Need-based transfers in water management and disaster recovery workshopHosted by the Human Generosity Project and the Decision Center for a Desert City, Arizona State University

Applying need-based transfers to pressing large-scale problems – what can we learn

from disasters?

Photo by David Kozlowski

Keith G. Tidball, Ph.D.Department of Natural ResourcesCornell University16 JAN 2015.

Caveats & Disclaimers – what you need to know…

Infantry TidballInternational Affairs Tidball

Academic Tidball

Trying to hang with the cool kids… my anthro DNA

Source: http://archives.wfpl.org/2008/09/04/religion-practicing-snake-handling-comes-under-scrutiny/

Tidball, K. G. and C. P. Toumey (2007). "Serpents, Sainthood, and Celebrity: Symbolic and Ritual Tensions in Appalachian Pentecostal Serpent Handling." Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 17(Fall): http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art17-serpents-print.html

Tidball, K. G. and C. P. Toumey (2003). Signifying Serpents: Hermeneutic Change in Appalachian Pentecostal Serpent Handling. Signifying Serpents and Mardi Gras Runners: Representing Identity in Selected Souths. C. Ray and L. E. Lassiter. Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press.

The fascination with symbols and ritual persisted…

Camp Algiers – Relief HQ NOLA Post-Katrina

Trees as Social Objects in Anthropology

“From its beginnings , anthropology has concerned itself as much with the ways in which natural processes are conceptualized and the natural world classified, as with the ways in which human societies interact with their natural environments and use natural resources.”

Laura Rival- The Social Life of Trees

Trees and Rebirth: Resilience, Ritual and Symbol in Community-

based Urban Reforestation Recovery Efforts in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Keith G. TidballCornell University

Department of Natural Resources

American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting:Philadelphia, PA USA

Dec 2009

Session: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF TREES: COMMUNITY RESILIENCE, COLLECTIVE ACTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR

“Scrap House” art installation by Sally Heller. Convention Center, NOLA.Photo: Arts Council of New Orleans

Tree Symbolism in Anthropology

“…Trees are used symbolically to make concrete and material the abstract notion of life [and are] … ideal supports for such symbolic purpose precisely because their status as living organisms is ambiguous.”

Laura Rival- The Social Life of Trees

Symbol of Re-birth

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-new-orleans-0525_r_lmvmay25,0,4086594,full.story

On Tennessee Street, only trees

remained after the storm.

Residents now look to the trees as

a symbol of their neighborhood’s

endurance, and their street bustles

with new construction. In fact,

Tennessee offers a veritable

textbook example of construction

methodology.

American Apartment Owners Association Newsletterhttp://www.american-apartment-owners-association.org/blog/2009/02/02/three-years-after-katrina-brad-pitt-still-rallies-in-new-orleans/

Tidball, K. G. (2014). "Seeing the forest for the trees: hybridity and social-ecological symbols, rituals and resilience in post-disaster contexts." Ecology and Society 19(4).

Resilience is…

• Explanations for the source and role of

change in adaptive systems, particularly the kinds of change that are transforming.

• Focused on social-ecological systems –not simply linked or coupled systems of people and nature, people IN nature

• Found at multiple scales, from the scale of a farm or village, through communities, regions, and nations to the globe.

Resilience - the ability to absorb disturbances, to be changed and then to re-organize and still have the same identity. It includes the ability to learn from the disturbance. Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5

“…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

“…systems that demonstrate resilience appear to have learned to recognize feedback, and therefore possess mechanisms by which information from the environment can be received, processed, and interpreted.” Berkes & Folke 1998

Explore the means, or social mechanisms, that bring about the conditions needed for adaptation in the face of disturbance (eg. disaster and war) fundamental to social-ecological system resilience.

Trees Shaped Resilience before and after Katrina

Before

• Ecosystem service provision– cooling

– storm water mgmt

– air quality

– aesthetic & recreational values

• Sense of place– Well-being

– Social capital

– Links to SES resilience

After

• Actionable restoration target

• Symbol of regeneration, rebirth, resilience

• Source of memory and memorialization

• Basis for emergence of a Community of Practice

• Catalyst for re-initiation of virtuous cycles in social-ecological system

WHAT INITIATES GREENING?

Urgent Biophilia

Positive Dependency

Memorialization

Mechanism

Social-Ecological

Symbols and Rituals

Tidball, KG. (2012). Urgent Biophilia: Human-Nature Interactions and Biological

Attractions in Disaster Resilience. Ecology and Society. 17(2).

Tidball, KG & RC Stedman. (2013). Positive Dependency and Virtuous Cycles:

From Resource Dependence to Resilience in Urban Social-Ecological Systems.

Ecological Economics. 86(0): 292-299.

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 (2014). 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.

Source of Memory & Memorialization

The 2002 "Restore the Oaks" art installation featured 30 local artists, each creating an original mural on the outer freeway columns to memorialize the live oak trees that once stood on either side of Claiborne Avenue.

I am going to go further back (than Katrina)…We lost something…we had these big majestic oaks that city planning and everyone else saw fit to uproot. Along with those oaks we had inherited businesses. So that’s the legacy that’s lost. So, these trees (we are planting) might be a reminder of what we lost, so that we don’t ever forget it and don’t let that happen to us again, as well as kind of light a fire under us to ensure that we won’t have to worry about a legacy being lost (due to Katrina) (Treme community member and tree planter, January 19 2009).

Memorial tree examples are familiar…

Scythe Tree, Waterloo, NYFrom a postcard

Survivor tree NagasakiPhoto by: Meghan Deutscher

Memorial tree examples are familiar…

The Oklahoma City bombing “Survivor Tree”

Image from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/14637493

Memorial tree examples are familiar…

2001

The New York City 9/11 “Survivor Tree”

Spring 2009

Michael Browne/Parks Department David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

Memorial tree examples are familiar…

Saint Paul’s Chapel, NYC

Tree memorials are “Living Memorials…Because of the

overwhelming desire to honor and memorialize the tragic losses that occurred on September 11, 2001 (9-11) the United States Congress asked the USDA Forest Service to create the Living Memorials Project (LMP).

This initiative invokes the resonating power of trees to bring people together and create lasting, living memorials to the victims of terrorism, their families, communities, and the nation.

See USDA Forest Service Living Memorials Project www.livingmemorialsproject.net

How do others account for greening activities in disaster and war?

LOCATION RED ZONE TYPEAfghanistan 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

Joplin/Detroit/NYC Case study

Applied Work

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Acknowledgements

Thank you!