keith g. tidball & richard stedman cornell university positive resource dependency in urban systems:...

Keith G. Tidball & Richard Stedman Cornell University Positive resource dependency in urban systems: applying urgent biophilia and restorative topophilia 20 May 2013 Linn Hall, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Stockholm, Sweden

First, some history Elmqvist visiting scholar and 1 st SU/SRC & Cornell/CALS MOU workshop Fall 2011 2 nd SU/SRC & Cornell/CALS MOU workshop and meeting Fall 2012 Visiting Researchers PhD Course 2013

Background and Framing Big Picture Humans have lost their ecological identity, which we argue may be related to loss of resilience and adaptive capacity among humans in social- ecological systems. How can ecological identity 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 contexts?

Background and Framing Big Picture 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 mechanisms by which information from the environment can be received, processed, and interpreted tangible evidence of social mechanisms behind social ecological practices that deal with disturbance and maintain system resilience Berkes & Folke 1998

Main Messages for Today Deficit-based perspectives on urban systems are barriers to movement from undesirable to more sustainable system states. Issues such as ecological identity, human exemptionalism, anthropocentrism, and resource dependence contribute to barriers. Urgent biophilia and restorative topophilia may enhance ecological identity and beneficial positive dependency. Positive dependency may start, re-start, or expand virtuous cycles that confer desired resilience.

Roadmap Key Terms Dependency Urban Systems Ecological Identity Biophilia Topophilia Introducing Positive Dependence Origins and Assumptions Critiques Positive dependence Restorative Topophilia Core definition and principles A basis for action Key caveats Urgent Biophilia Description Origins Research to date Further implications Implications, Caveats and Conclusions

Keith G. Tidball Ecologically speaking, if the city is dead, the ecological sensibilities of the inhabitants of the city will also be dead. NE Heller, 2010, ESA Meetings a description of the unique relationship between the users of environmental attributes and the environmental attribute itself Resource Dependence

What is largely still missing in social-ecological resilience theory is a treatment of cities and urban areas. This includes the historical lessons that can be drawn from distant urban pasts in regard to sustaining ecosystem services during times of hardship and crisis ( Stephan Barthel, 2011).Stephan Barthel, 2011 given its origins in ecology, it is not surprising that most resilience scholars have historically been interested in empirical analyses of non-urban areas (e.g., shallow lakes, production forests, and small- scale agriculture, see Berkes and Folke 1998; Gunderson and Holling 2002; Berkes et al. 2003), and have devoted less attention to the specifically human and social elements of human- dominated systems, such as cities (Ernstson et al., 2010 Ambio ).Ernstson et al., 2010 Ambio Urban Systems

Ecological Identity one part of the way in which people form their self-concept: a sense of connection to some part of the nonhuman natural environment, based on history, emotional attachment, and/or similarity, that affects the ways in which we perceive and act toward the world; a belief that the environment is important to us and who we are Clayton 2003

Biophilia?

Proliferation of concept

Topophilia Topohilia (Tuan 1974) love of place A place is a center of meaning or field of care (Tuan, 1977) based on human experience, social relationships, emotions, and thoughts. Through human experience, abstract space, lacking significance other than strangeness, becomes concrete place, filled with meaning (Tuan 1977, p. 199).

Introducing Positive Dependence Ecological and social resilience may be linked through the dependence on ecosystems of communities and their economic activities. The question is, then, whether societies dependent on resources and ecosystems are themselves less resilient. Adger, 2000

Resource Dependence: The Traditional View Rural sociological origins Strong historical rural legacy of resource dependence Dependence defined by employment in extraction, processing of raw materials (forestry, fisheries, mining, energy) Resource dependence linked with community well being Rural development practitioners Researchers (early on)

A quick history Traditional booster view: Rural jobs = resource jobs These jobs are better: higher paying, more stable Inputs of new wealth Linkages to subsequent development A great deal of indicator-based work: W US energy boomtowns (1970s) The sustainability of resource-dependent communities (1990s) Dominated by analysis of secondary data (US Census, NAICS, StatsCan, etc.)

However Booster view largely wrong: research shows Few jobs: rural is not resource dependent Poor outcomes for dependent places Higher rates of poverty, unemployment, education, etc. Linkages dont come: uneven development Language of the resource curse Summaryresource dependence is the past, not the future, of rural systems (the new truism)

Gentle Critique of this view Narrow use of secondary data mostly employment and income based narrow view of employment: extraction and processing Problems of scalemeasured at large (irrelevant?) geography Great diversity of outcomes Lack of subjective indicators foranyeyes.blogspot.com

This Needs to be Challenged 1. Conceptualizing too narrowly 2. What about urban systems?

Recent expansions Employment is more than extraction (e.g. natural resource tourism) Dependence is more than employment: e.g. community symbols/identity /basis for (in)action We need to take this line of critique further Mynatour.org Vn-tourism.com

Need to examine actions and psychologies at multiple scales.

Two key conceptual and methodological issues Dependence as psychological state conflated with ~ behavioral indicators Scale: Who depends? Communities? Or people?

A conceptual typology of dependence Individual Community/Aggregate Psychological Attitude, personal identity (An individual feels dependent) Social representations, Cultural cognition Community identity Behavioral Individual actions that Express or create dependence Secondary data: indicators of community well being Community level actions

Enter positive dependence? Transition from deficit-based to asset-based perspectives Terms: addiction, reliance, craving imply vulnerability or weakness So do most findings, as conventionally measured Another class of synonyms for psychological dependence: trust, confidence, belief, faith that imply something positive: dependence versus dependability? Held by individuals or larger social aggregates Can this base of confidenceprovide a basis for action: stronger sense of agency, resilience, And thus foster virtuous cycles?

Populating the typology with virtuous / vicious cycles ( Tidball and Stedman, 2012). Individual Community/Aggregate Psychological (pos / neg) Attitudes: Negative: Risk aversion, unwillingness to change Positive: attachment, biophilia Social representations, community identity: Negative: we are backward, with few other options, stuck. Positive: shared vision, collective identity, community as special place Behavioral (pos / neg) Individual actions: Negative: disinvestments in human capital based on faith in industry or lack of awareness of options Positive: use faith in the resource as a launching pad for creativity, entrepreneurship, etc. Secondary data: indicators of community action Negative: disinvestments in alt development strategies Positive: community-driven initiatives: resource based development strategies, CBRM

The question becomes under what circumstances can dependence lead to virtuous cycles? (positive dependency)

Road map Check -in Key Terms Dependency Urban Systems Biophilia Topophilia Introducing Positive Dependence Origins and Assumptions Critiques Positive dependence Restorative Topophilia Core definition and principles A basis for action Key caveats Urgent Biophilia Description Origins Research to date Further implications Broad Positive Dependency & Resilience Implications Caveats and Conclusions

Restorative Topophilia

Topophilia Empirical expression in place attachment -- research Concerns whole place rather than environment Experiential (constructed rather than innate) Based on attributed symbols/meanings

Restorative Topophila When love of place fosters individual and collective action that repair and/or enhance valued attributes of place Requires strong attachment and important meanings under threat.

Some caveats: what accounts for virtuous versus vicious tips? Mostly meanings, rather than attachment Diversity is a double edged sword Magnitude of variation How is variation distributed Change fostering vs change inhibiting reflexive or resistant

Road map Check -in Key Terms Dependency Urban Systems Biophilia Topophilia Introducing Positive Dependence Origins and Assumptions Critiques Positive dependence Restorative Topophilia Core definition and principles A basis for action Key caveats Urgent Biophilia Description Origins Research to date Further implications Broad Positive Dependency & Resilience Implications Caveats and Conclusions back to Keith

Urgent Biophilia

Proliferation of concept

Urgent Biophilia- Roots in 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 severely disturbed urban 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 then? 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 Newtons 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

Urgent Biophilia Operationalized Gunderson and Holling 2002 Might Urgent Biophilia flourish in the backloop?

Examples- New Orleans, LA

Examples- Joplin, MO

Examples- Detroit, MI

Examples- Tohoku Japan

How to analyze? LOCATIONRED ZONE TYPE AfghanistanOngoing wars in the Middle East Berlin, GermanyPost-Cold War divisions Charleston, South Carolina1989 Hurricane Hugo Cameroon and ChadMid 2000s civil unrest in Central Africa CyprusDemarcation between Greek and Turkish Cyprus Europe1940s WW II Nazi internment camps GuatemalaOngoing post-conflict insecurity IraqOngoing wars in the Middle East Johannesburg, South AfricaEarly 2000s Soweto, Post-Apartheid violence KenyaEarly 2000s Resource scarcity conflict Liberia1989- 2003 civil war MadagascarCostal vulnerability New Orleans, USA2005 Hurricane Katrina New York City, USA2001 September 11 th terrorist attacks Rotterdam, NetherlandsOngoing urban insecurity Port-au-Prince, Haiti2010 earthquake RussiaPost-Soviet Cold War urban insecurity Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina1992-1996 conflict South KoreaDemilitarized Zone South Korea2002 Typhoon and coastal vulnerability Stockholm, SwedenUrban insecurity in times of war Tokyo and Hiroshima, JapanWW II bombings United StatesWW II involvement United StatesViolence and prison populations

Ok so what? In the context of SES, move towards linking individuals with groups of people, neighborhoods and communities Contact with nature, a kind of self administered therapy, as a means to cope with crisis Contribute to the literature connecting individual resilience to the adaptive functioning of larger social systems and networks

Implications of Restorative Topophilia & Urgent Biophilia for Positive Dependency & Resilience

In Conclusion Need to move away from deficit perspectives Circumstances under which positive dependence is likely to emerge What may be lost in translation within a perspective born in rural sociology as it is applied to urban systems Need for transdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches that document and interpret linkages between individual ecological identity and community ecological sense of place, and their relationships to collective action for sustainable urban systems.

Acknowledgements

keith g. tidball & richard stedman cornell university positive resource dependency in urban systems:...

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