to the achievement of the objectives of the Convention. Furthermore, appropriate incentive schemes could reduce, or even reverse, degradation and deliver substantial co-benefits for biodiversity and local livelihoods.
In line with CBD Target 15, The Bonn Challenge is a global initiative for forest landscape restoration, which aims to restore 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. According to estimates (FLR), achieving the 350 million-hectare goal could generate US$ 170 billion per year in net benefits from watershed protection, improved crop yields, and forest products, and could sequester up to 1.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, all while reducing the current emissions gap by 11-17 percent.
As part of international action towards global climate targets, there is a growing recognition of the role of healthy ecosystems in increasing resilience and helping people adapt to climate change through the ongoing delivery of a range of ecosystem services. The discussions at the Climate Summit in Paris in December last year underscored that national governments and the private sector, as well as other key stakeholders from science and civil society, need to work together to act immediately. The UNFCCC has established a database on ecosystem-based approaches to adaption to capture some of the ways in which various types of ecosystem-based measures have contributed to several sectors, including livelihood sustenance and food security, sustainable water management, disaster risk reduction, and biodiversity conservation. One of the examples in the database is from the City of New Orleans, which faces a high risk of flooding, and has integrated the need for protection and restoration of wetlands around New Orleans as a feature of the City Masterplan. The intention is to restore wetlands using a combination of restoration of natural delta through building, marsh creation, and construction of water control structures to increase resilience.
Restoration’s return on investment
There is a clear need for a new financial system which recognizes nature’s enormous contribution to global economic growth and incorporates the full cost of generating wealth. This means bringing the world of nature conservation together with the financing and urban development sectors.
According to The Nature Conservancy, combining the climate mitigation benefits of natural climate solutions with their co-benefits can break through financing barriers by unlocking a more diverse group of investors and stakeholders who are interested in business and sustainability solutions beyond climate mitigation alone. To mobilize change, it is important to identify the financial returns of investing in nature. Several countries and cities around the world are demonstrating how this can work.
A study released by the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility in 2014 indicates that damage from wind, storm surges, and inland flooding amounts to between 4 and 6 percent of the national Gross Domestic Product per year in Barbados and other Caribbean countries (IUCN, 2014). Early investment in climate resilience is more cost-effective than post-disaster recovery. According to the report, Barbados could avoid more than a third of expected losses by implementing risk mitigation initiatives such as beach nourishment and reef and mangrove revivals to reduce damage from strong winds and storm surge. Every dollar invested in the Folkestone Marine Park on the west coast of Barbados, for instance, could reduce 20 dollars of hurricane loss. This is why climate adaptation is a priority for national and local decision-makers, and explains why the United Insurance Company of Barbados is giving financial incentives for homeowners to put preventive measures in place (IUCN, 2014).
Other countries, such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Thailand, have become increasingly aware of the economic benefit of restoring lost coastal wetlands, discovering that it is much less expensive to protect existing wetlands than to replace them after they have been lost. Considering the costs associated with storm damage, the value of wetlands becomes clear; in Malaysia, for example, each kilometer of intact mangrove swamp is valued at US $300,000 for its role in flood and storm protection (De Vries, 2016). In Japan, following a major earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the government declared a plan for the expansion of its coastal forest national park in the form of Sanriku Fukko Reconstruction Park, with an estimated saving of more than JPY 2.5 billion (IUCN, 2015).
A coastal forest national park in Japan. Photo: Naoya Furuta
Another example is Calcutta, India, where 8,000 hectares of wetlands help to treat the sewage from its 10 million citizens, reducing the need for constructing expensive treatment plants, while producing substantial amounts of fish and vegetables and multiple other benefits (De Vries, 2016).
One of the world’s most innovative urban wetlands can be found in Bucharest, Romania. Văcărești is a natural area of approximately 190 hectares with miniature lakes and wetland vegetation hosting over 90 species of birds and wild animals live. It emerged as a result of unfinished works for a hydrotechnical project begun by the Communist regime in 1986, and was established thanks to the support of a strong civil society movement.
Văcărești, an urban wetland in Bucharest, Romania. Photo: Arhiva Adevarul
In 2013, Washington D.C., which faces major difficulties related to storm water runoff, developed a new idea to increase green spaces in the city through so-called retention credits. These credits are available to homeowners, churches, businesses, and anyone else with land that could be upgraded to retain more rainwater. The credits can then be sold to developers who may need them in order to meet the retention requirements for large new building projects.
These examples show that investing in restoration can bring multiple benefits that many cities around the world have not yet tapped into.
How to make restoration work?
Since 1995, John D. Liu, an American filmmaker and ambassador to Commonland, has documented the rehabilitation of the Chinese Loess Plateau, a vast plain of approximately 640,000 square kilometres and the cradle of Chinese civilization. This area is approximately the size of France and stretches over seven severely degraded Chinese provinces. A range of measures of planning, policy, participation, and engineering measures, including afforestation; banning free range grazing and cutting trees; terracing; dune stabilisation; agroecology; and agroforestry have led to the transformation of degraded agricultural lands and deforested mountain slopes to lush farmland. According to Liu, ecological restoration presents the great work of our time. Through restoration efforts, we can create and continuously renew the atmosphere, hydrological cycle, and soil fertility, and naturally regulate the weather and the climate. At the same time, restoration returns habitats to their natural balance and allows natural genetic variety to reassert itself.
Rehabilitation of the Chinese Loess Plateau. Photo: John D. Liu
One of the best ways to convince decision makers, politicians, business representatives, policymakers, and others that nature-based solutions such as these can work on a large scale is to demonstrate how it can be done and what it means for the community and local economy.
Better information sharing amongst the urban development sector, the environmental community and climate change policy makers, and the fostering of mutually beneficial partnerships and collaborations are also key to promoting nature as a solution for a wide range of societal challenges.
Furthermore, the scientific basis of nature-based solutions also needs to be strengthened to enhance the understanding of how natural infrastructure can complement engineered infrastructure and how it can be integrated into urban planning.
Locally relevant information on nature-based solutions, as well as technical support on integrating nature-based solutions into land-use planning, is also essential.
In order to make large-scale restoration credible and viable, we need new partnerships between governments, NGOs, conservationists, scientists, consumers, producers, urban planners, entrepreneurs and financing partners. Each partner holds a vital piece of the puzzle—the knowledge, the tools, the resources—and they need to be united.
Murti, R. and Buyck, C. (ed.) (2014). Safe Havens: Protected Areas for Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/44887
Most of the narratives on the crises of development are woven around rapid population growth in developing countries. Yes. The number of world citizens is over seven billion. The challenges that this number raises far exceeds national and intergovernmental agencies’ abilities to address them. Rapid urbanization is but one of the key challenges in the developing countries.
It is crucial for municipalities in African countries and beyond to tap into millennials to achieve the SDGs. Millennials have the capacity and energy to engage their peers, younger and older generations who look up to their innovative energies, aspirations and commitment to rebooting environmental wellbeing and welfare.
Many scholars and researchers grasp some understanding of the extent of the speed of urbanization in developing countries through spatially explicit or discreet models that point out some significant changes. For instance, the disappearance of open and green spaces, encroachment of buildings on watershed areas increases social and biophysical vulnerability of urban areas. Such issues and challenges are often repeated discussions between policymakers, environmentalists, planners and other stakeholders. In most cities, people look up to governments for solutions to crises and vulnerabilities. Is the public sector—through the policymakers and decision makers—always the springboard of urban resilience? Considering the multiple dimensions of urban sustainability challenges in Africa, the answer is certainly no.
Kano in the 1950s—full of open and green spaces.Kano today is dense.
Since the 1970s and 1980s the phrase “future generations” is clichéd in many environment and sustainable development circles. The unborn generations of the late 20th century were born into the world that is so much urbanized and replete with vulnerabilities, uncertainties, complexities and ambiguities that were well understood during the late 1970s through the dawn of the new millennium. This young generation of the new urban age are called millennials. There is an urbanized planet where resilience of its biophysical and cultural components is the only guarantee of its survival.
Many urban centers of African countries experience youth bulge and unprecedented youth unemployment. In many African countries the youth are marginalized and excluded from political and economic architectures in spite of their dominance in population pyramids of African countries. Indeed, a resilient city is one that promises the future of the young generation. While growing up, the young generation enrich their life-long experiences through their landscape experiences. Green areas and open spaces in many African cities provide the children with avenues for peer play and pastimes. Children gather fruits from trees, play with butterflies and insects and make some reptiles their pets. This is the ecological school that forms the life of the young generations.
Unfortunately, rapid urbanization and poor planning institutions in many urban areas in Africa has undermined the priceless ecosystem services that urban areas offer to the young generation. The young generation are not the only losers but they could be the most severely hit by several consequences of urbanization which may be exacerbated by climate change and poverty. Kano City in Northern Nigeria is one of the ancient pre-colonial African cities whose history dates back to the 10th century. According to some historical accounts, around the 16th century Kano was the third largest city in Africa after Cairo in Egypt and Fez in Morocco (Barau et al, 2015). The city is located in the West African drylands. It is prone to droughts and famine and yet it counts as one of the most resilient cities in Africa. Land management—through agroforestry—raising of trees in farm lands and institutional management of urban open and green spaces strengthened the attributes of the city’s resilience which has only waned and collapsed towards the last quarter of the last millennium.
In the nooks and crannies of Kano city Mr City Lab takes trees to their right places. Here the millennials visit Rimin Kira to drop silk cotton tree.
Prior to the two, back-to-back major international conferences, ISCC and Resilience 2017 held in Stockholm, Sweden, there was an effort to showcase innovative ideas that can support implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs). The SDG Labs emanate from joint works of the Future Earth, Stockholm Resilience Centre and University of Tokyo.
Because urban Kano is at the centre of the storm of collapsing city resilience an idea of restoring local tree species through the efforts of millennials was proposed by the city’s Bayero University Kano. The proposal is tagged as MR CITY Lab an acronym for Millennials and Resilience: Cities, Innovation, and Transformation of Youths Laboratory.
MR CITY Lab, just like other SDG Labs, was selected based on its innovative attributes, primarily its focus on the younger generations as the driving force of restoring urban resilience through restoring the local tree species of the savanna. The friendliness and affinity between people and trees in urban Kano is unique and fascinating one. Many neighborhoods in Kano are named after different indigenous tree species (see Table). Linguists called the art and practice of naming places after some phenomenon as toponym. The neighborhoods that bear tree toponyms are centuries old. Unfortunately, in most of these neighborhoods one can hardly see any of these namesake local tree species. Even worse, young urbanites would tell you that they do not know and cannot even recognize such plants.
At MR CITY Lab, we believe that trees are important in helping cities and communities to realise SDG 11–Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 13—Climate Action and many targets under these the two goals. Our approach is practical. We used university student millennials to make contact with communities and subsequently introduce the tree species into the neighborhoods with tree toponyms.
S/N
Places
Tree species name
Longitude
Latitude
1
Rimi Market
Ceiba pentadra
8.51573
12.0004
2
Rimin Kebe
Ceiba pentadra
8.55131
12.0456
3
Rimin Gata
Ceiba pentadra
8.44102
11.9715
4
Durimin Iya
Ficus polita
8.52602
11.9909
5
Dorayi Babba
Parkia clapatoniana
8.47656
11.9569
6
Dorayi Karama
Parkia clapatoniana
8.4534
11.9643
7
Dorawar Yankifi
Parkia clapatoniana
8.45558
11.9782
8
Chedi
Ficus spp
8.51911
12.0018
9
Chediyar Yangurasa
Ficus spp
8.51007
12.003
10
Kukar Bulukiya
Adansonia digitate
8.50594
12.0113
11
Gawuna
Faidherbia albida
8.55874
12.0328
11
Dan Marke
Anogeissus schimperii
8.56879
11.9832
13
Mangwarori
Mangifera indica
8.50271
11.9924
14
Gabari
Acacia nilotica
8.512625
12.00223
15
Kurnar Asabe
Ziziphus spina-christi
8.483041
12.05291
16
Giginyu
Borassus aethopium
8.577825
11.99117
17
Tsamiyar Boka
Tamarindis indica
8.568871
11.97791
18
Wali Mai Aduwa
Cajanus cajan
8.484699
11.98801
19
Durumin Saude
Ficus polita
8.514247
11.98523
20
Dorayi
Parkia clapatoniana
8.522907
12.00171
21
Madatai
Khaya senegalensis
8.514038
11.99687
Reintroducing local tree species has multiple socio-ecological and economic utilities. Most of the local tree species are nitrogen fixers that make them in part good for fixing nitrogen from urban air pollution. The presence of trees also improves the local microclimate by making the city cooler especially where the tree density is high. Compared to most exotic species the local species is adapted to dryland conditions, developing a long root system that goes deep below the surface. Hence, this root system growth aids soil aeration improves water infiltration and reduces flooding incidents.
Most of the trees that were restored are of immense economic importance and industrial utility. For instance, the fruits of Acacia nilotica tree are used in tanning hides and skin—one of the traditional industries in Kano. The city used to export tanned leather to Morocco and parts of Europe in the pre-colonial periods. The residue of the fruits from the tanning pits are used for fattening animals. On the other hand, the modern tanneries are powered by fossil fuels and depend on heavy toxic chemicals that pollute rivers and waterways both within and outside the city. Most of the trees that MR CITY is reintroducing to the city are beneficial to human health because their fruits, leaves and roots provide local foods, drinks and medicines.
The experiences of MR CITY attest to the power of youth in rebooting elements of urban resilience in Africa. The millennials have the capacity and energy to engage their peers, younger children and also the older generations who look up to their innovative energies, aspirations and commitment to rebooting environmental wellbeing and welfare. Thus, it is crucial for municipalities in African countries and beyond to tap into the hidden talents of millennials to achieve the SDGs.
Barau, A. S., Maconachie, R., Ludin, A., & Abdulhamid, A. (2015). Urban morphology dynamics and environmental change in Kano, Nigeria. Land Use Policy, 42, 307-317.
New long-term development plans that do not integrate management of potential future climate conditions will put many people in harm’s way. The task is nothing short of a complete overhaul in planning practice, and a deep integration of fields that are historically divided.
Cities are dynamic complex adaptive systems. They are a network of systems interacting and exchanging flows of energy, information, and materials, held together by a set of rules, based on millennia of ecological change and more recent governance structures. Dominant narratives and practices describe cities as human systems that are separate from regional (or rural) ecosystems. After all, cities can defy gravity and pool natural resources unlike any other ecosystem on the planet. As a result, many city practitioners view the built environment in isolation from the regional ecosystems, and the resulting development patterns and processes presume that the infrastructure, communities, and systems can withstand extreme events, including floods, fires, and heat waves.
However, climate change is now testing these assumptions by shifting local weather toward the unexpected, revealing a gap in what cities can withstand and the type, number, and magnitude of extreme weather events they will experience. The impact from hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, offer a sobering perspective on how the more predictable patterns of extreme weather events are changing, and how cities are indeed not isolated and that the built environment is highly vulnerable to impacts. Harvey and other events like it are occurring at a scale that we are currently unable to withstand or support. Climate models and scientists suggest that these extreme events are only the beginning of the shift we can expect for decades to come.
City planners are on the front lines of climate change adaptation, and their ability to implement effective changes, from policy and regulation to infrastructure and technology, will determine their city’s capacity to cope with the next big storm. Recent disasters are forcing an examination of how urban preparation, response, and recovery mechanisms require a redefining of cities as vulnerable ecosystems.
The task that city planners face is immense, and timing is critical because while we do not know exactly what or where, extreme weather is unavoidable, and will hit in unexpected places in unpredictable ways. With such immense uncertainty, planners and urban researchers must identify adaptation measures with the latest, yet incomplete understandings. These adaptations, many of which are still emerging, require however, recognition that cities are not monolithic, safe, and robust environments, and in fact may be the opposite. They are indeed vulnerable because they are places where social, technological, and biological components come together to impact human capacity to survive, particularly during extreme weather events.
Indeed, recent extreme events can be seen as justification for better integrating the functions of city offices—e.g., planning, transportation, parks, and emergency management—to couple changing social conditions, aging infrastructure, and advancing technology with the impacts of climate change. The processes that determine the prioritization and allocation of urban adaptation projects, i.e., protecting the historic downtown vs. a working-class community, partially determine who is likely to suffer most in extreme events. For example, why was there no city-assisted evacuation plan in place for the neighborhoods that were most impacted by Katrinai? How did the chemical plant explosions from Harvey impact those with the least access to or control over resources? These behind the scenes processes are often subtle and manifest institutionalized yet invisible processes of inequality such as bias, racism, and privilege though their outcomes.
To uncover some of these inconspicuous dimensions of prioritization processes for urban adaptation to climate extremes, we interviewed planners in five cities across the United States—Baltimore, Miami Beach, Portland (Oregon), Syracuse, and Phoenix—to identify the mechanisms that recreate, and potentially amplify social inequities. We wanted to know in detail why a particular event was impactful on the capacity of cities to withstand extreme weather events, and how current decision-making processes are interacting with the subtler forms of privilege that occur in city planning and politics. Although this research is in its early stages, we highlight a few key findings, which may help to shed light on preparation for the future extreme events.
The urban context matters
The complex development history of cities and the legacies inherited by residents and planners offer insights about the conditions that hamper urban climate adaptation efforts. These are, of course, unique circumstances for each city, consisting of powerful (empowered) individuals, institutions, and networks that lock-in development trajectories. For example, the development of Baltimore is facing entirely different issues than Miami Beach, and factors that go beyond biophysical and locational differences. While Baltimore was shaped by legacies of policy-supported racial segregation, Miami Beach arose as a tourism resort community, which arguably amplifies economic segregation between the new arrivals and those early European settlers. The heat vulnerability differential in Phoenix, where neighborhoods just two miles apart can experience a 13-degree temperature difference, can be partially explained by how the city grew and where immigrant communities live. Many former immigrant communities in Phoenix still have virtually no tree cover, making them some of the hottest and most exposed neighborhoods in the city.
The intersection of economics and vulnerability is particularly acute in North American cities. Miami Beach and Baltimore, are both threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges, yet Miami Beach is advancing adaptation responses, including major engineering projects to raise roads, houses, and whole neighborhoods, while Baltimore is expanding development on the flood plain because those areas provide developers the greatest return on investment. Since people who can afford the waterfront may also have greater access to government decision-making processes, owners of properties vulnerable to sea level rise can lobby city officials to fund protection systems. Instead of adaptation project money going to areas with long-standing social vulnerabilities due to processes (e.g., segregation) largely outside of residents’ control, limited city dollars may wind up supporting wealthy neighborhoods where residents choose to put their lives and property at higher risk. We learned that such trade-offs are occurring regularly in cities. In the Portland, Oregon area, a series of storms and consistent rainfall over two months in 2015 created landslides and road washouts that were largely in wealthier neighborhoods, and further impinged on the budget for important, but less critical, transportation infrastructure improvement projects that may be necessary in potentially less privileged areas of the city.
Rethinking “extreme events”
The aforementioned rain in 2015-2016 was the wettest winter ever in the Portland area, with over 25 days of consecutive rain. While not normally thought of as an extreme event, the rains caused flooding, landslides and other small localized problems ensued. We learned that these unusual or unexpected events are forcing planners into uncharted territory. Practitioners are now considering the cumulative effects of more frequent and intense, yet expected, weather (e.g., more rain, more days over 90 degrees). Duration and timing are becoming increasingly important aspects of weather. The planning moniker of “plan for the norm” is giving way to “prepare for the extremes”. Yet, environmental protection regulations and design guidelines still operate based on 100-year storms and utilize combined sewer overflow for storm events, and these policies are quickly outdated. In fact, interviewees suggested that annual seasons are shifting, where “summer” was characterized as 1 May–31 October, and “winter” from November 1–April 30, though if October becomes a winter month, as precipitation patterns already indicate, then compliance failures will likely occur, when combined storm and sewage flows increase. Governance planners will have to rewrite, indeed rethink, the regulations and re-allocate resources appropriately, which is a technical, economic, environmental, and political process.
Impacts on urban infrastructure
Practitioners in Syracuse, New York have jokingly said that Syracuse is one of the few beneficiaries of climate change due to the increase in pleasant, warm, and sunny days that have chased some of the rain clouds south. Climate change brings with it greater warmth to the northern areas, though it also brings extreme events, which they are experiencing as shifts in seasonal predictability. The 2016-17 winter in Syracuse was the “craziest winter” residents have ever experienced. In February, temperatures went up to 72 degrees (F) but dropped to 0 in March with a heavy snowstorm to boot. Plow drivers, who are normally employed through the winter were let go in February when winter seemed to be over. As a result, the snowstorm in March was met with a very sluggish response, which had rippling impacts throughout the social and economic fabric of the city.
More importantly, a record number of water main breaks in the city due to the recurring freeze-thaw cycles required the replacement and repair of the piping, which reveals a serious issue facing most of America’s cities: aging and inadequate critical infrastructure. These changes after the 2016-2017 winter in Syracuse have, however, made the city’s water infrastructure better able to withstand future temperature variability. City infrastructure, such as water and sewage, roads, rail and bridges, and electricity, are vulnerable to the specific policies and regulations that do not consider the increasing frequency, magnitude, and duration of extreme weather events. As weather patterns shift in unexpected ways, critical and secondary infrastructure will likely fail without intensive retrofitting. But city planners told us that their budgets are already thin, and funding for these projects is scarce, and likely not forthcoming.
Coinciding events create extreme conditions
In June of 2012, the surprise for Baltimore was not increased heat, which they expected, but wind, which they did not. The event that most stood out was what is called a “derecho”, a strong sustained and straight-line moving windstorm that occurred during a summer heat wave. Heat, as is becoming more widely understood, is the deadliest of weather conditionsii. City residents depended on air conditioning, fans, and cooling centers during the prolonged heat wave, when strong winds downed power lines across the city. How well residents weather a heat wave often correlates with measures of social capital, poverty, age, and raceiii. But this storm was indiscriminate, and high health risks reached across race and class lines. While food rotted in refrigerators, city residents sweated in the dark. With elevators frozen, people in high-rises became stranded in the unrelenting heat. Emergency management procedures and resources were not prepared for this kind of eventuality, and the city was hard-pressed to identify critical problems and act effectively, with lives in the balance. Much then depended on the social capital of individuals and families that can offer greater support during these extreme events.
Going forward
These select examples from the planners we interviewed suggest a need to reconsider the dominant narrative of city planning. What might be the advantages of considering cities as ecosystems that are vulnerable to climate change impacts? If we continue to think about cities as refuges to protect, then we will imagine higher walls, thicker levees, and technology that further separate humans from the ecosystems upon which we depend. But if cities are ecosystems and indeed complex and adaptive, then vulnerability becomes a product of the network of systems interacting and exchanging material and non-material goods and services. If we can think in terms of interaction, then we can imagine the complex exchanges that exist between a city and the weather patterns of the region and that the nature of those exchanges creates and define the city’s resilience to weather extremes. Adaptations, then, must mimic the complexity by addressing vulnerability and building resilience using a multiple-interacting criteria approachiv.
Permeability becomes an important organizational concept as we think about building resilience into cities. Permeability because, similar to ecosystems, attempts to wall off or close the flow of goods, services, information and other elements will increase vulnerability and likelihood of harm. Each city, as such, increasing its vulnerability as a result of greater isolation (less permeability) and increases the risk from extreme events. These must be addressed through the city’s cultural, political, and economic capacity. The cities we spoke with are well into this process. Like the concept of permeability, the following five themes were developed through our discussions with lead environmental planners. While not comprehensive, these themes are shaping the current practitioner perspective on cities as vulnerable ecosystems.
1. Historical context sets the stage. Patterns of development and policy reflect how the city has managed social, racial, and class tensions. Outcomes from these historical processes create not just the vulnerability context, but also form barriers to adaptation, change, and resilience building.
“[W]e are a city that’s developed on racism and racist policies…they adopted the ordinance of 1910 that basically allowed for white blocks and black blocks. Even though that was later invalidated, it was still a practice that was widely followed. Then bring in redlining maps—Federal Housing Administration support for racism in housing. We are a city that is essentially very segregated…That leads to huge differences in socioeconomic status throughout the city primarily based on race.”
— Baltimore
Beyond the social, political, and economic patterns that have and are shaping the city, the built environment is also critical. The development patterns a city has followed creates a path dependence in that it is deeply invested in one system of managing, e.g., stormwater, that it is too costly to implement a different, potentially better strategy. Therefore, planners and engineers often have to work within the current infrastructural context. In this way, management decisions of the past can determine a city’s future potential to weather extreme events that limit the adaptation potential of critical systems (e.g., stormwater, energy delivery, etc.).
The built environment also dictates how city residents interact with the city. The structure of spaces direct human accessibility, transportation preferences, and types and frequency of use. Interrupting these patterns may be critical in shifting the vulnerability of people in certain neighborhoods. Understanding the historical context allows planners and policy-makers to uncover why a city functions the ways it does, as well as how the city and residents have responded to imposed changes in the past, giving insight on how they will likely respond to future shifts. Questions for planners as they consider historical contexts in preparing for extreme events, include: What are the legacies that your city inherited from past policy and development, and how are they continuing to shape your current vulnerability context? How are historical patterns of infrastructure and investment influencing the adaptive capacity of the city, and stifling innovation?
2. Knowledge building is critical. Novel events and changing weather patterns are pushing cities into unknown territory. It is critical to examine city processes and event impacts to understand where gaps in response and preparation exist, as well as to understand new weather patterns as they are developing.
“That was a big event for us as far as impact on low-income residents, impact on elderly and youth, and just impact on our infrastructure systems, showing a lot of the vulnerabilities in our community, lack of understanding of where resources should be distributed, where we’re getting resources to, how effective that distribution was—or ineffective.”
— Baltimore
With novel events, it is also important to understand how a city’s current systems and residents respond. What new vulnerabilities are revealed? Essentially, it is necessary to understand how the city’s risk context is shifting. With Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012 FEMA flood maps were redrawn up and down the eastern seaboard. Understanding not just the event, but the interaction of the city with the event is a crucial step in effective and efficient adaptation.
Researchers have capacities that planners often do not, such as experimenting with innovative approaches and technologies. City planners and researchers can work together to assess urban vulnerability to extremes and to co-develop strategies that will have the best chance at positive strides toward building resilience.
“[T]he research historically has all been all over the map and giving opposing opinions of what to do and opposing solutions, and solutions that apply at the micro scale, but not at the macro scale, that it’s actually created inertia in doing anything.”
— Phoenix
Choosing the most effective path to prepare for extreme events may also incur large costs, take years to actualize, and potentially create a path dependence. Partnerships across academia, government, and communities can improve the sharing of knowledge and facilitate capacity building on all levels. Questions for building knowledge when preparing for extreme events include: What are the gaps between what your city is experiencing and the plans, protocols, and regulations in place to manage preparation and recovery from extreme weather? Is there a coordinated network of academic, non-profit, community, and government organizations that can co-produce and share knowledge? And importantly experiment with novel solutions to current problems?
3. There may be limits to change. As the climate continues to change the identity (e.g., tourist or recreational destinations, cultural or historic centers, historic districts, economic engines, etc.) of the city can become quickly threatened. Planners who work between adaptation and transformation, can anticipate strong push back against proposed changes. A city that needs to transform its identity, perhaps as a result of adaptation planning, will strongly resist abrupt change, but a long-term strategy can transform the built environment, behavior, and the economic base.
“[Retreat] is never going to be an option for Miami Beach, because what happens if we consider that option? First and foremost, residents don’t want to leave Miami Beach. There’s a reason they’re there, and they love it. Secondly, some of the most vulnerable areas are the touristic areas. If you propose some kind of retreat, you kill Miami Beach.”
— Miami Beach
Regardless if current systems are causing harm or creating vulnerability, there are some who risk great losses from change. Many groups, individuals, companies, and organizations have gained significantly in wealth and influence through the current organization of system elements. Indeed, many of those likely had a hand in shaping the current state to their benefit. If adaptation measures challenge their positions of power, then proposed changes may likely be ardently opposed. Questions that offer insights into the limits to change when planning for extreme events include: How can multi-scalar alignment be achieved; what are the conditions where residents, city management, business, and organizations are largely on the same page? What can you do to prepare for when those conditions arise? Can you identify areas that will be sources of powerful push back to proposed adaptation and develop strategies that engender goal alignment?
4. Align policy, processes, and infrastructure with conditions. Extreme weather, seasonality, temperatures, and more are in the process of change, which suggests that more surprises are likely. Regulations, policy, short- and long-term planning, and critical infrastructure capacity all need to be adaptable to at least match current conditions, but ideally made to proactively manage a broad range of potential conditions.
“The utilities have had to respond to the water main breaks, but I don’t see them being proactive. They’re reactive…There’s a whole network of emergency management people in NY state who are charged with being proactive and being prepared for emergency response. But the city, in some respects, seems to be declining in terms of its ability to respond, as a result of its financial constraints.”
— Syracuse
Understanding how city policies, regulations, services, and resource allocation mitigate harm from extreme weather events is necessary before engaging in this step, which aims to bridge the gaps. Knowing how and why current policies, infrastructure, etc. are failing will greatly facilitate enacting adaptation. However, it is not always possible, quick, or efficient to build that knowledge, especially when weather patterns are not stable year to year. Building in flexibility and adaptive potential to city management will allow for practitioners to make critical decisions at critical times. Questions for planning to align city systems when preparing for extreme events include: What policies, procedures, and regulations are outdated? And how are these impeding adaptation and the ability of the city to effectively manage current weather events? Can policy and regulation updates be made to allow for flexibility and adaptive capacity to anticipate a changing local and regional climate?
5. Build bottom-up capacity and cohesion. Expanding plans from a response and recovery focus to include preparation will be essential. With the recognition that the city cannot manage it all on its own, the community becomes critical. Consider how governance can facilitate developing community capacity and cohesion.
“We can see huge differences from neighborhood to neighborhood and how folks are checking in on each other and what the adaptive capacity is of that neighborhood…I think that something we’ve been realizing more and more each year and trying to incentivize as an element of all planning and implementation is—how do we strengthen communities and community ties?”
— Baltimore
Neighbors and neighborhoods play a critical role in managing extreme events. Localized networks that are active in and out of crises can ensure that there are avenues of aid and information for vulnerable people and families. Connecting these networks with city managers and emergency responders will allow coordination of efforts, streamline communication, and minimize confusion and potential panic. When people know who to contact, where to go, or how to react during crises, there is less burden on city personnel. This may even save lives and reduce negative health impacts especially in surprise or prolonged events such as heat waves. Questions for planners when facilitating community-based preparation for extreme events include: How can community members and organizations be empowered and become allies in climate adaptation, risk and emergency management, and awareness? What current networks and associations exist that can be tapped into and/or expanded to work together with city management and researchers?
* * *
As the dramatic repercussions from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria continue to unfold; the next storm is developing and aiming towards places that are vulnerable to major infrastructure, societal and ecosystem impacts. Collectively, we need to have an eye on next years’ storms, as well as those that will hit in 2030. If we are not actively trying to understand what can be done, then we’ll continue to face similar consequences.
On top of all of this, urban areas around the world are growing dramatically, with likely more than 6.4 billion residents in cities by 2050. How will cities accommodate their new millions, while ensuring some measure of protection from extreme weather? New long-term development plans that do not integrate management of potential future climate conditions will put many more people in harm’s way. The immensity of the task is nothing short of a complete overhaul in planning practice, and a deep integration of fields that are historically divided.
Notes i T. Litman, “Lessons from Katrina and Rita: What Major Disasters Can Teach Transportation Planners”, J. Transportation Eng., no. 1, pp. 11-18, 2006.
ii Luber G, McGeehin M. Climate change and extreme heat events. Am J Prev Med 2008;35(5):429–35.
iii Huang, G., Zhou, W., Cadenasso, M.L., 2011. Is everyone hot in the city? Spatial pattern of land surface temperatures, land cover and neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics in Baltimore, MD. Journal of Environmental Management 92, 1753–1759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2011.02.006
iv Pelling, M., 2011. Urban governance and disaster risk reduction in the Caribbean: the experiences of Oxfam GB. Environment and Urbanization, 23(2), pp.383–400.
Professor Vivek Shandas specializes in integrating the science of sustainability to citizen engagement and decision making efforts. He evaluates the many critical functions provided by the biophysical ecosystems upon which we depend, including purifying water, producing food, cleaning toxins, offering recreation, and imbuing society with cultural values.
Free from the constraints of water scarcity and the harsh climate, major cities have been developing in high-risk arid environments across the world during the last century, cities such as Phoenix (US), Antofagasta (Chile), and Kuwait City (Kuwait).
Arid cities around the world
Over two years ago, my colleagues and I at Arup began a research project focused on the topic of planning and designing cities in arid environments. We were initially interested in exploring the most relevant practices and innovations for cities in the Middle East, but soon realised that many other cities and regions around the world share similar climatic conditions and challenges. As a matter of fact, approximately one-third of our planet’s land area can be classified as arid, receiving less than 800 ml (~ 50 cubic feet) of rain per year.
Arid environments have only recently been able to support large populations, thanks to inventions such as air conditioning, desalination plants, and the automobile. These technologies helped create habitable conditions in the hostile environment by supplying water through alternative methods (desalination, dams) and providing comfort, at least indoors (air conditioning). Free from the constraints of water scarcity and the harsh climate, major cities started developing in arid environments across the world during the last century, cities such as Phoenix (US), Antofagasta (Chile), and Kuwait City (Kuwait). Not only was their growth reliant on energy-intensive technologies and oblivious to local climate conditions, it was based on an imported, land-intensive development model which encouraged sprawl and further reduced the sustainability of these cities from an environmental and social perspective.
In the 21stcentury, the above development trajectory poses two significant and related challenges for arid cities. First, how can these cities become more sustainable, weaning themselves off the energy and land intensive development models which were central to their creation? Second, how can these cities become more resilient and adapt to global climate change, which is likely to render their climate even less hospitable? By reaching out to our professional network of colleagues and partners from across the world, my colleagues and I were able to identify key learnings and best practices which can help address these questions for existing and developing arid cities. I would like to highlight three areas identified in our work which I believe are particularly important especially for cities in the Arabian Gulf: sustainable urban drainage, the provision of public spaces, and walkability.
Storm water drainage is often an after-thought when planning cities in the Arabian Gulf. With sunny weather for most months of the year, it can be easy to forget that rain events do occur, and they are often intense. Rain water capture is typically not financially viable due to the limited frequency of the rain. This generally leaves the “hard engineering” approach of designing a drainage network to channel storm water as quickly and efficiently as possible to the sea, complying with planning requirements which typically only address up to 1-in-5-year storms.
There is usually no consideration for sustainable urban drainage and filtration systems (e.g. bioswales, porous pavements), nor for designing public spaces to function as part of the storm water management network during intense rain events. Storm water infrastructure is thus capital-intensive and provides no broader amenity or value to the city. Moreover, no scenario planning is undertaken to ensure that vital city assets (e.g. schools, clinics, business districts) remain functional and accessible during larger storm events. Finally, and perhaps most critically, despite infrastructure assets being planned and designed for the next 50 – 100 years, I have yet to see an example where the changing climate conditions (e.g. changing rainfall frequency) are sufficiently taken into consideration to ensure the adaptability of the system for the future.
Storm water management is recognised as vital only in the immediate aftermath of a storm, when cities seize to function after a few minutes of intense rain. At that point, quick-fix, reactive measures are sometimes announced (e.g. increasing number of drainage vehicles, cleaning clogged drains). However, the momentum is not sustained long enough to allow for meaningful and proactive change in planning and design requirements and practices.
Well-used public space in Dubai (UAE). Partially shaded but still water-intensive.
Shifting paradigm, changing pathways
A paradigm shift is needed whereby the complexity and importance of storm water management in arid cities is recognised, understood, and addressed. There are lessons to be learnt from other cities which are planning their storm water infrastructure and sea defenses more thoughtfully, incorporating green and blue infrastructure and utilising the investment to provide more people-focused amenities. The same engineering and design skills need to be employed in arid cities, and this will also require the protection and rehabilitation of local natural systems (e.g. valleys, wetlands) which have and can play a role in resilient storm water management.
Linked to the above topic is the wider discussion around the provision of quality public spaces. This area has been receiving growing interest in the cities of the Arabian Gulf, with critiques around the quality, accessibility and equity of existing public spaces. Interestingly, there have also been valid critiques around the pre-conceptions of public space in the Gulf—why can’t malls be considered a valuable public space if they serve a similar social function as a park?
As cities in the Arabian Gulf (Riyadh, Doha, Dubai) mature, we are seeing the interest in “iconic architecture” develop to recognise the importance of the public realm in the functioning of the city, the wellbeing of its residents, the value of its assets and ultimately the ability of a city to attract future investors and residents. To provide the quantity and diversity of public space needed, arid cities will need to bravely and carefully consider optimising the design and use of outdoor spaces. It is encouraging that this is in line with recent trends, with outdoor spaces being developed successfully in Riyadh, and to a more commercial extent in Dubai (although the question of their ‘public’ nature remains in Dubai).
Designing spaces to be comfortable for considerable parts of the year despite the often hot, dry, and dusty weather will be key. Most of the answer lies in designing spaces to adapt to, and not overpower, the climate. Shade must be provided in a water-efficient and cost-efficient way, which means employing clever passive design techniques wherever possible. A series of small parks and plazas may be more suited to arid climates than large open spaces, as the former are generally easier to shade and more accessible by foot, two critical considerations in arid climates. Providing accessible, comfortable and functional public spaces which encourage social interaction will be key to maintaining the attractiveness and vibrancy of arid cities in the long term.
The restored Wadi Hanifah in Riyadh (KSA) providing alternative public spaces and water management strategies. Source: Moriyami & Teshima
Diseases such as obesity and diabetics are prevalent in the Arabian Gulf due to the sedentary lifestyle promoted by the planning model catering for life in air-conditioned spaces and vehicles. Re-integrating walking into the lives of arid city residents will require a fundamental rethink of land use planning practices, just like in most other cities. The added dimension is planning to allow for comfortable walking conditions for most of the year, which takes us back to good passive design practices. It is simply too dangerous to accept the idea that “it is too hot to walk” in arid cities. In addition to the health risks associated with the lack of physical activity, relying on vehicles jeopardizes the resilience of these cities as it reduces the mobility options available.
Arid cities have become a reality in the 20thcentury due to the technological innovations allowing them to overcome the challenges of their harsh environment. They now face the challenge of adapting to the 21stcentury, with its limitations on resource use and the more extreme and less certain climate. To have a chance at addressing these challenges, planners and designers must learn from best practices in other arid cities and environments and develop locally-responsive urban models and solutions.
For city planners and those interested in addressing sustainability of the city as its interrelates with nature, we are very familiar with the pervasive discourse of climate change and the idea of adaptation to, as well as mitigation of, climate change effects and causes.
To strategically transform infrastructure for climate change, we need to indicate how cities can equitably involve the nature and culture of place.
As with any such terms, there are nuances that have important implications for our desired goals. If we are serious about adapting and mitigating climate change, we should understand how our proposed actions interface with the logic driving the patterns of unsustainable/non-resilient growth of our cityscapes—the logic patterns of growth that have collectively contributed to our getting to this climate crisis point.
Even with a degree of mitigation, adaptation that enables the short-term continuation of existing infrastructure and accruing tensions, rather than being part of a process of necessary reorganizing, becomes part of the “sustainability” of an increasingly frail status quo. In other words, certain kinds of adaptation can enable the current system to continue on a similar trajectory. An important critical consideration in sustainability is: what is being sustained, for whom, and who (or what) is being left out?
Living for the city: the greening of late modernity
Cities are human’s largest constructed artifacts and the locus of the majority of the world’s population. In places such as the U.S., our existing cities saw their greatest growth based on the infrastructure and underlying logic of “high modernity”—a logic of production that reigned supreme from 1930-1970. This includes the grey infrastructure-based logic of seeking concrete control of nature, which has resulted in the fragmentation and destruction of our relations to accessing the natural processes of place. This logic also includes the capitalist imperatives of growth centered on property markets, goods movement, profit reinvestment, and commerce backed by the rationalized sciences of economics, efficiency and professional planning. This overall structural complex of high modernity has created the foundation for the sprawl, consumption, technological-fixes, and industrial landscapes we take for granted. The resulting trajectory of this logic, should it continue to be applied, is what we describe in our climate plans as “business as usual.” This is a path that routinely supports “making a killing” as a way of making a living, but, as we know, does not support the living part of our lives in a deep sense, nor the living parts for our landscape ecologies. The sustainability industry is our response to this path—part of a larger “postmodern” environmental effort to ostensibly challenge and re-orient pervading capitalist logic and its built environmental manifestations.
In such a context, sustainability appears to be part of a clear, progressive movement. Yet, capitalist production has the capacity to morph and co-opt sustainability or greening through its logic of disinvestment, reinvestment, and consumption. How genuinely reformative, or transformative, is the emerging practice of applied interventions that we call sustainability? How would we even judge this quality?
Contemplating these questions is a rabbit hole that professional planners are typically trained and advised to avoid. We are not afforded the luxury to think through such critical (read: philosophical) conundrums. There are pragmatic and political concerns to consider; after all, we do not have a blank slate. Rather, we do what we can and hope for the best. In sustainability planning, there is an implicit idea that, somehow, we can balance planet, people, and profit in a form of green, more humane capitalism. The unfortunate elephant in the room is, we know by our own equations and science that as it stands, despite noble political efforts, what we are doing will certainly not be enough to prevent devastating consequences of climate change. We wait, hopefully, for the increasingly realized crisis to prompt deeper critical action, but this is like the homeowner calling for the architectural engineer to save them in the midst of an earthquake.
At this point, we need proactive strategic planning that doesn’t just adapt, as if in acquiescence, for anticipated future scenarios, but that immediately serves a functional purpose by morphing the existing built environment to produce a qualitative difference. The best analogy I like to use is the notion of “retrofitting”: much as the architect seeks to transform the performance of an existing unsustainable building by retrofitting within the given structure instead of razing it completely, we must seek to adapt strategically, so that the performance and capacity of the structure can become fundamentally different. While other unsustainable parts may, in time, fall away, a new emergent infrastructure is set in place. This is what I refer to as transformative adaptation.
My analogy to architectural retrofitting only goes so far, however. While we have a good understanding of structural engineering forces that affect buildings, the place structure of a multilayered, multivariable city is exceedingly complex. We have to create this path as we walk along it. Fortunately, we do have a reference point to orient us—the living nature within cities, often obscured in our everyday routines, plays a vital role in increasing our livability, but is also part of dynamic natural processes which we must carefully understand and work to integrate.
The nature-and-culture fabric of urban greening
What relates nature in the city and its associated living qualities to transformative adaptation? Part of transformative adaptation is about a built environment place that supports layers of interconnected and diverse life—from the nature of place to the culture of place (and its people—such that this nature is woven into the fabric of the city across and between scales. Clearly, this is the not the current case in our cities.
Nature manifests itself to people in cities through glimpses of the seasons and days unfolding, but not as obviously as outside cities, where the intimate ground, the water, the sky, the air, and the nested ecologies that prevail awaken our senses to this whole. There are, of course, places that do alert us to these connections very clearly, but they are the exceptional refuges, the greenbelts, the nature parks, that are not found everywhere nor are made easily accessible to all. Nevertheless, connections to nature are frequently located in less recognized forms: the marginal places of dumping and disuse, such as a trash-filled storm drain opening to a vine-infested, fenced-off creek culvert.
Likewise, a city’s culture is widely and loudly celebrated—but only as a chamber-of-commerce-packaged version or as (re)discovered exotica, soon to be commodified. Today, the ground where culture should be living and emerging organically more closely resembles the sad toil of the factory farm, where cultivation happens at the margins and in the cuts, especially for those of the dispossessed creative class. There is little, if any, ability for people below the formal municipal scale—for example, at the neighborhood level scale—to openly shape their lived places and express shared social aspirations as part of the city’s mosaic.
A rich urban ecology means living nature should support other, diverse living natures, and that living culture should support other layers of diverse cultures. Both are important for our psychological and physical health. For our livability, focusing on the human scale is also key. In fact, specific locations of culture and locations of nature are two significant assets of a city and, as far as structure, these should be valued, protected, enhanced, and interconnected—cross-woven as ends of a transitional continuum.
After waxing poetic about nature and culture, and even acknowledging their anemic presence in our everyday, sterile, standardized cityscapes, we return to the topic at hand: how are these conditions related to adaptation and the role of urban green infrastructure? Environmental and climate planners recognize the significance of trees, wetlands, flood plains, and rechargeable water regimes to environmental adaptation of urban heat island, sea-level rise, storm surges, and other climate effects. How do these types of greening interventions relate to how we, the city dwellers, in our everyday rituals, relate to the place, move about, interact, and collectively contribute to the production of the cultural city landscape?
I assert that the ability to know, see, and interact directly with natural processes in our everyday city life; the ability to know and create cultural expression in the everyday, provides, over time, a calibrated “organic” understanding of place and an experiential understanding of what is at stake in sustainability, what is important to sustain, and possible new ways to communicate this importance. The presence of these direction interactions with nature is missing in so many “disempowered” communities but could support organic empowerment and a sense of relational “ownership” in place that can mitigate the pushes of displacement.
By bringing together place-based nature and culture, we are now reaching the point at which adaptation has a potential to become transformative: as we adapt to climate changes, we are also, in that very intervention, taking greening actions that seek to reawaken spaces that can orient all of us to a living logic—one that is not beholden to academic mastery, but which becomes part of our everyday formative landscape as it integrates with the functional fabric and structure of our cities.
The planning practice of urban greening
As a counterpoint, let us now examine how well intended adaptation and urban greening happens in a city planning context ruled by layers of grey infrastructural forms (and the logic that supports them). Urban greening is one of the latest catchall terms that is a complement to sustainable climate action-oriented planning, crossing-over with co-interests in resiliency, health, and equity. For some, urban greening may include green tech installations, such as solar arrays, smart energy grids, or green roofs. For others, it may connote the conviviality of linear parks and green boulevards from the “City Beautiful/Garden City” movements of the 1990s. Typically though, it refers to green infrastructure elements such as bioswales and vegetative air pollution or storm-surge/sea-level rise buffers.
Figure 1. Typical urban green infrastructure elements around Oakland, CA. Top: Mandela Parkway through West Oakland as an active green median (Wikimedia Commons); Middle: green roof as a productive garden in Garden Village Housing (Urban ReLeaf); Bottom: rendering of newly funded bus-rapid transit line along International Blvd. in East Oakland (Wikimedia Commons).
Unfortunately, the medley of urban greening connotations also mixes with a medley of responsible municipal implementers, styles of implementation, and sustainability goals which, taken together, have created a confusing and often ad-hoc landscape with little overarching coordination or, as I argue, transformative capacity. For example, in my own city of Oakland, California, where I have worked as a planner and a practitioner, the panoply of greening actions are typically operations proceeding in their own silos across more than eight different professional departments: land-use planners focus on incentivizing private-side concentrated smart growth development to mitigate sprawl and incorporate green building or site aspects as a permit condition; the sustainability units (housed in Public Works) manage the carbon-reduction prioritized energy and climate action planning process; the Public Works environmental department oversees city trees and waterways while the Transportation Departments focuses on engineering streets, sidewalks, and bicycle facilities; the Parks Department has urban nature in its purview but is preoccupied with recreation services. Meanwhile, entire other departments and offices deal respectively with culture/arts, resiliency, and equity concerns. Outside of the City, County and regional agencies are responsible for environmental and public health, air pollution, safety and hazard preparedness, and adaptation to sea level rise. Bringing these together is a monumental bureaucratic effort.
Figure 2. Example from the City of Oakland of typical city government silos (yellow circles), their respective “plans” (blue boxes), and actual sustainability policy domains (white boxes). Unfortunately, typical practice keeps these silos—and the overall coordinated planning system—fragmented. Image: David Ralston
In the context of adaptation, sustainability managers may have the broadest climate planning mandate, but only have recommendatory and marginal influence. Land-use planners have formal tools of visioning, and they manage the legally adopted City master plan, but they prioritize the private sector, not public infrastructure or facilities. Public Works has the most implementing authority and funding availability, but as the organization consists predominantly of engineers, it has become pragmatically focused with available standards, value-engineering, and solving immediate problems.
The existing ad hoc conditions unfortunately mean that what little planning does happen is not connected to coordinated or critical-level implementation. Further, while they are exciting, press-worthy, and may even nudge the bar for sustainability higher, a creek restoration, several blocks of protected bike lanes, new recycled water projects, even solar-powered electric car charging stations are actions that remain “boutique pilot projects” in certain areas, which have yet to be integrated or to rise to a critical level of transformation. Other big investments in LEED-certified transit villages and bus rapid transit lines become magnets for new development and thus embroiled in issues of gentrification and affordability that only nominally involve local residents.
Certainly, these are sincere progressive efforts, but the land-use and transportation system still overwhelmingly reverberate with the existing logic of growth. Such initiatives pump millions into improving the function of grey infrastructure, sometimes in the guise of green marketing. In the end, even a functionally resilient city, if it occludes urban nature or caters to the well-off but threatens the culture and livelihoods of working class and other families, is not truly sustainable.
Still, if we seek to be critically strategic in adaptation, we need to: plan how these urban greening approaches integrate (with all departments and areas of adaptation); articulate how they can specifically incorporate mitigation as part of their function; indicate how they directly involve the nature and culture of place; and figure out how they can be comprehensively and equitably applied. Most importantly, as a civic initiative, the best place to start with transformative adaptation is on publically-held lands and facilities.
The energy and capacity for creativity, “ground-truthing,” cultural expression, and championing projects comes from the grassroots, community-based organizations that can support, guide, and hold city planners accountable while also helping to garner outside funding resources. Oakland has clearly demonstrated this energy—a coalition of community-based organizations (Oakland Climate Action Coalition, Rooted In Resilience, Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Unity Council, Oakland Food Policy Council, Urban ReLeaf, Health for Oakland’s People and Environment, West Oakland Environmental Indicators, and East Oakland Building Healthy Communities, among others) along with the leadership of the Merritt community college Environmental Studies Program pushed the City in 2015 to develop a comprehensive urban greening plan that begins to meet the above criteria. What is salient about this grassroots plan is that it features a network of interconnected, watershed-based “greenways” along eight of the city’s creeks that connect neighborhoods, weaving their fabrics together and defining the unique features of the city’s topos. Another critical feature is that the plan calls for local involvement in planning, design, building, stewardship, and ancillary usage.
Figure 3. From visions to plans: Oakland Greenway Network. Top: community-based planning around urban greening led to a vision featuring interconnected, watershed-based “greenways” that could connect neighborhoods together from “hills to the Bay.” Here, working through the fabric of a fully built-out East Oakland, the San Leandro Creek became a model of such greenways. Bottom: ongoing efforts of how and where to insert “urban greening” corridors influenced the development and adoption of the City’s Priority Conservation Area/Urban Greening Plan as part of the City’s region-mandated Sustainable Communities Strategy.Figure 4. Photographs of the future San Leandro Creek Urban Greenway through the East Oakland neighborhoods of Sobrante Park, Columbia Gardens, and Brookfield Village. The planning of this project was supported through a decade of community planning and ongoing collaborative work with partners led by the local community-college (Merritt Environmental Management and Technology Program) working with local residents, schools, churches and community organizations. These groups are working with the State and City to direct climate investment funds to make this a pilot urban greening project.
As a key element of living urban nature, water infrastructure—which is often part of publicly-controlled rights of way or easements—is an ideal place to start adaptation that involves ecological restoration, flood plain management, and resource conservation as well as linear open space, access, gathering spots, gardens, and paths for adjacent residents. These can be interlaced with other urban greening corridors along abandoned rail lines or green streets. Not surprisingly, this green network pattern is concurrently emerging in many places. Cities such as Hamburg in Germany are leading examples of bold, comprehensive planning, and cities large to small across the U.S., such as Detroit, Minneapolis, and Madison, Wisconsin are actively planning and building greenway networks as part of alternate infrastructural forms. Oakland’s newest San Leandro Creek greenway moves towards innovative, design-build implementation as an environmental justice victory; project advocates hopes the San Leandro Creek greenway’s success can also propel the city to the forefront of integrative urban greening planning that encapsulates sustainability, resiliency, health, and equity—and, as such, becomes a living foundation for transformative adaptation.
Oakland Climate Action Coalition: Oakland City Council Greenlights “Equity Checklist;” Adopts OCAC’s PCA Recommendations:http://oaklandclimateaction.org/news/
Ralston, David C. (2016): “Climate Action Planning and Urban Greenways: Weaving Together Sustainability, Health and Resilience” in Greenways and Landscapes of Change – Proceedings of the 5th Fabos Greenways Conference, Budapest: https://sites.google.com/site/fabos2016/publication
Nordhaus, Ted and Michael Shellenberger, 2005: “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World” in Grist: http://grist.org/article/doe-reprint/
A review ofGlobal Street Design Guide. From the Global Designing Cities Initiative.ISBN: 9781610917018. Island Press. 442 pages. Buy the book.
Streets are often the biggest share of publicly-owned land in a city. All too often, they’re conceived and managed only as thoroughfares for motor vehicles. A whole set of standards has been imposed to judge the effectiveness of streets solely on the basis of how many automobiles they can move and how fast. The results, in cities around the world, are streets that are destructive of urban vitality, dangerous to human beings, and detrimental to the environment and economy.
Transportation infrastructure gets designed, built, and operated according to standards and established practice. The Global Street Design Guide, if adopted and applied, would dramatically improve those standards and practices in cities around the world.
The Global Street Design Guide not only challenges the out-moded expectation that cars should dominate a city, but goes so far as to provide new standards and designs that show how a more humane approach to streets can be implemented. It starts as a manifesto about why city streets should be designed differently, then goes into detail about how to actually do it, before concluding with case studies showing how it has actually been done.
A citizen activist in the southeastern United States once said, “We pushed and pushed our city government to create safer streets for people, but they refused and said, ‘We do things by the book.’ ” She went on to say that the activists realized that the book was quite literally a book, developed by highway engineers, with the sole purpose of optimizing streets for automobiles, without consideration of any other priorities. The activists concluded, “We realized that the city was never going to not ‘do things by the book,’ so it dawned on us, rather than asking them to throw the book away, we needed to give them a new book!”
The Global Street Design Guide is that book. Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, it was produced by practitioners in a network of progressive cities on six continents. Their peer practitioners are a crucial audience for the book, but that is not the only audience. Most often, change in urban politics starts with resident activists who are outside the conventional agencies: neighborhood residents concerned about excessive car traffic, health care professionals who recognize the impact that air pollution, traffic violence and sedentary lifestyles have on public health, or business associations who realize that auto-oriented strip development quickly turns to blight and disinvestment. These passionate citizens aren’t transportation experts, but they grasp the fundamental truth that automobile dominance is harming their communities. By reading the introductory sections of the Global Street Design Guide, they will become just expert enough to press their city leaders with the demand that streets be improved. Those city leaders, whether mayors or city council members or finance directors or public works directors, are another important audience for the introductory chapters, which make a compelling case that streets can and should be redesigned in a variety of ways. The well-designed book is refulgent with pictures and attractive drawings that illustrate just how things can be different, with powerful examples from a variety of contexts around the globe.
Once the activists recognize the potential for change, and prevail on municipal leaders to embrace it, the Global Street Design Guide serves its main purpose: as practical direction for the agency staff members who are charged with implementing new approaches. The heart of the book is a well-organized catalog of street typologies for a wide range of uses, with technical guidance on how each feature or technique can be applied. For example, a street with a high-capacity transit corridor will have a different spatial manifestation than a side lane that is more suited for local access. An intersection with abundant retail sites should be designed differently than one near a grade school.
By recognizing the joyful complexity of urban life, as well as the reality that different nations and cultures have different resources and needs, the Guide inevitably debunks the one-size-fits-all street design manuals that originated in the mid-20th century and should now be put in the dustbin of history. The Guide explicitly recognizes societal interests and social priorities beyond the pure movement of cars. Notably, the important role that streets play in handling rainwater and other run-off is given a prominent section, with examples of green infrastructure. The potential for economic development, and streetscapes that attract customers and retail spending, is another example of another feature that the Guide recommends quantifying. All these measures of success—reduced fatalities, cubic meters of rainwater run-off treated, dollar value of economic vitality—are the performance measures that the Guide puts forward as a comprehensive substitute for the old unitary metric of how many cars a street can move and how fast they move. In some cases, that outmoded metric actually needs to be inverted, because volume and speed are in many cases antithetical to the more important goals a particular street should serve.
The Global Street Design Guide is the multi-national cousin of other guides intended more specifically for the U.S. market, produced by that country’s National Association of City Transportation Officials. The series, which has much more of a U.S. domestic focus, includes the Urban Street Design Guide, an Urban Bikeway Design Guide, Second Edition, an Urban Street Stormwater Guide, and a Transit Street Design Guide. (Disclosure: this reviewer was involved in providing philanthropic support for the latter.) This canon of works should be useful in North America, Australia and New Zealand, while the Global Street Design Guide has relevance to those regions but also the rest of the world, at any level of development.
Transportation infrastructure gets designed, built, and operated according to standards and established practice. The Global Street Design Guide, if adopted and applied, will dramatically improve those standards and practices in cities around the world.
[The Right to the City is] the right to change ourselves, by changing the city. —David Harvey, 2008
The cities we have
The cities we have in the world today are far from being places of justice. Whether in the South, the North, the West or the East, the cities we are living in are a clear expression of the increasing inequalities and violence from which our societies suffer, as a direct result of putting capital gains and economic calculations—greed!—before people and nature´s well being, dignity, needs and rights.
Many governments have abandoned their responsibility for any urban-territorial planning, leaving “the market” to freely operate the private appropriation of urban spaces.
The concentration of economic and political power is a phenomenon of exploitation, dispossession, exclusion and discrimination whose spatial dimensions are clearly visible: dual cities of luxury and misery; gentrification processes that displace and evict traditional and low-income populations; millions of empty buildings and millions of people without a decent place to live; campesinos without land and land without campesinos, subjected to abuses by agro-businesses, mining and other extractive industries and large scale projects. In other words, the injustice that emerges from destruction of public and community´s goods and assets, and the weakening of regulation, redistribution and welfare policies in States that instead facilitate private appropriation and accumulation of the commons, the resources and the collectively created wealth.
The conditions and rules currently present in our societies are globally condemning more than half of the world population to live in poverty. The inequalities are increasing both in so-called developed and developing countries. What real opportunities are we giving to young people if, according to the UN, 85 percent of the new jobs at the global level are created in the “informal” economy?
At the same time, the spatial segregation of the social groups, the lack of access to adequate housing and basic urban services and infrastructure, as well as many of the current housing policies in different countries, are creating the material and symbolic conditions for the reproduction of the marginalization and disadvantages of the majorities. Impoverished neighborhoods (“urban slums”) are home of to at least one third of the population in the global South—in most African and some Latin American and South Asian countries it reaches as high as 60 percent or more, including the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Somalia, Benin, Mali, Haiti and Bangladesh. Not having a place to live and not having a recognized address also results in the denial of other economic, social, cultural and political rights (education, health, work, right to vote and participate, among many others). What kind of citizens and democracy are we producing in these divided cities?
It is not news to anyone that, especially during the past 25 years, many governments have abandoned their responsibility for any urban-territorial planning, leaving “the market” to freely operate the private appropriation of urban spaces, almost without any restriction to real-estate speculation and the creation of exponential revenues. It does not require expertise to realize that almost everywhere land prices have grown hundreds of times while minimum wages have remained more or less the same, making adequate housing unaffordable for the vast majority of the population.
The Cities We Want: Right to the City and Social Justice for All
At the occasion of the World Habitat Day commemoration in October 2000, more than 350 delegates of urban social movements, community based women and indigenous people organizations, tenants and cooperative housing federations, and human rights activists from 35 countries around the world got together in the great Mexico Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) over an entire week to exchange concrete experiences and build proposals for more inclusive, democratic, sustainable, productive, educative, safe, healthy and culturally diverse cities.
Under The City We Dream motto, this first World Assembly of Inhabitants produced what would become one of the pillars for the elaboration of the World Charter for the Right to the City, a process developed inside the World Social Forum between 2003 and 2005. For the past decade, that document has inspired several similar debates and other collective documents of the city we want, as the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City (2010), not as simple wishing list but as a clear roadmap on how to achieve it. Many of those are now included in political and legal instruments signed by local and national governments, as well as some international institutions.
Based on that foundation, the Just City for an Urban Century must be based on the six strategic principles of the Right to the City:
Full exercise of human rights in the city
A just city is one in which all persons (regardless of gender, age, economic and legal status, ethnic group, religious or political affiliation, sexual orientation, place in the city, or any other such factor) enjoy and realize all economic, social, cultural, civic and political human rights and fundamental freedoms, through the construction of conditions of individual and collective wellbeing with dignity, equity and social justice.
Although universal as they are, provisions should be taken to prioritize those individuals and communities living under vulnerable conditions and with special needs, such as homeless, people with physical disabilities or mental and chronic health conditions, poor single parents, refugees, migrants, and people living in disaster-prone areas.
As duty holders, national, provincial and local governments must define legal frameworks, public policies and other administrative and judicial measures to respect, protect and guarantee those rights, under the principles of allocating the maximum available resources and non-retrogression, according to human rights commitments as included in international legal instruments.
Cities around the world, like Rosario in Argentina, Graz in Austria, Edmonton in Canada, Nagpur in India, Thies in Senegal and Gwangju in South Korea, among several others, have declared themselves as Human Rights Cities, going beyond specific human rights programs to try to instill a human rights framework in the city daily life and institutions. Of course they face many contradictions and challenges, but they also represent a concrete path for other cities to consider.
The social function of the city, of land and of property
A just city is one that assures that the distribution of territory and the rules governing its use can thereby guarantee equitable use of the goods, services and opportunities that the city offers. In other words, a city in which collectively defined public interest is prioritized, guaranteeing a socially just and environmentally balanced use of the territory.
Planning, legal and fiscal regulations should be put in place with the required social control, in order to avoid speculation and gentrification processes, both in the central areas as well as in peripheral zones. This would include progressive increase of property taxes for underutilized or vacant units/plots; compulsory orders for construction, urbanization and priority land use; plus-value capture; expropriation for creation of special social interest and cultural zones (especially to protect low-income and disadvantaged families and communities); concession of special use for social housing purposes; adverse possession (usucapio) and regularization of self-built neighborhoods (in terms of land tenure and provision of basic services and infrastructure), among many others already available instruments in different cities and countries, like Brazil, Colombia, France and the United States, just to mention a few.
Democratic management of the city
A just city is one in which its inhabitants participate in all decision-making spaces to the highest level of public policy formulation and implementation, as well as in the planning, public budget formulation, and control of urban processes. It refers to the strengthening of institutionalized decision-making (not only citizen consultancy) spaces, from which it is possible to do follow-up, screening, evaluation and reorientation of public policies.
This will include participatory budgeting experiences (being used in more than 3,000 cities around the world, with some important examples like Dominican Republic, Peru and Polonia), neighborhood impact evaluation (especially of social and economic effects of public and private projects and megaprojects, including the participation of the affected communities at every step of the process) and participatory planning (including master plans, territorial and urban development plans, urban mobility plans, etc.).
Several other concrete tools are already being used in many cities, from free and democratic elections, citizen audits, popular/civil society planning and legislative initiatives (including regulations around granting, modification, suspension and revocation of urban license) and recall election and referendums; to neighborhood and community-based commissions, public hearings, roundtables and participatory decision-making councils.
Nevertheless, several countries—specially in the Middle East and the South Asian region—still have strong, centralized, and in many cases non-democratic national governments, that appoint local authorities and hinder more participatory decision-making process to happen.
Democratic production of the city and in the city
A just city is one in which the productive capacity of its inhabitants is recovered and reinforced, in particular that of the low-income and marginalized sectors, fomenting and supporting social production of habitat and the development of social and solidarity economic activities. It concerns the right to produce the city, but also the right to a habitat that is productive for all, in the sense that generates income for the families and communities and strengthen the popular economy, not just the increasingly monopolistic profits of the few.
It is known that in the Global South between half and two thirds of the available living space is the result of people’s own initiatives and efforts, with little, if any, support from governments and other actors. In many cases, these initiatives go against many official barriers. Instead of supporting those popular processes, many current regulations ignore, or even criminalize, people’s individual and collective efforts to obtain a decent place to live.
At present, few countries—namely Uruguay, Brazil and Mexico—have put in place a system of legal, financial and administrative mechanisms in order to fully support what we call the “social production of habitat” (including access to urban land, credits and subsidies, and technical assistance); but even there, the percentage of the budget that goes to the private sector remains above the 90%, for the construction of “social housing” that remains unaffordable for more than half of the population.
Sustainable and responsible management of the commons (natural and energy resources, as well as cultural patrimony and historic heritage) of the city and its surrounding areas
A just city is one whose inhabitants and authorities guarantee a responsible living relationship with the nature, in a way that makes possible a dignified life for all individuals, families and communities, in equality of conditions but without affecting natural areas and ecological reserves, cultural and historic patrimony, other cities or the future generations.
Human life and life in urban settings is only possible if we preserve all forms of life, everywhere. The urban life takes a vast diversity of the resources it needs from outside the formal administrative boundaries of the cities. Metropolitan areas, regions that include smaller towns in the countryside, agricultural and rural areas, and rain forest are all affected by our urban behavior.
There is an urgent need to put in place more strict environmental regulations and use of appropriate technology at an affordable cost, promote aquifer protection and rain-water collection; to prioritize multimodal public and massive transportation systems; to guarantee ecological food production and responsible consumption, notably including reuse, recycling and final disposal; among several other urgent measures.
Democratic and equitable enjoyment of the city
A just city is one that reinforces social coexistence, through the recovery, expansion and improvement of public spaces, and its use for community gathering, leisure, and creativity as well as critical expression of political ideas and positions. In recent years, and especially as a local and spatial consequence of the neoliberal policies, a great part of those spaces that are fundamental in the definition of the urban and community life have not been taken care of, have been abandoned or left in disuse or, worse yet, have been privatized: streets, plazas, parks, forums, multiple-use halls, cultural centers, etc.
Infrastructure and programs to support cultural and recreational initiatives, especially, those that are autonomous and self-managed with strong participation of youth, low-income sectors and minority populations are needed. In short, public policies must guarantee the city as an open space and as an expression of diversity.
* * *
In an urban century, the meaning of justice will necessarily include all the dimensions of social life: political, economic, cultural, spatial (territorial) and environmental. The just city of the new century will be a city in which the decision making processes are not monopolized by few “representatives” and political parties, but are in the hands of the communities and the citizens; the land, the infrastructure, the facilities and the public and private resources are distributed for social use and enjoyment; the city is recognized as a result of the productive contributions of the different actors and the goal of the economic activities is the collective wellbeing; all human rights are respected, protected and guaranteed for everyone; and we conceive ourselves as part of nature, and nature as something sacred that we all should take care of.
In an urban century, the just city would be the result of, and at the same time the condition for, a just society on a healthy planet.
In theory, “La Ferme du Rail” represents a model of sustainable economy and social solidarity linked to the interdependence between project stakeholders and residents. It relies on the skills of each, which are known to reinforce each other, for the benefit of the neighborhood.
Prior to the two, back-to-back major international conferences, 
A citizen activist in the southeastern United States once said, “We pushed and pushed our city government to create safer streets for people, but they refused and said, ‘We do things by the book.’ ” She went on to say that the activists realized that the book was quite literally a book, developed by highway engineers, with the sole purpose of optimizing streets for automobiles, without consideration of any other priorities. The activists concluded, “We realized that the city was never going to not ‘do things by the book,’ so it dawned on us, rather than asking them to throw the book away, we needed to give them a new book!”
, an 
, an 
, and a 
. (Disclosure: this reviewer was involved in providing philanthropic support for the latter.) This canon of works should be useful in North America, Australia and New Zealand, while the Global Street Design Guide has relevance to those regions but also the rest of the world, at any level of development.
2 Comments
Join our conversation