Grz for tokyo city univ guest lecture

Presentation given Nov 30, 2012

Tokyo City University
in the
Faculty of Environmental and Information Studies

Yokohama, Japan

Community-based Ecological Restoration to Enhance
Resilience and Transitions Toward Peace

Keith G. Tidball, PhD
kgtidball@cornell.edu
www.civicecology.org

What does this…

…have to do with this ?

Why do humans turn to nature, and
restoring nature, in the wake of conflict
and disaster?
Of what use might greening in human
vulnerability and security contexts be in
managing social-ecological systems for
resilience and transitions to peace?

HUMAN VULNERABILITY & SECURITY CONTEXTS ….

+ +
Population growth Climate Change Resource scarcity

ROAD MAP FOR TODAY

• Definitions, Context, & Study Site
• Research Question in the form of Retroductive
Hypothesis/Model
• Framing
• Initial Models
• Mining for Mechanisms (results)
• What Does It All Mean?
• Broader Context & Application

What is a red zone?
“Red Zones” refer to multiple settings (spatial and temporal)
that may be characterized as intense, potentially or recently
hostile or dangerous, including those associated with terrorist
attacks and war, as well as in post-disaster situations caused by
natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes.

What is greening?
• “Greening” is an active and integrated approach to the appreciation,
stewardship and management of living elements of social-ecological systems.

• Greening takes place in cities, towns, townships and informal settlements in
urban and peri-urban areas, and in the battlefields of war and of disaster.

• Greening sites vary -- from small woodlands, public and private urban parks
and gardens, urban natural areas, street tree and city square plantings,
botanical gardens and cemeteries, to watersheds, whole forests and national
or international parks.

• Greening involves active participation with nature and in human or civil
society (Tidball and Krasny 2007)—and thus can be distinguished from notions of
‘nature contact’ (Ulrich 1993) that imply spending time in or viewing nature, but
not necessarily active stewardship.

Some examples
Restoration of Iraq’s wetlands, supported by community-based natural resources
management among Iraq’s Marsh Arabs & partnerships with the scientific community

Replanting of the Urban Forest of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Living Memorials creation throughout
NYC, Washington D.C. , and Shanksville,
PA after 9/11

Establishment of Band-e- Amir National
Park in the midst of conflict in
Afghanistan

Conservation efforts in demilitarized
border lands in the Korean peninsula and
between Greece and Cyprus

Evidence of the importance of greening

scientific journal articles
scholarly books
popular press and news media
public initiatives
websites
blogs

RED ZONE-- HURRICANE KATRINA &
THE NEW ORLEANS SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEM

Image by NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES.

Context - Study Site

A FOREST OF SYMBOLS


LAND COVER & CANOPY IMPLICATIONS

Wang & Qu, 2009. Assessment of post-hurricane forest damage using
optical remote sensing. Spie. http://spie.org/x35463.xml

Chambers, J. Q., J. I. Fisher, et al. (2007). "Hurricane Katrina‟s
Carbon Footprint on U.S. Gulf Coast Forests." Science 318: 1107.


NEW ORLEANS CANOPY LOSS

AVG
-1.8
Photo of New Orleans after Katrina - NOAA

Nowak, D. J. and E. J. Greenfield (2012). "Tree and impervious cover change in U.S.
cities." Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 11(1): 21-30.


“A FAILURE OF RESILIENCE” AND OTHER
(PREMATURE?) EPITAPHS

“All Coherence Gone: New Orleans as
a Resilience Failure” (R. Westrum, 2006)


RETRODUCTIVE RESEARCH QUESTION

• General- If greening is happening in red zones, what could the
model and theory be that might explain greening‟s occurrence ?

• Specific- If, despite the dominant discourse
of a failed city, tree planting is spreading
throughout the city of New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina, what models, built of
mechanisms, can explain this phenomena?

Research Question

WHAT FRAME?

The purpose of scientific activity no longer
stands out as a statistical putting together of
surface phenomena in an observed reality.
(Sayer)

The important thing … becomes to conceive
this reality as an expression for, or a sign of,
(Bhaskar 1979)

deeper-lying processes.
(Harré & others)
)
Alvesson (2000)

Harré, 1986. Varieties of Realism: A rationale for the Natural Sciences. Oxford, Basil Blackwell
Bhaskar, 1989. Reclaiming Reality. London and New York: Verso.
Bausch, 2001. The Emerging Consensus in Social Systems Theory. New York: Plenum.
Bhaskar, 1979. The Possibility of Naturalism. Brighton, UK: Harvester.
Framing

A LITTLE MORE ON RETRODUCTIVE MODELS…
• Models are built of mechanisms such that, if they were to exist and act in the
postulated way, they would explain the phenomenon being examined .

• Underlying mechanisms can only be known by constructing ideas (models)
about them; and models reveal the underlying mechanisms of reality.

• Emphasizes tendencies of things to occur, as opposed to regular patterns of
events.

Framing

METHODS – A MIXED MODELS APPROACH (Tashakkori and Teddlie 2003)

Track 1 Track 2 Track 3
Greening Orgs Trees & Recovery Tree PLANTING & Recovery

Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3 Phase 4 Phase 5

Exploratory Participant GIS Canopy and
In-depth In-Depth Exploratory In-Depth
GIS Mapping observation tree Focus group Surface area
interviews (5) interviews (30) interviews (30) interviews (30) interviews (25)
planting analysis

Document Participant
Photo Essay (5) Photo Essay (5)
analysis Observation

Retroductive modeling: via multiple literature and theory synthesis

Iterative methods and data “mash-up” – difference between ”field data” & “experimental data”

Ethnographic qualitative methods

GIS quantitative methods

What models, built of mechanisms, can explain Greening in Red Zones?

ROAD MAP FOR TODAY

 Definitions, Context, & Study Site
 Research Question in the form of Retroductive
Hypothesis/Model
 Framing
• Initial Models
• Mining for Mechanisms
• Approaches & Findings

Begin action to enhance,
restore natural assets, which
recovers symbols, rituals and Catalyzes ??
sense of place

Recognize in natural assets (trees) a place to start
anew, to move beyond loss, grief , helplessness

Experience loss, grief,
helplessness and turn to nature in
form of trees for solace

Initial models

SECOND MODEL… A SEARCH FOR
MECHANISMS

Tidball, KG & ME Krasny. 2008. “Raising Urban Resilience: Community Forestry and Greening in Urban
Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Contexts.” Paper presentation at meetings of the Resilience Alliance,
“Resilience 2008,” Stockholm, Sweden: April.

Initial models

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS…

What Initiates?

Repeat &
What kind? Expand?

How much?

Initial models

WHAT MIGHT INITIATE GREENING?
Urgent Biophilia Tidball, KG. 2012. Urgent Biophilia: Human-Nature Interactions and Biological
Attractions in Disaster Resilience. Ecology and Society, 17(2).
PD*
Restorative Topophilia Tidball, KG & RC Stedman. Positive Dependency and Virtuous Cycles: From
Resource Dependence to Resilience in Urban Social-Ecological Systems.
Ecological Economics. Doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.10.004

Memorialization Tidball, KG, ME Krasny, E Svendsen, L Campbell, & K Helphand. 2010.

Mechanism 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.

Social-Ecological Tidball, KG (Accepted; expected 2013). Trees and Rebirth: Social-Ecological
Symbols, Rituals and Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans. In: Tidball and

Symbols and Rituals Krasny, Eds., Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience, and Community
Greening. Springer publishing.

*Positive Dependency complex
What
Initiates?

Mining for Mechanisms

MECHANISM 1 = URGENT BIOPHILIA
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
(Holling and Gunderson 2002)

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

MECHANISM 2 = 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. Submitted to: Ecological Economics.

MECHANISM 3 = MEMORIALIZATION
• 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

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.


MECHANISM 4 = SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYMBOLS
& RITUALS
http://candychang.com/sexy-trees-of-the-marigny-2011-calendar/

Tidball, KG (Accepted; expected 2012). 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.


& RITUALS II

N = 34

& RITUALS III

N = 36

HOW DOES THE CYCLE REPEAT & EXPAND?

Desired system
Virtuous cycle
Undesired system
Vicious cycle

barriers
to change
(bifurcation zone
or ridge)

potential for action potential for actions
perpetuating virtuous cycle perpetuating vicious cycles

Repeat &
Expand?


“GREENING” VIRTUOUS CYCLE MECHANISM
4. Ecosystem services
3. Natural
capital

“VIRTUOUS”
Feedback “primes”
virtuous cycle to
repeat and expand

2. Individual &
family well-being

1. Greening activities
commence

Repeat &
Expand?


RED ZONE VICIOUS CYCLE

Feedback “primes”
cycle to repeat and
expand

5. Depletion of social
capital

4. Loss of
1. Red Zone community ecosystems
services
“VICIOUS”

2. Rioting, looting, etc. undermine
individual and family well-being 3. Natural capital
Repeat & eroded
Expand?


QUANTIFYING TREE PLANTING EFFORTS

How much?


ROAD MAP FOR TODAY

 Definitions, Context, & Study Site
 Research Question in the form of Retroductive
Hypothesis/Model
 Framing
 Initial Models
 Mining for Mechanisms
• What Does It All Mean?

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

FINDING 1 -- There appears to be a
“greening in the red zone process or cycle”
that contains fundamental key sequential
components, but that likely is nuanced on
a case-by-case basis reflecting landscape,
disturbance intensity, and other factors .

1, Individuals gravitate toward available green assets
2. Use available green assets 3. Clusters form-
for therapeutic benefits- different paths/pace
communities of practice

4. Restore and create new green assets

5. Larger greening movement
emerges

7. New sites recruit new
individuals; expand cycle

6. Greening activities
Social-ecological system
recover & restore sense of
recovery & resilience processes
place

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
FINDING 2 -- Within this “greening in the red zone process”
there are at least five important mechanisms that explain
how the system functions from one sequential frame to the
next:
• Urgent Biophilia
Positive Dependency
• Restorative Topophilia
• Memorialization
• Symbol & Ritualization
• Expansive Virtuous Cycles

2. Use available green
1, Individuals gravitate toward available green assets
assets; experience 3. Clusters form-
for therapeutic benefits- different paths/pace
therapeutic benefits communities of practice

4. Restore and create new green assets

5. Larger greening movement
emerges

Memorialization SES Symbols &
Red zone commences Urgent Biophilia mechanism Rituals mechanism
mechanism
Virtuous Cycle
Restorative Topophilia mechanism
mechanism

Social-ecological system 6. Greening activities
recovery & resilience processes recover & restore sense of
place

IMPLICATIONS & APPLICATIONS
Are there examples of this besides the New Orleans case?

Application for DNR? How do we go about “…maximizing
biodiversity, enhancing and sustaining ecosystems, mitigating
climate change, and managing natural resources in partnership
Big picturegroups, state agencies, and national and international
with local issues
• environmental organizations...” in ephemeral,how can it be remembered and recovered ?
Humans have lost their ecological identity; perturbed social-
ecologicalOpotow, 2003;like red zones?
(Clayton &
systems Clayton 2003)

• Are there clues about how we might recover
our ecological identity in the way humans respond
Thelarge scale disasters? zone model
to
greening in the red
and mechanisms may be a beginning …

• How should we value community-based ecological
“…humans may be heavy hitters, but we must
restoration in human vulnerability and security remember that nature bats last.” David Suzuki
contexts?

CONCLUSIONS
Things to walk away with:
• Possible utility of methodology that is pragmatic and well-suited for coupled
biophysical/social research
• A greening in the red zone process or cycle model
• contains fundamental key sequential components
• nuanced on a case-by-case basis reflecting landscape, disturbance intensity,
and other factors
• Five greening in the red zone mechanisms

Thank you!

Ontological Assumptions Part I
A Realist orientation…

1. The world is 2. Things exist, act
real, independent independently of
of us. our descriptions.

3. Reality concept-
4. Descriptions =
dependent, not
world of ideas
concept-
(transitive).
determined.

5. Objects = world
of reality & nature
(intransitive).

Often, researchers conflate descriptions with objects.

Ontology

The ultimate objects of social scientific enquiry exist and act independently of social scientists
and their activity. (Bhaskar 1989)

Social reality is viewed as a socially
constructed world, a result of:

Empirical
• social actors‟ cognitive resources
(i.e., the social has to be interpreted
and understood)

• material but unobservable structures
of relations

Actual

Real

Epistemology – Critical realism

TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE
• We must distinguish between intransitive structures and mechanisms and transitive
concepts, theories and laws that are designed to describe the former.

Transitive = changing dimensions of scientific experience such as different historical
conceptions of the world

or

Ptolemy‟s planetary motion Copernicus‟ planetary motion


TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE CONT.

Intransitive = causal mechanisms science seeks to discover and which exist in themselves
regardless of whether or not humans exist.

If the atomic model of oxygen is correct and
oxygen does indeed have six electrons in its outer
orbit and two electrons in its inner orbit, this is
an ontological feature of oxygen atoms that
is intransitive to our various theories and
conceptions (the transitive) of oxygen. That is,
according to Bhaskar, oxygen possesses these
properties in itself, not merely for us, and these
properties act and do their thing regardless of
whether anyone knows it. Science is the search for
these mechanisms, and requires a practice in
order that they might be revealed or discovered.


As adapted from Holling and Gunderson (2002), a stylized depiction of the four ecosystem functions ( r, K, Ω, α) and the
flow of events among them. Arrows show flow speed in the cycle; closely spaced arrows represent slow change and long
arrows represent rapid change. The cycle reflects change in two properties (1) the Y axis is potential inherent in
accumulated resources; (2) the X axis is the degree of connected among controlling variables. The transition from the K
phase to the Ω phase is depicted here as „The Red Zone.‟ Expression of biophilia is also represented, corresponding to the
Y axis and potential. Low connectedness is associated with loosely connected elements whose behavior is dominated by
external relations and variability. High connectedness is associated with elements whose behavior is dominated by internal
relations that control or mediate external variability. The „back loop,‟ in green, represents the stage during which urgent
biophilia is likely expressed. The exit from the cycle at the left of the figure suggests the stage where the potential can leak
away and where a „flip‟ into a less organized and desirable system is likely.

WHAT FRAME?

(Sayer)

(Bhaskar 1979))

(Harré & others)
)

Harré, 1986. Varieties of Realism: A rationale for the Natural Sciences. Oxford, Basil Blackwell
Bhaskar, 1989. Reclaiming Reality. London and New York: Verso.
Bausch, 2001. The Emerging Consensus in Social Systems Theory. New York: Plenum.
Bhaskar, 1979. The Possibility of Naturalism. Brighton, UK: Harvester.
Framing

SO, WHY RETRODUCTIVE?

Inductive Deductive

Retroductive

WHAT‟S THIS ABOUT?

Big picture issues
• Humans have lost their ecological identity; how can it be remembered and recovered ?
(Clayton & Opotow, 2003; Clayton 2003)

• Are there clues about how we might recover
our ecological identity in the way humans respond
to large scale disasters?

• How should we value community-based ecological
restoration in human vulnerability and security “…humans may be heavy hitters, but we must
remember that nature bats last.” David Suzuki
contexts?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/01-9

Context

INITIAL MODELS… IMAGINING MECHANISMS

“…there will be social mechanisms behind management
practices based on local ecological knowledge, as evidence
of a co-evolutionary relationship between local institutions
and the ecosystem in which they are located.” Berkes &
Folke 1998

NOT GARDENS …


CRITICAL REALIST NUANCES AMONG “NATURAL” & SOCIAL WORLDS

1. Social structures 2. Social products
can‟t exist w/o less enduring than
natural world natural structures

Environmental Cosmic
3. Social structuresSocial
Ecology
Ecology 4. Social systems Ecology
not independent of
Personal Ecology
more open than
social actors
physical systems
conceptions

5. Yet, social actors
able to act upon and &
Gunderson

transform physical 2002
Holling
Wimberley 2009
systems
Panarchies
Nested Ecologies Framing

One Community
Three points of
of Practice
analysis

Trees
Trees
(Domain of Knowledge )

Tree Planting Tree Planters
Tree Planting Tree Planters
(Practice) (Community)

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). "Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System." Systems Thinker , June.
Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009) 'Communities of practice', The Encyclopedia of Informal Education, www.infed.org/biblio/communities_of_practice.htm.
Daniel, Schwier et al. (2003) “Social Capital in virtual learning communities and distributed communities of practice.” Canadian Journal of Learning & Technology 29(3):113-139.

GIS ANALYSIS – CANOPY

How much?


GIS ANALYSIS – SURFACE AREA

How much?


Grz for tokyo city univ guest lecture

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