Nature and Green Spaces: Sources, Sites, and Systems

of Resilience

&other Re-Words Keith G. Tidball, Cornell University

Re-words = second chances reabsorb reaccede reaccelerate reaccent reaccept reaccession reacclimatize reaccredit reaccuse reacquaint reacquire react reactivate readapt readdress readjust readmission readopt readorn reaffirm reaffix reafforest reaggregate realign reallocate reanalyze reanimate reannex reanoint reappear reapply reappoint reapportion reappraise reappropriate reapprove reargue rearrange rearticulate reascend reassemble reassert reassess reassign reassure reattach reattempt reattribute reauthorize reavail reavow reawake rebalance rebirth reblend rebloom reboard rebook reboot rebound rebred rebuff rebuild rebuke rebury rebut rebutton rebuy recalculate recalibrate recall recant recap recast receive recertify recharge recheck reciprocate recirculate reclaim reclassify reclean recline recode recognize recolonize recolor recombine recommence recommission recommit recompile recompose recompute reconceive reconcile recondense reconfigure reconnect reconsecrate reconsider reconsolidate reconstitute reconstruct recontour reconvey reconvince recook recopy recork recoup recover recreate recross recrown recultivate recycle redecorate rededicate redeem redefine redeploy redevelop redigest redirect redistill reeducate reelect reembody reemerge reemphasize reenact reenergize reengineered reenlist reenroll reenter reestablish revaluate reexamine reexperience reexplore reexpose reface refasten refill refinance refinish refit reflect reflex refocus reforest reform …

Remembering a Relationship

Given the challenges facing society and our planet…

…remembering and recovering our individual and collective ecological identity is of the utmost urgency…

However hopeless this endeavor feels in daily life, it is when we are faced with calamity that our withering ecological identity suddenly flushes and blooms…

Human-Nature Interactions in Crisis Contexts…

Greening in the Red ZoneGreening in the Red Zone --

• creation and access to green spaces confers resilience and recovery in systems disrupted by violent conflict or disaster.

• provides evidence for this assertion through cases and examples.

• a variety of research and policy frameworks to explore how creation and access to green spaces in extreme situations might contribute to resistance, recovery, and resilience of social-ecological systems.

Road Map for Today

Concepts & Constructs• Biophilia / Urgent biophilia• Restorative Topophilia• Memorialization mechanisms• Social-ecological symbols and

rituals • Discourses of defiance

CasesConclusions

Concepts and Questions

What processes or mechanisms might explain the phenomena of Greening in the Red Zone– why do people turn to Nature and Green Spaces as Sources, Sites, and Systems of Resilience and other Re-Words?

Biophilia?… we are human in good part because of the

particular way we affiliate with other organisms (p. 129).

Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms (p.31).

Proliferation

Wilson-Biophilia

Frumkin- Human Health

Kellert-Design

Tidball-SES Resilience

& Human Security

Hort Therapy

There are many examples of people, stunned by a crisis, benefitting from the therapeutic qualities of nature contact to ease trauma and to aid the process of recovery. (Miavitz 1998; Hewson 2001)

• benefits of horticulture therapy (Markee and Janick 1979; PeoplePlantCouncil 1993; Relf and Dorn 1995; Relf 2005)

– among returning war veterans (Brdanovic 2009)

– in refugee contexts – and in prisons

Restorative Environments

• Frumkin (2001) and Hartig (2007) traced human-nature relationships contributing to human health to the ancient Greeks, to the New England transcendentalists, and through the American landscape designers Andrew Jackson Downing (1869) and Frederick Law Olmsted (1865) (Nash 1982; McLuhan 1994; Murphy, Gifford et al. 1998; Mazel 2000).

• To see or actively experience plants and green spaces can: reduce domestic violence, quicken healing times, reduce stress, improve physical health, and bring about cognitive and psychological benefits in individuals and populations as a whole (Ulrich 1984; Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Hartig, Mang et al. 1991; Sullivan and Kuo 1996; Taylor, Wiley et al. 1998; Wells 2000; Hartig, Mang et al. 1991).

• The study of restorative environments complements research on the conditions in which our functional resources and capabilities diminish, such as red zones.

Systemic Therapies

What might gardening, tree planting, or other greening activities contribute to post-catastrophe individual or SES resilience?

Moving toward an ‘ecological’ approach, the field of systemic therapies contributes alternative approaches to healing.

Address the environment not merely as a setting but as a partner in the process (Berger and McLeod 2006).

Systems Within Systems Facilitate Human Resilience

• Communication• Transportation• Manufacturing

• Hydrological Cycle• Carbon Cycle• Nitrogen Cycle

What IS Urgent Biophilia?• Attraction humans have for the rest of nature (and the rest of

nature for us?)• Process of remembering that attraction • Urge to express it through creation of restorative

environments• restore or increase ecological function• confer resilience across multiple scales

Based on Biological Attraction Principle (Agnati et al. 2009)

Analogous to Newton’s Law of Gravitation

Biological activities, processes, or patterns are all deemed to be mutually attractive

Biological attractive force is intrinsic to living organisms and manifests itself through the propensity of any living organism to act

Road Map for Today

Concepts & Constructs Biophilia / Urgent biophilia• Restorative Topophilia• Memorialization Mechanisms• Social-ecological symbols and

rituals • Discourses of defiance

CasesConclusions

Restorative Topophilia

• Topophilia = love of place (Tuan, 1974,1975,1977)

• Emphasizes attachment to place and the symbolic meanings that underlie this attachment

• Base for individual and collective action that repair and/or enhance valued attributes of place

• Not only attachment, but also on meanings (Stedman, 2003,2008)

• Urgent biophilia & restorative topophilia together comprise “positive dependency”

• Positive dependency is resource dependence that enhances resilience, rather than eroding it

Tidball, KG & RC Stedman. Positive Dependency and Virtuous Cycles: From Resource Dependence to Resilience in Urban Social-Ecological Systems. Ecological Economics 86(0) 292-299..

Memorialization Mechanism• spontaneous and collective memorialization of lost ones through

gardening and tree planting• community of practice emerges to act upon and apply these

memories to social learning about greening practices• confers SES resilience, through contributing to psychological–social

resistance and resilience and to ecosystem goods and services production

Memorialization Mechanism• spontaneous and collective memorialization of lost ones through

gardening and tree planting• community of practice emerges to act upon and apply these

memories to social learning about greening practices• confers SES resilience, through contributing to psychological–social

resistance and resilience and to ecosystem goods and services production

Social-ecological symbols & Ritualshttp://candychang.com/sexy-trees-of-the-marigny-2011-calendar/

Tidball, KG (2013). Trees and Rebirth: Social-Ecological Symbols, Rituals and Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans. In: Tidball and Krasny, Eds., Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience, and Community Greening. Springer publishing.

Social-ecological symbols & Rituals II

N = 34Mining for Mechanisms

Social-ecological symbols & Rituals III

Discourses of DefianceWhat I realized…doing this is that you don’t plant trees where there’s no hope for a better future… if there’s no hope for a future you’re not going to put a tree there. What would be the point? …so if we’re not going to be around to see it, then why, why would we plant it? – Tree planting resident of New Orleans

what Might initiate greening?

Urgent Biophilia

Restorative Topophilia

MemorializationMechanism

Social-Ecological Symbols and Rituals

Discourses of Defiance

Tidball, KG. 2012. Urgent Biophilia: Human-Nature Interactions and Biological Attractions in Disaster Resilience. Accepted at: Ecology and Society.

Tidball, KG & RC Stedman. Positive Dependency and Virtuous Cycles: From Resource Dependence to Resilience in Urban Social-Ecological Systems. Submitted to: Ecological Economics .

Tidball, KG, ME Krasny, E Svendsen, L Campbell, & K Helphand. 2010. Stewardship, Learning, and Memory in Disaster Resilience. “Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: the Role of Learning and Education,” Special Issue of Environmental Education Research, 16(5): 341-357.

Tidball, KG (2013). Trees and Rebirth: Social-Ecological Symbols, Rituals and Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans. In: Tidball and Krasny, Eds., Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience, and Community Greening. Springer publishing.

Tidball, KG, Svendsen, E, Campbell, L, Falxa-raymond, N. (in preparation). Landscapes of Resilience and Discourses of Defiance: Greening as Recovery in Joplin and New York City.

Mec

hani

sms

PD*

*Positive Dependency complex

Road Map for Today

Concepts & Constructs Biophilia / Urgent biophilia Restorative Topophilia Memorialization Mechanisms Social-ecological symbols and

rituals Discourses of Defiance

CasesConclusions

G3– The Green Complex

Greening(G1)

Green(ed) space(G3)

Greeners(G2)

Cases- Joplin, MOLandscapes of Resilience

Cases- Detroit, MI

Cases- Tohoku Japan

Cases- Returning Warriors

Cases in Greening in the Red ZoneLOCATION RED ZONE TYPE

Afghanistan Ongoing wars in the Middle East

Berlin, Germany Post-Cold War divisions

Charleston, South Carolina 1989 Hurricane Hugo

Cameroon and Chad Mid 2000’s civil unrest in Central Africa

Cyprus Demarcation between Greek and Turkish Cyprus

Europe 1940’s WW II Nazi internment camps

Guatemala Ongoing post-conflict insecurity

Iraq Ongoing wars in the Middle East

Johannesburg, South Africa Early 2000’s Soweto, Post-Apartheid violence

Kenya Early 2000’s Resource scarcity conflict

Liberia 1989- 2003 civil war

Madagascar Costal vulnerability

New Orleans, USA 2005 Hurricane Katrina

New York City, USA 2001 September 11th terrorist attacks

Rotterdam, Netherlands Ongoing urban insecurity

Port-au-Prince, Haiti 2010 earthquake

Russia Post-Soviet Cold War urban insecurity

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1996 conflict

South Korea Demilitarized Zone

South Korea 2002 Typhoon and coastal vulnerability

Stockholm, Sweden Urban insecurity in times of war

Tokyo and Hiroshima, Japan WW II bombings

United States WW II involvement

United States Violence and prison populations

Conclusions

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

― Albert Einstein

For more information…

www.civicecology.org

Thank you!

greeningintheredzone.blogspot.com