Keith G. Tidball

Stewardship, learning, and memory in disaster resilience

In this contribution, we propose and explore the following hypothesis: civic ecology practices, including urban community forestry, community gardening, and other self‐organized forms of stewardship of green spaces in cities, are manifestations of how memories of the role of greening in healing can be instrumentalized through social learning to foster social–ecological system (SES) resilience following crisis and disaster. Further, we propose that civic ecology communities of practice within and across cities help to leverage these memories into effective practices, and that these communities of practice serve as urban iterations of the collaborative and adaptive management practices that play a role in SES resilience in more rural settings. We present two urban examples to build support for this hypothesis: the Living Memorials Project in post‐9/11 New York City, and community forestry in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. These cases demonstrate what we refer to as a memorialization mechanism that leads to feedbacks critical to SES resilience. The process begins immediately after a crisis, when a spontaneous and collective memorialization of lost ones through gardening and tree planting ensues, following which a community of practice emerges to act upon and apply these memories to social learning about greening practices. This in turn may lead to new kinds of learning, including about collective efficacy and ecosystem services production, through a kind of feedback between remembering, learning, and enhancing individual, social, and environmental well‐being. This process, in the case of greening in cities, may confer SES resilience, through contributing to both psychological–social resistance and resilience and ecosystem benefits.

Civic ecology: a pathway for Earth Stewardship in cities

In an increasingly urban society, city residents are finding innovative ways of stewarding nature that integrate environmental, community, and individual outcomes. These urban civic ecology practices – including community gardening, shellfish reintroductions, tree planting and care, and “friends of parks” initiatives to remove invasive and restore native species – generally begin as small, self-organized efforts after a prolonged period of economic and environmental decline or more sudden major disruptions, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and conflict. Those practices that are sustained expand to encompass partnerships with non-profit organizations; local-, state-, and federal-level government agencies; and universities. Civic ecology practices reflect local cultures and environments as well as the practical knowledge of city residents, and thus vary widely across different cities. When viewed as local assets in some of the most densely populated urban neighborhoods, civic ecology practices offer opportu...

Applying a Resilience Systems Framework to Urban Environmental Education.

A growing body of literature on community gardening, watershed restoration, and similar ‘civic ecology’ practices suggests avenues for integrating social and ecological outcomes in urban natural resources management. In this paper, we argue that an environmental education programme in which learning is situated in civic ecology practices also has the potential to address both community and environmental goals. Further, we suggest that civic ecology practices and related environmental education programmes may foster resilience in urban social‐ecological systems, through enhancing biological diversity and ecosystem services, and through incorporating diverse forms of knowledge and participatory processes in resource management. By proposing interrelationships among natural resources management, environmental education, and social‐ecological systems, we hope to open up discussion of a research agenda focusing on the role of environmental education in systems processes and resilience.

Education and Resilience: Social and Situated Learning among University and Secondary Students

Similar to research on social learning among adult participants in natural resources management, current research in the field of education claims that learning is situated in real-world practice, and occurs through recursive interactions between individual learners and their social and biophysical environment. In this article, we present an overview of the social and situated learning literatures from the fields of natural resources and education, and suggest ways in which educational programs for secondary and university students might be embedded in and contribute to efforts to enhance resilience of social- ecological systems at the local scale. We also describe three initiatives in which learning is situated in adaptive co-management and civic ecology practices: a university graduate experiential learning course in Sweden, a pre-college environmental education program in the USA, and a university undergraduate service-learning class in the USA. Through integrating the social learning and adaptive management literature with the literature focusing on youth learning situated in authentic practice, we hope to: (1) suggest commonalities among systems views of learning and social-ecological systems perspectives on resilience, and (2) expand our thinking about educational practice from being a means to convey content matter to becoming a critical component of social-ecological systems and resilience.

Agricultural Knowledge in Urban and Resettled Communities: Applications to Social-Ecological Resilience and Environmental Education.

In light of globalising trends toward urbanisation and resettlement, we explore how agricultural knowledges may be adapted and applied among relocated people. Although indigenous and related forms of practice‐based knowledge may be temporarily lost as people adopt commercial agricultural practices and switch to non‐agricultural livelihoods, they are capable of resurfacing when contingent opportunities arise. This contribution to the collection draws upon case studies of recollection and application of agricultural knowledge as revealed in narratives from immigrant gardeners in New York, USA, and relocated farmers in Sebakwe, Zimbabwe. In these narratives, the communities draw upon their reserves of knowledge to respond to changes within their local environments. Such knowledge can serve as a source of community resilience through enabling people to sustain their livelihoods and community well‐being, and thus adapt to environmental changes and displacement. We also explore possibilities for applications of such knowledge in environmental education.

Toward an ecology of environmental education and learning

Environmental education traditionally has focused on changing individual knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Concern about environmental educations lack of effectiveness in instilling an understanding of humans role within ecosystems has led us to an exploration of the relationship of learning and education to the larger social-ecological systems in which they are embedded. We draw from socio-cultural learning theory and from frameworks developed by long-term ecological research, hierarchy theory, and social-ecological systems resilience to suggest an “ecology of learning” and an “ecology of environmental education.” In so doing, we hope to open up new research and practices that consider possibilities for environmental education to act in consort with other initiatives, such as local stewardship efforts, to foster social capital, ecosystem services, and other attributes of resilient social-ecological systems.

Stewardship of the Biosphere in the Urban Era

We are entering a new urban era in which the ecology of the planet as a whole is increasingly influenced by human activities (Ellis 2011; Steffen et al. 2011a, b; Folke et al. 2011). Cities have become a central nexus of the relationship between people and nature, both as crucial centres of demand of ecosystem services, and as sources of environmental impacts. Approximately 60 % of the urban land present in 2030 is forecast to be built in the period 2000–2030 (Chap. 21). Urbanization therefore presents challenges but also opportunities. In the next two to three decades, we have unprecedented chances to vastly improve global sustainability through designing systems for increased resource efficiency, as well as through exploring how cities can be responsible stewards of biodiversity and ecosystem services, both within and beyond city boundaries.

Resilience in learning systems : case studies in university education

In this paper, we address the challenge of translating the concept of resilience into effective educational strategies. Three different cognitive dimensions (ontological, epistemological and axiological) that underpin assumptions held about the nature of nature, the nature of knowing and the nature of human nature are identified. Four case studies from higher education in the USA, The Netherlands, Sweden and the UK are presented, which illustrate how learners can be encouraged to confront their ontological, epistemic and axiological positions and appreciate the positions of others. The cases all emphasize experience as the source of learning and explore how learning experiences can be designed to facilitate transformations at the individual level that might foster resilience at the social–ecological system levels. We argue that the epistemic dimension deserves greater attention among educators and that epistemic development is crucial for those working with social–ecological systems as a foundation for building resilience.

Applying the Environment Shaping Methodology: Conceptual and Practical Challenges

In 2007 the authors presented a view of planning to confront the challenges for post-conflict and developing environments called Environment Shaping. In 2008, under contract to the US Army Corp of Engineers, the authors and their colleagues set about advancing the Environment Shaping concept into a detailed but practicable systems-based methodology and process for ‘real world’ planners in a project called Stake-Holder Asset-Based Planning Environment, or SHAPE. This article describes research and development efforts that traversed three primary avenues, each concerning different aspects of creating a workable process. First, it documents how the need to define what is meant by ‘system’ in post-conflict and development contexts requires identifying key descriptive characteristics and behaviors of the place of interest. To do so it relies on concepts from wicked problems, systems-of-systems approaches, and the authors’ own social-ecological systems perspective. Secondly, the authors discovered that one consequence of defining the environment in systems terms is the need for tools in the form of a systems-based criterion by which to understand and craft solutions consistent with the earlier re-characterization. A resilience approach featuring a social-ecological systems perspective provides the basis for just such tools, and enables planners to harness the dynamism and change inherent in post-conflict and developing environments. Thirdly, adapting the original Environment Shaping systems concepts to a usable business process required delving deeply into each component of Environment Shaping, demanding answers to questions such as ‘what does participation mean?’ Lastly, the authors take a step back and contrast the Environment Shaping view of post-conflict and developing world challenges to contrast their approach with the status quo, and document practical lessons learned from their experiences applying systems planning approaches like Environment Shaping from within the US government itself.

Nature Engagement to Foster Resilience in Military Communities

Stress associated with overseas military service is a major concern for soldiers, their families, and communities. Whereas actual deployment is the most obvious disruption, pre-deployment (preparing to go overseas) and post-deployment (re-integration into family and community) also cause significant stress. Several authors have suggested that when considering interventions to ease military service related stress, it is critical to take into account not only the individual as a ‘client’ but also how military families are embedded in larger communities, and how interventions can build on existing informal and social networks and other community assets. Although largely absent from the research literature focusing on individual therapy and on community capacity in military communities, individual veterans, conservation organizations, and government agencies across the US and in the UK are initiating projects that connect returning soldiers to nature, through gardening, farming, job skills, hunting, fishing, retreat centers, camps, and outdoor adventure experiences. These initiatives are perhaps not surprising, given that extensive research from the fields of horticultural therapy and conservation psychology has demonstrated the positive outcomes of contact with nature for individual and community well-being and healing. In this chapter, we present a case for integrating nature-based and community capacity building interventions designed to foster resilience in military communities facing deployment.