Reasons to be Optimistic for a Greener, Fairer Future

Reasons to be

Optimistic

for a greener, fairer future

the

U rb an

A bout R esilien ce P ro j e ct

Over the last three decades, Island Press has published seminal works on resilience, ecosystems, and sustainable urban design. As our cities confront turbulent times, much depends on how resilience is defined and implemented. Seeing an opportunity to shape that outcome, Island Press launched the Urban Resilience Project in 2013, with the support of The JPB Foundation and The Kresge Foundation.

The project’s goal is to advance a holistic, transformative approach to thinking and action on urban resilience in the era of climate change, an approach grounded in a commitment to sustainability and equity.

We bring together leading thinkers with a broad range of expertise to generate and cross pollinate ideas. And we share those ideas in a variety of media—books, articles, interviews, webinars, and educational courses.

For more information, and to find out how you can get involved, visit www.islandpress.org/URP

About

the

K r e s ge F ound ation

and its environment program The Kresge Foundation is a $3.5 billion private, national foundation that works to expand opportunities in America’s cities through grant making and investing in arts and culture, education, environment, health, human services, and community development in Detroit. Its Environment Program helps communities build environmental, economic, and social resilience in the face of climate change.

For Kresge, resilience is more than just withstanding stresses—it also includes the capacity to prosper under a wide range of climate-influenced circumstances. In the long term, resilience is possible only if society reduces greenhouse gas emissions and avoids the worst impacts of climate change.

So, strengthening a community’s resilience requires efforts to: • • •

Reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change; Plan for the changes that already are under way or anticipated; Foster social cohesion and inclusion.

As a foundation committed to creating opportunity for low-income people and communities, Kresge is particularly concerned with the effect climate change has on people with limited economic resources. It works to engage people from historically underrepresented groups in efforts to build resilient communities and plan for climate change.

About

the

JPB F ound ation

and its environment p ro g ra m

The JPB Foundation’s mission is to enhance the quality of life in the United States through transformational initiatives that promote the health of our communities by creating opportunities for those in poverty, promoting pioneering medical research, and enriching and sustaining our environment.

The JPB Environment Program’s goal is to enable healthy and resilient communities by enriching and supporting the environment because JPB believes it measurably impacts the well being of our human and natural systems. A theme across all program areas is the intent to protect, enhance, and advance the human and civil rights of individuals.

A b o u t I s l a n d P ress Since 1984, the nonprofit organization Island Press has been stimulating, shaping, and communicating ideas that are essential for solving environmental problems worldwide. With more than 1,000 titles in print and some 30 new releases each year, we are the nation’s leading publisher on environmental issues. We identify innovative thinkers and emerging trends in the environmental field. We work with world-renowned experts and authors to develop cross-disciplinary solutions to environmental challenges.

Island Press designs and executes educational campaigns in conjunction with our authors to communicate their critical messages in print, in person, and online using the latest technologies, innovative programs, and the media. Our goal is to reach targeted audiences—scientists, policymakers, environmental advocates, urban planners, the media, and concerned citizens—with information that can be used to create the framework for long-term ecological health and human well-being.

Island Press gratefully acknowledges the support of The JPB Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, without whose partnership this journal would not be possible.

Earth Optimism Summit Companion Content OPENING OUR MINDS "Is 'Resilience' the New Sustainababble?" by Laurie Mazur and Denise Fairchild "Bounce Forward: Building Resilience for Dangerous Times" by Laurie Mazur

NEW FOODS "Bee Bans and More: How Food Laws Sting Producers" by Baylen Linnekin

HUMAN HEALTH &THE PLANET'S HEALTH "Climate Change is Making Us Sick" by Praveen Buddiga and Katrina Peters "Oakland Rejects Coal Terminal, Sets Example on Climate Change" by Linda Rudolph & Keanan McGonigle

INSPIRING POSITIVE ACTION "What Happens When an NAACP Leader Becomes a Climate Activist? by Laurie Mazur "Want to Win on Climate? Put Justice at the Center" by Laurie Mazur

SUCCESS IN THE CITY "This is How We Can Tackle Climate Change, Even With a Denier in Chief" by Laurie Mazur "People Power: How Northern Manhattan Residents are Creating an Energy Revolution" by Aurash Khawarzad "Building for Resilience Makes (Good Business) Sense" by Sarene Marshall "Parks: Not Just for Picnics" by Mitchell Silver "In Defense of Density: Rethinking Jane Jacobs in the Era of Climate Change" by Alec Appelbaum

BEATING EXTINCTION "What JFK Fliers Owe Jamaica Bay Wildlife" by Eric Sanderson and John Waldman

APPS FOR THE PLANET "NASA Scientists: Do You See Change? If So, Share It" by Loretta Williams "Gentrification and Food Deserts Got You Down? There's an App for That" by Charles D. Ellison

POSITIVE PARTNERSHIPS Start-Up City (excerpt) by Gabe Klein

DOING MORE, USING LESS "How Solar Power Can Make Affordable Housing More Resilient" by Laurie Mazur

GREEN FARMING BLUE FISHING "Tear Down That Fence: A Tale of Urban Farms and the Barriers in Their Way" by Dwane Jones

CSI: EARTH Natural Defense: Enlisting Bugs and Germs to Protect Our Food & Health (excerpt) by Emily Monosson

PHILANTHROPY ROUNDTABLE "Solar Power With Storage for All? Philanthropy Can Help Make it Happen" by Lewis Milford & Rob Sanders

SPECIES AND SPACES Climate and Conservation: Landscape and Seascape Science, Planning, and Action (excerpt) edited

by Jodi A. Hilty, Charles C. Chester, and Molly S. Cross Safe Passages: Highways, Wildlife, and Habitat Connectivity ( excerpt) edited by Jon P. Beckmann, Anthony P. Clevenger, Marcel Huijser, and Jodi A. Hilty; forward by Richard T.T. Forman

SCIENCE, CONSERVATION, INSPIRATION "After Disaster, Tactical Urbanism Builds Resilience" by Mike Lydon Nature's Allies: Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World (excerpt) by Larry A. Nielsen

WORKING WITH COMMUNITIES "A Community Approach to Climate Resilience" by Rebecca Wodder "Protecting Communities from Climate Change (Hint: It's Not Just About Seawalls)" by Jeni Miller "Doubling Down on Community Resilience" by Denise Fairchild "What Does Environmental Justice Organizing Look Like in the Time of Trump?" by Laurie Mazur "Getting Real About Resilience in South Brooklyn" by Laurie Mazur and Sabine Aronowsky

WORKING LANDS AND SEAS "Building Climate Resilience at the Water's Edge" by Rebecca Wodder

THE BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY "Designing a Renewable Food System" by Paula Daniels Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West (excerpt) by John Fleck

ENERGY & EFFICIENCY "Heat or Eat? New York Tackles Energy Costs and Climate Change" by Jeni Miller

MEDIA PERSPECTIVES Don't Be Such a Scientist: Talking Substance in an Age of Style (excerpt) by Randy Olson

RESTORING NATURE "What's That Forest Worth? Disaster Assistance (Finally!) Takes Nature into Account" by Laurie Mazur The Death and Life of Monterey Bay: A Story of Revival (excerpt) by Stephen R Palumbi & Carolyn Sotka

BIG IDEAS FOR BIG SPACES The Science of Open Spaces: Theory and Practice for Conserving Large, Complex Systems (excerpt) by Charles G. Curtin

EDUCATION FOR CONSERVATION EarthEd (State of the World): Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet (excerpt)

LOOKING FORWARD "Frontline Communities Will Lead the Fight for Environmental and Climate Justice Under Trump" by Amy Vanderwarker "On the Nature of Cities— and the Future of Conservation" by Rob McDonald

~ Cover images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Speakers: Moderator: Andrew Revkin, Senior Reporter, Pro Publica Dr. Birute, Robot Orangutan, Spy for Nature Muriel Bowser, Mayor of Washington DC Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day Network David J. Skorton, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution International Space Station, Crew

Read the following content to continue exploring optimistic solutions!

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Is “Resilience” the New Sustainababble?

Laurie Mazur and Denise Fairchild

Originally published January 14, 2015 on Grist.com

S

uddenly, “resilience” is everywhere. It’s the subject of serious books and breezy news articles, of high-minded initiatives and of many, many conferences. After Superstorm Sandy, it was triumphantly plastered on city buses, declaring New Jersey “A State of Resilience.”

What’s going on? Does all this talk about resilience mean that we’ve basically given up on averting climate change and other environmental catastrophes—and that our only hope is to roll with the punches? Have we leapfrogged over denial, anger, and bargaining, landing squarely in acceptance?

Not necessarily. Resilience, like sustainability before it, is an idea with potentially transformative power. Resilience is all about our capacity to survive and thrive in the face of disruptions of all kinds. If we were to take resilience seriously (highly recommended in our increasingly disruption-prone world), we would make some far-reaching changes in how we live.

A truly resilient city would look very different from those we now inhabit—in ways that would make Grist readers proud. For example, our resilient city would: •

Rely on distributed, renewable energy, rather than on the ridiculously vulnerable centralized grid—so that a disruption in one area doesn’t mean lights out for everyone.

•

Support diversified local agriculture, so that when supply chains are cut off, we can continue to eat.

5

6 • section 1: Introduction to resilience

•

Foster social equity and inclusion, so that the greatest risks are not dumped on the most vulnerable communities.

•

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because the worst projected impacts of climate change are simply more than we can adapt to.

Or at least that’s what resilience should mean. But right now, the meaning is up for grabs. And it seems that resilience might be following the same trajectory as “sustainability.” That concept shaped the thinking of a generation of enviros, and laid the foundation for real improvements in energy efficiency, recycling, and more. But it has also been co-opted to cover up distinctly unsustainable practices, mutating into what Bob Engelman of the Worldwatch Institute calls “sustainababble.” After all, it is more profitable to pretend to be sustainable than to actually be so.

Now the co-opters are hard at work on “resilience.” For example, the pollutocrat-friendly American Enterprise Institute, which opposes efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promotes instead what it calls the “resilience option” for climate change. (In essence: Deal with it.)

Aside from out-and-out co-optation, there is a danger that resilience will be defined too narrowly, and deprived of its power to transform. Too often, resilience is simply seen as bouncing back after disaster (let’s build bigger beach houses on the Jersey shore!) or as protecting the status quo (the Stafford Act, which funds federal disaster response, requires that everything be built back exactly as it was before).

You could say that “sustainability” was hollowed out by co-optation, but also by a failure of imagination. We enviros haven’t really mounted a challenge to an economic system based on growth and profit at all costs, and we have missed opportunities to join forces with others challenging that system. If “resilience” is just about making that system stronger, it, too, will ring hollow.

So, is resilience the new sustainababble? It doesn’t have to be. The need for resilience could jump-start significant changes in our built environment, our relationship with the natural world, and our relationships with one other. But to seize that opportunity, we need to get real about what resilience is—and what it isn’t.

Bounce Forward: Building Resilience for Dangerous Times Laurie Mazur

Originally published January 2016 in Solutions

W

hen Superstorm Sandy came ashore in 2012, thousands of New Yorkers were plunged into what seemed like an earlier century. No lights. No heat. No refrigeration. No elevators. On the upper floors of high-rise apartment buildings, the taps went dry and toilets would not flush.

For the poorest New Yorkers, this went on for weeks. Less than a mile from the seat of global capitalism where stock traders were back at work soon after the storm, residents of public housing rifled through dumpsters full of discarded food looking for something to eat.1 Sandy was many things: a disaster that cost hundreds of lives and billions of dollars, a wake-up call on climate change, and a reminder of the fragility of the systems that hold our civilization together.

It is a reminder we would do well to heed. We live in a time of wrenching change and widening inequality; of growing vulnerability to disaster. The good news is that there is much we can do to make our communities stronger, fairer, and more resilient. That does not, however, mean “bouncing back” to the status quo that got us into this mess in the first place. Instead, it means bouncing forward to a world that is more sustainable and just.

The New Normal It’s safe to say that we’ve never been here before. While change is a constant in natural and social history, the pace, scale, and impact of change today is utterly without precedent.

Part of that change is environmental, reflecting our wholesale transformation of the natural world. Over the last half century or so, human 2

Bounce Forward: Building Resilience for Dangerious times • 3

beings have altered the planet’s ecosystems more than in all of previous history combined—clearing forests, diverting rivers, replacing the riotous diversity of nature with uniform monocultures. Those changes have improved the lives of many, but they have weakened nature’s ability to protect and sustain us in the long term.2-4 Most ominously, we are changing the climate. Through industry, agriculture, and the business of daily life, humans have increased the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40 percent above pre-Industrial Era levels, trapping heat and warming the planet.5 The impacts are increasingly visible: in monstrous storms and devastating droughts, in spiking food prices, and wrecked infrastructure. Climate-related disasters in North America have nearly quintupled since 1980.6 On our altered planet, the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future.

Temperature records are broken on a regular basis and “hundred-year storms” arrive every few years. October 2015 was the warmest in recorded history by a wide margin—a record that may be broken again by the time you read this. And 2015 is shaping up to be the warmest year ever.7 As the planet warms and climate disasters multiply, there are more people in harm’s way than ever before. The global population has tripled in the last hundred years, with most of that growth taking place in coastal areas that are exposed to rising sea-levels.8,9 At the same time, our world is rocked by enormous technological and social changes. More than any previous generation, we are connected by dense global networks of commerce and communication. Those networks can accelerate the spread of innovation, information, and opportunity, but they can also spread disaster. For example, the financial crisis that began in 2007 was triggered by risky mortgage lending in the United States, but in an interconnected global economy, its impacts continue to reverberate around the world. Other threats—from Ebola to terrorism—can easily hop a plane and go from local to global overnight.

The complex systems that keep our lights on and our refrigerators full would have dazzled our agrarian ancestors—but they are surprisingly vulnerable. For example, Big Food’s globe-spanning supply chains are easily disrupted and its vast monocultures susceptible to drought and disease.10 The electrical grid is ridiculously fragile. According to the Federal Energy

4 • Introduction

Regulatory Commission, if saboteurs or disaster were to destroy just nine substations and one transformer manufacturer, “the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer.”11 A massive solar storm, similar to one that occurred in 1859, could take down the grid and interfere with essential electronics—putting the world as we know it on indefinite hold.12 In the face of these new and sobering risks, all people are not equally vulnerable. That’s because we live in an era of stark and growing inequality.

The richest one percent of the world’s population lays claim to 46 percent of the world’s wealth; the bottom half—some 3.5 billion people—together possess less than one percent of global assets.13 Not surprisingly, the poor bear the brunt of climate and other disasters.14 In this unequal world, the affluent seize opportunities and shield themselves from harm, while the poor face greater risks with fewer resources. These dynamics are self-reinforcing: the rich get richer while the poor fall farther behind.

Defining Resilience In these turbulent times, the concept of “resilience” has growing appeal.

Lately it’s been the subject of serious books and breezy articles, of high-minded initiatives and countless conferences. After Sandy, it was triumphantly plastered on city buses, declaring storm-ravaged New Jersey “A State of Resilience.”

But what is resilience, exactly? Recently, Island Press—a nonprofit that provides ideas and information on environmental problems and solutions—set out to answer that question. To that end, we reviewed relevant literature in the natural and social sciences and interviewed dozens of scholars, activists, and practitioners. Based on that inquiry, we define resilience as “the capacity of a community to anticipate, plan for, and mitigate the risks—and seize the opportunities—associated with environmental and social change.”15 Resilience is an idea with potentially transformative power. The need to protect our communities from climate impacts and other threats asks us to rethink the systems that supply our basic needs. It asks us to live within planetary limits and to avoid further destabilizing natural systems.

It asks us to eradicate the inequities that magnify vulnerability to disaster, and to distribute opportunities more fairly—so that all people have a chance to adapt and thrive in a fast-changing world.

Bounce Forward: Building Resilience for Dangerious times • 5

But the transformative potential of resilience is far from assured. Too often, resilience is defined narrowly as a community’s capacity to “bounce back” after a disaster. For example, the self-declared “State of Resilience” rebounded after Sandy by building even bigger houses on the Jersey Shore.16,17 Bouncing back to a status quo that degrades the environment, increases greenhouse gases, and widens inequality will only make us more vulnerable in the longer term.

Here, we offer an alternative path—a framework for communities to consider as they endeavor to become more resilient to the shocks and surprises of the future. This framework is neither definitive nor universal; it is best seen as a jumping-off point for communities to begin their own conversation.

Ask–Analyze–Act The process of building resilience is not value-neutral; decisions about what to protect and strengthen reflect deeply entrenched values and power structures. Should public funds be used to build seawalls around Wall Street or to put solar panels on a housing project? The first step is to ask what in the community must be strengthened, against what threats or changes, and for whose benefit.

The next step is to analyze the systems that supply a community’s needs.

Resilient systems and communities have certain characteristics in common: •

Diversity: A system with diverse components will have a wide range of responses to change and is therefore unlikely to fail all at once. This is why a healthy, mixed forest is less vulnerable to fire or disease than a tree farm. Similarly, a city with a diverse economic base is less vulnerable to economic upheaval than one that relies on a single industry.

•

Redundancy: A resilient system has multiple ways to perform basic functions, so that the failure of any one component does not cause the entire system to crash. For example, a multimodal transportation system that includes a variety of public transit options as well as opportunities for walking and bicycling will weather disruptions better than a system that relies wholly on automobiles.

6 • Introduction

•

Modularity: Modular systems that can be self-sufficient when disconnected from larger networks will fare better in times of change. For example, people living in a city with a robust local food culture (nearby farms, a farmer’s market) will be less likely to go hungry if there is a disruption in national or global supply chains. Modularity allows a community or system to manage its connectivity to larger regions and the world; it is a way to guard against “contagions” from a hyper-connected, globalized economy.

•

Tight feedbacks: A resilient system has tight feedbacks, allowing it to quickly detect changes in its constituent parts and respond appropriately. If a reservoir is low, for example, water conservation measures may be put in place. But in today’s globalized economy, consumers may be thousands of miles away from the source of resources on which they depend—so feedback loops go slack. Inequality also weakens feedbacks, as affluent communities routinely outsource production and pollution to poorer ones.

•

Social capital: For an individual, social capital is about relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. In communities, social capital can be measured by levels of trust, cohesion of social networks and the quality of leadership. In a disaster, social capital can literally mean the difference between life and death.18 Resilient communities build social capital with public spaces that encourage interaction and with traditions and institutions that enable neighbors to help one another.

•

Agency: Resilient people have a sense of control over their destiny; resilient cities fully engage their citizens in decision making. Fundamentally, agency is about power: personal and political. Strategies to build agency include community organizing, education, public health and society initiatives, and civic engagement.

•

Equity: Equity means that opportunities—and risks—are equally shared. It is a building block of social cohesion—the sense that “we’re all in it together” that enables communities to cooperate in times of disaster. And equity improves performance

Bounce forward: Building Resilience for Dangerious times • 7

on a broad range of human development indicators—physical and mental health, public safety, social capital—that form the bedrock of individual and community resilience.19 •

Inclusiveness: Inclusive social institutions—economic, political, and cultural—can strengthen resilience at every level, by increasing social capital, agency, and equity. In an inclusive society, power and opportunity are shared broadly, not concentrated in the hands of a few. Inclusive governance has practical benefits.

For example, it tightens feedback loops so that problems are more readily detected, and it expands the depth and diversity of knowledge available for problem solving

•

Innovation: A resilient system generates novel responses while learning and adapting to changing conditions. In nature, this is accomplished by evolution. In human society, it requires innovation—the ability and willingness to try new things. The capacity to innovate derives from the qualities described above.

A diverse system generates more novelty than a monoculture; in social systems, innovation often comes from the margins. An inclusive society is better able to engage the agency and creativity of all of its citizens. And tight feedbacks provide timely and accurate information about changing conditions, which is essential for appropriate innovation.

Finally, communities must act by protecting, restoring, adapting—and, if necessary, transforming—the systems on which they depend. Building resilience in complex systems may require all of the above.

Take, for example, the electrical grid, which, as noted above, is staggeringly vulnerable to disruption. A more resilient grid requires persisting—urgent action to protect vulnerable links in the chain. It also requires adapting—measures to make the grid more redundant and modular, as some are doing now. For example, Co-Op City, a housing complex in the Bronx, kept their lights on during Superstorm Sandy with a microgrid that disconnected temporarily from the larger system.20 But ultimately—given the limited supply and disastrous climate effects of fossil fuels—the existing electrical grid must be transformed to one that relies instead on a diverse array of renewable power sources.

8 • introduction

Resilience requires a holistic view: focusing myopically on the system at a single scale, or managing for a single outcome, is likely to yield surprises from unanticipated feedbacks. So managing resilient communities begins with an understanding of systems and their functions at many scales, from many perspectives. And, it calls for a certain amount of humility; an admission of what we cannot know.21 To avoid a narrow focus, interventions to build resilience can try to solve more than one problem. For example, energy efficiency in affordable housing can help low-income people save money on utilities. It also makes homes more habitable during power outages, so that residents can shelter in place during a disaster. And it reduces energy usage, mitigating climate change and improving air quality and public health.

There are many other such win–win solutions. For example, the Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland are employee-owned, for-profit companies—laundry services, urban farms, and renewable energy— whose green jobs pay a living wage and enable workers to build equity.

Because Evergreen is linked to the supply chains of the city’s anchor institutions, it helps keep financial resources in the community. Evergreen builds resilience by protecting workers from the vicissitudes of the global economy and also by protecting the ecosystems on which the city depends.18 Bounce Forward Facing an unknowable future, we can build resilience with win–win strategies like distributed, renewable energy; local food; and greater social equity.

These strategies will help protect our communities from a broad range of disruptions, and help create a world that is more sustainable and just.

Resilience, in essence, is about strengthening our connections to the natural world and to one another. We may live in cities, divorced from nature, but we are not exempt from nature’s laws. To survive and thrive in these disruptive times, we need to reconnect to the values that enabled our species to overcome hard times through the millennia.

Those values were out in force after Superstorm Sandy, when “Occupy Sandy” mustered volunteers to provide food, clothing, transportation, generators, and other vital assistance to storm victims. One Occupy

bounce forward: Building Resilience for dangerous times • 9

supporter summed up the group’s philosophy: “We’re all in this together, so let’s help each other out.”19

References 1. Cara Buckley and Michael Wilson, “In New York’s Public Housing, Fear Creeps in With the Dark,” The New York Times, November 2, 2012.

2. Vitousek, Peter M., et al., “Human domination of the Earth’s ecosystems,” Science 277, July 25, 1997; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board of Directors, Living beyond Our Means: Natural Assets and Human Well-being (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005).

3. U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2014 National Climate Assessment, at http:// nca2014.globalchange.gov/; IPCC, 2014: Summary for Policymakers, In: Climate Change 2014, Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Cambridge University Press, 2014.

4. Munich RE, “Rise in Weather Risks,” at: http://www.munichre.com/us/weather-resilience-and-protection/rise-weather/rise-weather-risk/index.html 5. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for October 2015, retrieved on November 19, 2015 from http://www.ncdc. noaa.gov/sotc/global/201510.

6. Sarah Goudarzi, “Flocking to the Coast: World’s Population Migrating into Danger,” LiveScience, July 18, 2006, at: http://www.livescience.com/4167-flocking-coast-world-population-migrating-danger.html 7. Plenert, G. et al. Supply Chain Vulnerability in Times of Disaster. (Wipro Consulting Services, Bangalore, 2012); Foley, J. Farming changes can limit risks of extreme drought. The New York Times. July 25, 2012.

8. Rebecca Smith, “U.S. Risks National Blackout From Small-Scale Attack: Federal Analysis Says Sabotage of Nine Key Substations Is Sufficient for Broad Outage,” The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2014.

9. Richard Lovett, “What if the biggest solar storm on record happened today?” National Geographic News, March 4, 2011, at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/ news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/ 10. Anthony Shorrocks and Jim Davies, Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, (Zurich: Credit Suisse Research Institute, 2013).

11. Tracey Ross, a Disaster in the Making: Addressing the Vulnerability of Low-Income Communities to Extreme Weather (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2013).

10 • introduction

12. Island Press and The Kresge Foundation, Bounce Forward: Urban Resilience in the Era of Climate Change (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2015).

13. Ronda Kaysen, “Back to the Jersey Shore,” The New York Times, April 4, 2014.

14. Eric Klinenberg, “Adaptation: How can cities be “climate-proofed?” The New Yorker, January 7, 2013; Eric Klinenberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

15. Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).

16. Beth Gardiner, “Bypassing the Power Grid, The New York Times, October 8, 2013.

17. Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke, “Back to the Future: Ecosystem Dynamics and Local Knowledge,” in Gunderson and Holling, Panarchy op. cit.

18. http://www.evgoh.com/ 19. Jeffrey Lawrence and Luis Moreno-Caballud, “It’s mutual aid, stupid,” Huffington Post, November 18, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-lawrence/occupy-sandy_b_2155103.html

www.islandpress.org Phone: (202) 232-7933 Fax: (202) 234-1328 Island Press 2000 M NW Ste. 650 Washington, DC 20036

RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

I

nterested in learning more about urban resilience in the era of climate change? Resilience Matters 2016: Sustainable, Equitable Solutions is an

e-book compilation of articles, blog posts, and opeds from the Urban Resilience Project in 2016.

E-BOOK: FREE PAGES: 164 PUBLISHED: JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9781610918657

Highlights include: •

Like Under a Trump Presidency •

We want to hear from you! Email resilience@islandpress.org to share your story, get involved, or to request experts for media interviews and public appearances.

Malign Neglect? What Will Urban Policy Look What Can the Abolitionists Teach Us About Climate Change?

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People Power: How Residents of Northern Manhattan are Creating an Energy Revolution

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If Roads Are Gridlocked in Rush Hour, What Happens When Disaster Strikes?

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Bee Bans and More: How Food Laws Sting Producers

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Did you attend this session?

New Foods 11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.

Speakers: Moderator: Leslie Cockburn, Writer, Producer, Filmmaker Yao Afantchao, University of DC Rachel Bynum Matthew Dillon, Director of Agricultural Policy and Programs, Clif Bar & Company Oran Hesterman, President and CEO of Fair Food Network Nora Pouillon, Initiator of FRESHFARM Markets; Champion of Organic, Environmentally Conscious Cuisine

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Bee Bans and More: How Food Laws Sting Producers Baylen Linnekin

Originally published September 29, 2016 in The Des Moines Register

C

lare Heinrich, a senior at Dowling Catholic High School in Urbandale who’s studied beekeeping, received her first shipment of bees in April.

Not long after setting up the hives in her back yard, Heinrich quickly became a celebrated honey producer, winning three ribbons at the Iowa State Fair. But, as the Register reported this month, Urbandale officials soon told Heinrich that the city considers bees to be illegal livestock, and ordered Heinrich to remove the hives or face thousands of dollars in fines.

While this bizarre case may sound like some sort of outlier, as I detail in my new book, “Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make our Food System More Sustainable,” laws like those in Urbandale that handcuff sustainable food producers are as commonplace as they are outrageous and senseless. Just last month, for example, a judge in South Florida ruled that a city could prohibit a couple from growing vegetables in their front yard based solely on “aesthetic” reasons.

Though many cities around the country have similar laws against beekeeping and gardening at home, laws like these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to federal, state and local rules that hinder those who value and practice sustainability: a set of practices that aspire to maximize the benefits of the food system while minimizing its negative impacts. These obstacles, in turn, make our cities and towns less resilient, meaning they are less able to address unexpected shocks to the food system, such as drought or other unanticipated production obstacles.

Needlessly rigid food-safety rules are another type of barrier to sustainability and resilience. It’s hardly a stretch to suggest that we should be making it easier for local farmers to connect with eager consumers. And yet rules so often do the opposite. Many rules that govern farmers markets 53

54 • section ii: health, food, and water

require small farmers to follow costly food-safety processes that are fit only for large producers. That causes many small farmers to stay home.

One such example: rules that require a farmer to use a refrigerated vehicle to transport perishable food. That may sound sensible to a farmer who has enough food to fill up her truck. But to a small farmer who can chill all of the food he wants to bring to market safely and effectively in a large ice cooler, a refrigerated-vehicle requirement is both senseless and, likely, also prohibitively expensive. Smarter rules—and they do exist in places—are ones that require farmers of all sizes to meet certain mandatory food-safety outcomes, and that leave the processes (the means of chilling food) up to the farmer.

If we truly want to address issues like food safety, a person’s right to raise bees or grow their own food, and food waste, we must rethink our food system. But to address many of the root problems that plague the system, we must do so in such a way that includes a wholesale reassessment of rules—like those in Urbandale—that hinder sustainability and handcuff resilience.

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A POWERFUL TREATISE

Biting the Hands that Feed Us

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Baylen J. Linnekin; Foreword by Emily Broad Leib

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ood waste, hunger, inhumane livestock conditions, disappearing fish stocks—these are exactly the kind of issues we expect food regulations to combat. Yet, today in the United States, laws exist at all levels of government that actually make these problems worse.

This book tells the human stories of farmers, food producers, sellers, and consumers who have been hurt by— or are working against—bad food laws.

Baylen J. Linnekin

B

aylen J. Linnekin, a food lawyer, scholar, and lecturer, is an adjunct professor at George Mason University Law School, where he teaches Food Law & Policy. He also serves on the board of the Academy of Food Law & Policy. Linnekin holds a J.D. from Washington College of Law and an LL.M. in agricultural and food law

from University of Arkansas Law School. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, New York Post, Newsweek, and more. He has appeared on MSNBC, Fox Business Channel, and dozens of other radio and television outlets and has been quoted by the Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and more.

More books of interest: Public Produce Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas, and Streets for Healthier Cities Darrin Nordahl Chock full of tantalizing images and hearty lessons for bringing agriculture back into our cities.

PAPERBACK: $19.99 (224 PAGES. 2014.

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Food, Genes, and Culture Eating Right for Your Origins Gary Paul Nabhan Vegan, low fat, low carb, slow carb: Every diet seems to promise a one-size-fits-all solution to health. But they ignore the diversity of human genes.

PAPERBACK: $23.00 (248 PAGES. 2013.

9781610914925.)

Where Our Food Comes From Retracing Nikolay Vavilov’s Quest to End Famine Gary Paul Nabhan It is a cruel irony that Vavilov, a man who spent his life working to foster nutrition, ultimately died from lack of it.

PAPERBACK: $25.00 (264 PAGES. 2011.

9781610910033.)

The Global Farms Race Land Grabs, Agricultural Investment, and the Scramble for Food Security Michael Kugelman and Susan Levenstein As we struggle to feed a global population speeding toward 9 billion, we have entered a new phase of the food crisis.

PAPERBACK: $27.50 (248 PAGES. 2012.

9781610911870.)

Phone: 202.232.7933 Fax: 202.234.1328 Island Press 2000 M Street NW Suite 650 Washington, DC 20036

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Climate Change is Making Us Sick Praveen Buddiga and Katrina Peters

Originally published April 21, 2016 in The San Diego Union-Tribune

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limate change is hurting our health—right here and right now. As practicing physicians, we see the impacts on our patients.

Allergy season is more intense, and arrives earlier than ever.

The five-year drought has left thousands in the Central Valley without clean water that is essential for good health.

Heat waves threaten the lives of patients with diabetes, heart and respiratory disease.

Floods and other extreme weather forces patients to leave their homes, disrupting medical care.

We are not alone: Surveys show that a majority of physicians across the country are now seeing the health impacts of climate change. A major new report released last week by the White House examines those impacts, and frankly, it’s frightening.

Heat has the greatest impact: heat waves have killed tens of thousands of people in recent decades—including more than 70,000 in Europe in 2003. Here in California, the 2006 heat wave caused 650 excess deaths in just two weeks and emergency room visits increased by over 16,000. By 2100, we could see tens of thousands more premature deaths each summer.

While extreme heat is especially deadly, even small increases in average temperatures can have devastating impacts on people in poor health.

Rising temperatures also cause more ozone and smog, which leads to more asthma and heart disease. California is home to five of the nation’s 10 most ozone-polluted metro areas. In one of our practices, asthma is already the leading cause of school absence and hospitalizations in 50

climate change is making us sick • 51

children. Unless we act now, climate-driven increases in ozone will cause thousands of additional premature deaths, hospital visits and respiratory illnesses each year.

There’s more. Disease-carrying mosquitoes are spreading into new regions, bringing with them the risk of Dengue and Zika virus (linked to microcephaly, a severe birth defect). Flooding increases the risk of waterborne illness, and leaves asthma-inducing mold in its wake. Food production is threatened as heat and extreme weather reduce crop yields, kill livestock and impede transport. Warming and acidification make fisheries less productive. This year, California’s crab season was significantly reduced by harmful algal blooms that thrive in warmer-than-usual waters.

Not surprisingly, climate change is also harmful to mental health—in part because it disrupts the physical, economic and social stability of individuals and communities. Even those who are not directly affected may be stressed by news coverage of climate threats.

Fortunately, there are many “no-regrets” actions we can take to reduce these risks. For example, shifting from dirty coal to clean energy sources like solar and wind will clean our air and prevent thousands of cases of asthma, respiratory problems, heart disease and premature death.

We’re proud that Californians are already adopting clean, renewable energy. But it’s shameful that there are plans for a coal export terminal in West Oakland, where asthma rates are already too high. We also need to prevent immediate risks from fossil fuel use—such as the methane leak in Aliso Canyon.

Another no-regrets strategy is to encourage more walking, biking, and public transit. Diabetes and obesity are two of our biggest health problems—and physical activity is an effective remedy. Investment in active transportation infrastructure can make it safe for people to get out of their cars—a win-win for health, clean air and lower carbon emissions.

We need to make our cities more heat resilient—with trees, shade and community gardens. Trees provide many other benefits: cleaning the air, replenishing ground-water aquifers, and making our neighborhoods more beautiful.

52 • section ii: health, food, and water

We also know that poor nutrition contributes to many chronic diseases and that our current food system is a big source of greenhouse gas emissions. By making it easier for people to purchase local fruits and vegetables, we can improve health and reduce emissions. Eating less red meat would help, too, since meat production is a major source of methane. And reducing food waste would remove 33 million tons of methane-producing garbage from landfills.

Today, we face a double threat: climate change increases the severity of existing health issues and introduces new ones. If we want to protect our patients and keep a lid on health care costs, climate action is a medical necessity now.

Oakland Rejects Coal Terminal, Sets Example on Climate Change Linda Rudolph and Keanan McGonigle

Originally published July 11, 2016 in The Sacramento Bee

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wo weeks ago, the Oakland City Council unanimously voted to ban the handling and storage of coal in the city, quashing a proposal to build what could have been the largest coal export facility in California.

It was a remarkable display of leadership and foresight: Council members put the health and safety of their residents above the arguments of coal proponents and developers eager to profit from its export.

Council members saw through the argument that we must choose between good jobs and a healthy environment, an argument often used in poor, minority communities. “It is outrageous to me that when we start talking about jobs for African Americans, for low-wage workers, they’re the dirtiest jobs, the most risky jobs, the jobs that we have to pay for with our bodies and shortened lives,” said council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney.

Other council members spoke of the already high levels of asthma and heart disease in the disadvantaged West Oakland neighborhood that would have suffered the most ill effects of coal dust from the export terminal.

But they did not base their decision solely on local health impacts.

Critically, they acknowledged the impact of coal exports on global climate change.

Whether it is burned in the U.S. or China, coal is the largest global source of carbon emissions. Climate change is causing heat deaths, asthma and heart disease from increased air pollution; displacement from flooding and sea level rise; rising food prices and food insecurity; water shortages; and conflict.

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Oakland rejects coal terminal, sets example on climate change • 157

Emissions from the 9 million tons of coal a year that would have shipped from Oakland would have surpassed emissions from all five Bay Area oil refineries and constituted 0.6 percent of the world’s “carbon budget”—the amount of carbon pollution that can be released without causing catastrophic warming.

As Oakland has demonstrated, it’s time to take responsibility for the climate impacts of U.S. fossil-fuel exports. According to the federal Energy Information Administration, our nation exported 74 million short tons of coal in all of 2015, plus 4.75 million barrels of petroleum products daily.

A “not in my backyard” mentality has allowed us to persist in thinking that we do not have culpability for what happens when coal and oil exports are burned in China or Vietnam. But the reality of climate change is that regardless of where greenhouse gas emissions occur, the impacts are felt in our backyard.

Others must now follow Oakland’s lead. Every time local and state policymakers decide whether to allow the extraction, processing, transport or shipment of fossil fuels for use abroad, they must consider the climate change implications, both abroad and at home. Some communities will need help transitioning away from fossil fuel extraction and processing.

But that is not a reason to forgo responsible decision-making to protect our health from the devastating risks of climate change.

www.islandpress.org Phone: (202) 232-7933 Fax: (202) 234-1328 Island Press 2000 M NW Ste. 650 Washington, DC 20036

RESILIENCE MATTERS 2015 Foreword by Laurie Mazur

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nterested in learning more about urban resilience in the era of climate change?

Resilience Matters: Forging a Greener, Fairer Future for All is an e-book compilation of articles, blog posts, and op-eds from the Urban Resilience Project in 2015.

E-BOOK: FREE PAGES: 139 PUBLISHED: JANUARY 2016 ISBN: 9781610917834

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• Tackling the “Wicked Problem” of Urban Street Planning • In Defense of Density: Rethinking Jane Jacobs in the Era of Climate Change • Got Food? How Local Food Systems Can Build Resilience for Turbulent Times • Can We Talk? Here’s the Conversation African-Americans Need to Have About Climate Change Visit www.islandpress.org/resilience-mattersdownload to download your free copy.

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Speakers: Moderator: Kirk Johnson, Sant Director, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Brett Jenks, CEO of Rare Elin Kelsey, Co-Creator of #OceanOptimism; Author of We Are Stardust Douglas McKenzie-Mohr, Science of community-based social marketing Randy Olson, author, "Houston, We Have A Narrative"; Prairie Starfish Productions Afroz Shah, World’s Largest Beach Clean-Up; 2016 UNEP Champion of the Earth

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What Happens When an NAACP Leader Becomes a Climate Activist?

Laurie Mazur

Originally published February 6, 2016 in Grist

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athy Egland was one of the first black students to desegregate her high school in Hattiesburg, Miss., in 1967. As a child and young adult, she marched for the right to vote and against segregated buses and drinking fountains. Now she’s fighting for the right to a clean, safe environment, serving as chair of the NAACP National Board’s committee on environmental and climate justice.

Egland has a long history of concern for environmental justice. Growing up in the shadow of a chemical plant, she and her family suffered from the unbearable smell—and also from asthma, headaches, and nosebleeds.

As an adult, Egland moved to Gulfport, Miss., where she again faced environmental hazards—this time from a toxin-spewing, coal-fired power plant. Thanks to activism by Egland and others—and a path-breaking partnership between the NAACP and the Sierra Club—that plant stopped burning coal in April 2015.

But what really turned Egland into an environmental justice activist was Hurricane Katrina, as she explains in this interview.

—– Q. How did you connect the dots between civil rights, environmental justice, and climate change?

A. I always felt that I was environmentally conscious—doing my part with recycling and being aware. But Hurricane Katrina was a revelation. It made it something more. It made it one of my life’s priorities.

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Q. Now it’s personal.

A. Yes, very much so. Because in the back of my mind, I knew it was going to happen, but I always thought it was going to be somewhere else. It never dawned on me that it would literally happen right here in my community. So that made it real. It took what was more of a casual awareness to a whole new level for me.

Q. Your city—Gulfport, Miss.—was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. And of course, those impacts were layered on top of the other challenges you’ve been fighting for years, like inequality and poverty.

A. I saw firsthand the inequities during the relief efforts. There was absolutely no sensitivity around having relief centers or distribution centers accessible to the people who didn’t have the transportation or who didn’t have money for gas. The Salvation Army would drive around in the food truck, but they weren’t going in the neighborhoods where people didn’t have cars.

Of course, people say disasters don’t discriminate. “Well, we all suffer.” Yes, but we all have different levels of how we’re able to recover. It is certainly income-based, which is usually racially based because if you look at the demographics here and you look at the people who are living in poverty, it’s a disproportionate number of minorities.

Q. What have you been able to do to prepare for the next one, to help reduce some of that vulnerability?

A. We at the NAACP called out the relief agencies, and they realized that they were not serving all of the communities. So we were able to get distribution centers set up in areas where they would be accessible to those who needed them most.

We have also been trying to raise awareness about climate change and sea-level rise. Everyone in this area has a heightened awareness of hurricanes, but what a lot of people did not understand until now is, when it floods in places where it hadn’t flooded before, that is due to sea-level rise.

what happens when an naacp leader becomes a climate activist? • 111

We worked with NOAA and Climate Central to co-host a training on sea-level rise. We learned how to use Climate Central’s Surging Seas Risk Finder, an interactive tool that lets us map the vulnerability of our neighborhoods. People who attended were so interested that everybody signed up for a follow-up training.

Once you have that knowledge and you’re empowered by that knowledge, you want more knowledge, you want more empowerment. I always tell people you have to have a seat at the table where the decisions are being made, because if you’re not at the table, you might end up on the menu. But, when you get a seat at the table, you have to have the information.

Q. So, understanding the risks of sea-level rise is drawing new attention to climate change?

A. Yes. These intense storms and droughts and wildfires are going to increase unless we address global warming globally. But we also have a lot of work to do here at home. So we talk about energy savings, practical things we can do to reduce energy consumption. We have worked with the local energy company, doing weatherization in low-income and minority communities.

And we’ve been working to increase access to healthy, fresh food. If people are receiving food assistance and they don’t have access to grocery stores where they can purchase things more cheaply, then they’re going to the convenience stores because they’re more accessible. Before they know it, they’ve used up their allowance on their food stamp cards. This affects people’s ability to prepare for emergencies, too: If you’ve spent your food allowance, you don’t have the money to purchase emergency food supplies during a storm or you don’t have the money to evacuate. Because Hurricane Katrina hit at the end of the month, people had no money left on their EBT cards to go out and buy canned foods and water.

So if you have more access to healthier foods and fresh foods, then that will allow you some savings and you’ll be able to maximize the benefits that you get from food assistance. That’s

112 • section iv: environmental and social justice

why we’ve been talking to our mayor and city manager about assistance with irrigation to create some community gardens.

Q. You had a huge victory a little more than a year ago—getting the Mississippi Power Company to stop burning coal at the Jack Watson power plant. How did you make that happen?

A. Well, after the release of the NAACP Coal Blooded report— which gave the Jack Watson plant a D- grade on an environmental justice scale—we had a full-day training session because people just didn’t know what our community was being exposed to.

Of course, we were going up against the local power company, which was saying we were against jobs—that we were working with environmental groups who cared more about trees than jobs. So we had to debunk that.

We had a series of town hall meetings with community members—clergy, businesspeople, health professionals, elected officials. We had the state epidemiologist come in. We had a representative from an energy company. We had the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).

The MDEQ told us that the Jack Watson plant was safe. They kept saying that, and we said, “All these reports can’t be wrong.

You’re supposed to be here to protect us, and it does not look like you’re protecting us; it looks like you’re protecting the power company.”

Another thing is that the two agencies charged with making the decision about the power plant—the MDEQ and the Public Service Commission—did not reflect the racial makeup of our state, which is 48 percent African-American. I went online and saw the pictures of the commissioners. No one in those photos looked like me.

So we had a letter-writing campaign to the governor. At our town hall meetings, we would have these postcards that people would sign. We sent them to the governor, and we also passed a

what happens when an naacp leader becomes a climate activist? • 113

resolution at the NAACP state convention. It worked: They did finally appoint an African-American MDEQ commissioner.

And we kept the pressure on, calling for the plant to be cleaned up or shut down. We worked closely with the Sierra Club, which ultimately won a settlement agreement that led to the plant’s closure. The Sierra Club recognized and credited the NAACP’s voices and involvement as a contributing factor in the company’s agreement to cease burning coal.

The Sierra Club attorney, Robert Wiygul, and the Mississippi State Sierra Club Director, Louie Miller, actually called us in before their announcement was made public. I will never forget that day. It’s like how you knew where you were when you heard the news that President Kennedy had been killed. We didn’t know what we were going there for, and they asked us to sit down. Then they started telling us about the settlement.

I sat there in disbelief. “OK. Where are the cameras? You’re joking, right?” They told us, “We’re calling you here because without your advocacy, without you pushing this as well, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to this point.”

Q. As part of the Sierra Club settlement, you also got Mississippi Power to drop its opposition to “net metering,” which lets solar-powered households sell their surplus energy back to the grid. Tell me about that.

A. Energy companies said that net metering was a subsidy for the rich at the expense of the poor. They said, “If you have net metering, the rich people will be able to afford solar. You will not, and you will be paying higher energy costs. They won’t be paying any. You’ll be paying their energy costs because you can’t afford solar.”

We have been able to explain to people that solar, like everything else, will be in everyone’s reach. I have a PowerPoint that I have shown, with pictures of a computer and a cell phone and a flat-screen television. I ask, “Did you own one of these 10 years ago or 15 years ago?” Nobody’s hand raises. Then I ask,

114 • section iv: environmental and social justice

“Do you own one now?” and everyone’s hand is raised. That will be the case with solar.

Q. This is not a traditional issue for NAACP. Did you have trouble making the case that this was a civil rights issue?

A. A lot of trouble. This issue is a lot different than someone being shot by a police officer. But it’s getting easier.

We were actually invited to a dinner meeting with local power company officials in early 2013, before our Coal Blooded campaign and training. They started off with, “I sure hope you all aren’t working with that Sierra Club. They don’t care anything at all about black people. They’re using you.”

I just totally went off. I told them, “First and foremost, the NAACP has its own environmental and climate justice department. We did our own research. We definitely agree with the Sierra Club on some issues, but this has nothing to do with the Sierra Club.”

Some of the residents were very upset with us. Some feared that people were going to lose jobs if they stopped burning coal here. But not a single job was lost when Jack Watson stopped burning coal.

Now people are convinced, because they see that a lot of things they told us in those town hall meetings were simply not true.

Q. You’ve been fighting these battles for a while now with success. What advice would you give to others who are just starting out?

A. Don’t give up. Get as much knowledge as you can. Share as much knowledge as you can. They told us that the plant would never close; that we were fighting a losing battle; that we were going against a powerful industry; that we were wasting our time. But we didn’t give up, and we won.

what happens when an naacp leader becomes a climate activist? • 115

I did a presentation at the U.N. Center, when I was in the People’s Climate March in 2014. When I looked out at the young people in that march, they reminded me of me. I was their age when I marched with Dr. King. I started thinking, “What would Dr. King say?” I said, “I know. I bet you he would say, ‘Fossil-free at last. Fossil-free at last. One day we’re going to be fossil-free at last.’”

Want to Win on Climate?

Put Justice at the Center Laurie Mazur

Originally published October 28, 2016 in Pacific Standard

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n a season of grim climate news, California (once again) offers a ray of sunshine. In its 2016 legislative session, the state passed no fewer than six groundbreaking climate bills: setting historic targets for greenhouse gas reductions, helping disadvantaged communities build climate resilience, and more.

These bills can serve as models for progressive climate legislation at the state and federal levels. But the real story here — and the lesson for climate activists everywhere — is in how the bills came to pass.

As recently as last year, the prospects for new California climate laws seemed dim. Big Oil spent a record $22 million lobbying the California state legislature in 2015, and it paid off. A bill to set tough emissions reduction targets — SB-32, introduced by Senator Fran Pavley (Democrat-Agoura Hills) — was shot down in the Assembly by “moderate” Democrats with ties to fossil-fuel interests. Early in 2016, Governor Jerry Brown met with oil companies in closed-door talks, trying to craft a compromise bill that industry would accept.

That’s when Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella) stepped up to the plate. Garcia, who represents a predominantly low-income district, was in some ways an unlikely champion. “I don’t consider myself a climate change activist,” Garcia told the Los Angeles Times in September.

“I consider myself an advocate for my community.”

So, Garcia helped craft a climate bill (AB-197) that puts the interests of his community at the center. Drafted in consultation with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA), and other grassroots groups, Garcia’s bill will 102

want to win on climate? put justice at the center • 103

curb carbon emissions and air pollution in low-income communities of color — where the dirtiest factories, refineries, and power plants are located. This is important because some climate strategies — notably cap and trade — have actually increased pollution in those communities. The bill will also make the California Air Resources Board more transparent and accountable.

Pavley and Garcia then teamed up to push the two bills forward as a package. This was crucial: by tying environmental justice issues to greenhouse gas reductions, the legislators were able to build a broad coalition of environmental groups, labor, and citizens from impacted communities.

That enabled them to secure key votes from assembly members who had not supported the standalone emissions bill in 2015.

That success — and the coalition that made it happen — paved the way for other victories. The California State Legislature then went on to pass AB-1550, which increases the set-aside of climate investments going to vulnerable communities; and AB-2722, which creates the Transformative Climate Communities program, providing $140 million to fund planning and implementation of community-driven climate plans in disadvantaged areas.

There are important lessons to be learned from these victories. First, there’s more to good climate policy than lowering emissions targets. “Not all climate policy is good policy,” says Parin Shah, senior strategist at APEN. “In Richmond, California, the town’s residents — low-income Asian immigrants and refugees — have endured pollution from the Chevron refinery for decades; and while the state’s emissions have gone down, our members continue to breathe dirty air and live in fear of another refinery explosion.”

“To grow the climate movement,” Shah adds, “we must prioritize reducing pollution at the source. And, if we price carbon pollution, we must set an equitable price on it, one that takes in the full range of health and economic costs absorbed by cities and residents that live next to hotspots like Richmond. Assembly Member Garcia’s leadership with AB-197 started us in this direction, and there is still more to do.”

Second, these legislative victories spotlight a new political reality for climate policy. “To win on climate,” says Strela Cervas, co-director of

104 • environmental and social justice

CEJA, “we’ve got to include the issues communities of color care about.

We need climate solutions that work for the communities that have been or will be hit first and worst by climate change and related pollution.”

What does that mean, exactly? According to Cervas, “It does not mean simply adding on some equity language, or using the potential benefits to communities of color as a talking point.” Instead, it is the people who are most affected by pollution and climate change who must identify solutions and strategies. “We must be part of the decision-making process — not brought in at the end, but part of the strategy conversations from the first step,” Cervas adds. Communities of color are strong leaders in the fight against climate change, but only if policies and the process genuinely reflects their voice and vision.

These lessons are clearly important in a majority-minority state like California. But they have resonance for climate activists everywhere. Too often, the environmental issues that communities of color care about are pushed to the side. Policymakers — and even advocates — think it is pragmatic to draft legislation in closed-door sessions, and support proposals that fail to tackle the health and quality of life issues of struggling communities.

Those proposals, however, predictably fail to generate public support. By working with affected communities to address their real and immediate needs, it is possible to build broad, enthusiastic coalitions — and win.

“Together, we are stronger than Big Oil,” Cervas says.

So, not selling out to corporate interests is the right thing to do, and it is also the strategic thing to do. That’s a lesson that all lawmakers — including future presidents — should keep in mind.

www.islandpress.org Phone: (202) 232-7933 Fax: (202) 234-1328 Island Press 2000 M NW Ste. 650 Washington, DC 20036

RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

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nterested in learning more about urban resilience in the era of climate change? Resilience Matters 2016: Sustainable, Equitable Solutions is an

e-book compilation of articles, blog posts, and opeds from the Urban Resilience Project in 2016.

E-BOOK: FREE PAGES: 164 PUBLISHED: JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9781610918657

Highlights include: •

Like Under a Trump Presidency •

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Malign Neglect? What Will Urban Policy Look What Can the Abolitionists Teach Us About Climate Change?

•

People Power: How Residents of Northern Manhattan are Creating an Energy Revolution

•

If Roads Are Gridlocked in Rush Hour, What Happens When Disaster Strikes?

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•

Bee Bans and More: How Food Laws Sting Producers

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Success in the City 1:45 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Speakers: Moderator: John Beardsley, Director of Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Moderator: Jeanne Haffner, Dumbarton Oaks David Auerbach, Sanergy Timothy Beatley, Founder and Director, Biophilic Cities Murray Fisher, President, New York Harbor Foundation; Billion Oyster Project Damon Rich, Partner, Hector urban design, planning & civic arts

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This is How We Can Tackle Climate Change, Even With a Denier-in-Chief Laurie Mazur

Originally published December 12, 2016 in The Nation

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resident-elect Donald Trump doesn’t believe the climate is changing.

Alone among world leaders, he has called climate change a “hoax,” perpetrated by the Chinese. Accordingly, he appointed a prominent climate-science denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency; fossil-fuel industry lobbyists are advising him on energy policy.

Here in the real world, of course, the climate is changing. We just experienced the warmest five-year period in recorded history, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Human-induced climate change is increasingly to blame for the extreme weather that wreaks havoc on American cities and towns—from Alaska’s thawing permafrost to the flooded streets of Miami and Norfolk. Even as we work to cool the planet by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there’s an urgent need to adapt to the changes that are now unstoppable.

With Trump at the helm, the prospects for addressing climate change in the United States seem bleak. But in the absence of federal leadership, we may see an explosion of climate action at the local level. In fact, some communities are already stepping up and preparing for a warmer, wilder future.

According to a new study—the first in-depth assessment of climate adaptation in the US—communities are busily preparing for risks by moving people out of harm’s way, reducing the vulnerability of vital systems, and building capacity to deal with disaster. The study, a twoyear project conducted by environmental research firm Abt Associates with support from the Kresge Foundation, shows that communities are taking action in red states and blue states, in big coastal cities and small rural towns—even where the phrase “climate change” is rarely uttered 12

this is how we can tackle climate change, even with a denier-in-chief • 13

in public. All while avoiding the political polarization that has led to gridlock at the national level.

With a new administration predisposed to deny climate change, these local works-in-progress will become even more important to the safety and security of Americans.

Disaster Focuses the Mind Fighting climate change requires a wholesale rethinking of how we power our economy, grow our food, and move from place to place. Perhaps that’s why it has taken the international community two decades to produce a non-binding climate agreement. So, how have cities and towns managed to move forward on an issue that has been so challenging for nations and the world?

In many cases, they were pushed into action by disaster. While some communities (including Miami, Seattle, and Oakland) developed forward-thinking plans informed by climate science, most received a wake-up call in the form of a flood, fire, or drought.

In Flagstaff, Arizona—a town that draws 5 million visitors a year— the 2010 Schultz fire was that wake-up call. Kindled by an abandoned campfire, the conflagration torched 15,000 acres of ponderosa pine forest.

Like many recent wildfires in the west, the Schultz fire was accelerated by unusually dry conditions, which are likely to intensify in a changing climate. And, soon after the fire, exceptionally heavy rains (another climate impact) poured down the denuded mountain slopes, flooding the town and killing a 12 year-old girl. Those events spurred voters to pass a $10 million bond measure that improves forest management and reduces the risk of catastrophic fires.

In the crimson-red city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, decades of flooding along the Arkansas River and its tributaries made many Tulsans question the wisdom of building in the floodplain. A citizen-led effort to limit construction was met with serious pushback from development interests, especially during the years that climate denier James Inhofe served as Tulsa’s Mayor. But the naysayers were largely silenced after a calamitous flood killed 14 people and damaged 6,800 homes. Ultimately, the city bought up over 1,000 repeatedly-flooded properties, converting them to public parkland.

14 • Section i: climate change and adaptation

And in the college town of Fort Collins, Colorado, threats to the beer supply galvanized action. A series of droughts raised fears about water shortages—an existential threat to local breweries that collectively suck up more than a billion gallons of water each year. In response, the town’s 16 breweries adopted—and championed—voluntary water conservation strategies that reduced water use by 25 percent over the last decade, even as the population grew.

One Size Does Not Fit All The Abt study profiled 17 communities and found their adaptation strategies are as varied as the places that employ them. “Climate adaptation is not a paint-by-numbers exercise,” says Garrett Fitzgerald, strategic partnerships advisor for the Urban Sustainability Directors’ Network, who served as an advisor to the study. But three general approaches are widely used.

First, a community can—in adaptation-speak—reduce exposure. That means removing people and property from paths of destruction. Tulsa’s flood-prevention strategy falls into this category. The seaside town of Avalon, New Jersey used this tactic, too: repeated Nor’easters and hurricanes prompted the town to buy up storm-damaged homes, restore sand dunes, and block development in vulnerable shoreline areas. Exposure reduction is especially useful in coastal communities facing inundation—at least those that are not doubling down on denial.

Second, communities can reduce sensitivity. Essentially, this means recognizing that bad things will happen, and working to limit the damage.

In Norfolk, Virginia, where rising seas now send water streaming into the streets on sunny days, the city changed a zoning ordinance to raise new construction at least three feet above the anticipated flood level. And Chula Vista, California is dealing with soaring temperatures by planting shade trees and requiring new housing to be built with light-colored “cool roofs” that reduce the urban heat island effect.

Finally, communities can enhance adaptive capacity. This is about supporting the hard-to-measure qualities that enable people to cope in challenging times—like strong social ties, good health, economic well-being, and a general sense of empowerment and engagement. Not surprisingly, poverty and marginalization eat away at adaptive capacity; that’s why low-income communities and communities of color often bear the brunt of climate disaster.

this is how we can tackle climate change, even with a denier-in-chief • 15

Building adaptive capacity starts with the most vulnerable, but not by parachuting into disadvantaged communities with a ready-made plan. “You need to actually work with the real-life people who will be affected,” says Fitzgerald, who partnered with community groups in Oakland to develop that city’s forward-thinking Energy and Climate Action Plan.

In Baltimore, the City’s Office of Sustainability has cultivated the art of engaging at-risk communities in adaptation planning. One secret, says Climate and Resilience Planner Kristin Baja, is to make it easy for residents to attend meetings by providing free transportation, food, and childcare. And at those meetings, city staff do more listening than talking: “PowerPoints are banned,” says Baja.

Some of the most innovative adaptation projects result from vulnerable communities taking the lead on adaptation planning. For example, in Cleveland, Ohio—where one in three residents live in poverty—local community development groups helped start the Bridgeport Café, a gathering place in the struggling Kinsman neighborhood. “A corner café might not seem like a top priority for climate adaptation,” says Missy Stults, another project researcher for the report, “but this is the kind of place that brings people together and strengthens communities.”

Strong communities literally save lives in times of disaster, according to sociologist Eric Klinenberg. Klinenberg studied a devastating 1995 heat wave in Chicago, which killed nearly 800 people. He found disproportionately high mortality rates in low-income, African-American neighborhoods where many lacked air conditioning, but there were telling exceptions to this rule. Auburn Gresham, a poor, black neighborhood on the city’s south side, reported fewer deaths than in many affluent communities. What made the difference, Klinenberg found, was the neighborhood’s strong social fabric. It was the “sidewalks, stores, restaurants, and community organizations that bring people into contact with friends and neighbors” that mattered, nurturing a community where residents checked on the elderly, sick, and vulnerable.

Good Signs and Next Steps The Abt investigation found that communities are, in fact, reducing their vulnerability to climate impacts. In Tulsa, no one was hurt—and no homes were destroyed—during recent severe flooding. And Avalon,

16 • section 1: climate change and adaptation

New Jersey was largely spared the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, while neighboring communities got hammered.

Importantly, many of the actions they are taking to adapt—restoring ecosystems, strengthening neighborhoods, conserving resources—are improving people’s quality of life right now. In Oakland, for example, community groups are rolling out an adaptation plan that calls for affordable, renewable energy; healthy, locally grown food; and emergency preparedness. “Every one of those actions is justified even without considering climate change,” says Joel Smith, a researcher for the study.

Despite such successes, it’s not enough. While some communities, like Oakland, are preparing for future climate impacts, others are simply seeking to prevent the recurrence of a previous disaster. But a changing climate means the future will not look like the past—so preparing for a disaster like the last one may mean under-preparing for the future.

There are limits, also, to what communities can do on their own. Many of the local actions profiled in the study had significant help from the feds. Flagstaff worked with the US Forest Service on its plan to save local forests; Tulsa got funding from FEMA to buy up properties in the floodplain; Cleveland’s Bridgeport Café won financial support from the US Department of Health and Human Services. And FEMA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provide communities with essential information about climate hazards. But adaptation assistance rarely—if ever—comes in the form of a “climate change” program or project; instead it comes as community development block grants, disaster recovery funds, and forestry initiatives. So, even if the Trump Administration dismantles his predecessors’ work climate, continued federal funding of various kinds could support local adaptation efforts.

Even in the worst-case scenario, a lack of federal leadership on climate could create a vacuum, which localities—understanding the urgency of action on both mitigation and adaptation—may rush to fill. In fact, it is exactly what we saw during the George W. Bush Administration.

In 2005, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels launched the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, which secured pledges from 1,060 mayors to reduce their city’s emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels, in line with the never-ratified Kyoto Protocol goal for the United States.

this is how we can tackle climate change, even with a denier-in-chief • 17

It was also during the Bush Administration that nine northeastern states signed an agreement to form the first (and only) regional greenhouse gas cap-and trade-system in the United States—the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Emissions in the RGGI states have declined by 45 percent since 2005, while state economies have grown by 8 percent, proving that economic growth need not be sacrificed in pursuit of clean power.

“There is a silver lining to the possibility that climate change may be a low priority under a Trump presidency,” says Jason Vogel, a lead author of the Abt study. “Our research shows that mayors, county commissioners, grassroots activists, and municipal staff are already taking action to reduce climate vulnerability while pursuing other important goals.”

Do It. Do It Now. This is the central message of the adaptation study: if your community has not begun to plan for a changing climate, now is the time to start. And although the Abt study is focused on adaptation, it carries a powerful (if unstated) message about mitigation and the need to slow climate change.

If emissions are not curbed and the worst-case scenarios come to pass, some of the adaptation strategies recounted here could be rendered useless.

Those raised buildings in Norfolk? They could be under water by the end of the century if current trends continue. Same for Avalon, NJ, with its carefully restored beaches and sand dunes. If climate change brings a mega-drought to the American west, even state-of-the-art management may not save Flagstaff’s ponderosa pine forests—and beer could be the least of the worries for people in Fort Collins.

Still, there is hope. In communities of every description, people are working across political, social, and economic divides to build resilience to a changing climate. There is much we can accomplish, even in Trump’s America, if we join forces to protect the places we call home.

People Power: How Residents of Northern Manhattan are Creating an Energy Revolution Aurash Khawarzad

Originally published November 21, 2016 in Meeting of the Minds

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he heat is on: This past July was the hottest month on record; the summer of 2016 was one of the five hottest the world has ever experienced. These trends have led President Obama to declare climate change a “terrifying” threat for humankind.

But, even as leaders take action, they have not done enough to address the issues of social inequality that make climate change a much more dangerous threat for the poor and working class.

Consider this: After Hurricane Sandy, residents of Battery Park City– where the average household income is over $100,000—kept the lights on, thanks to their microturbines, solar panels, and combined heat and power systems. But those across Lower Manhattan in Chinatown and the Lower East Side—predominantly Asian-American and Latino neighborhoods where the average income is less than $30,000—lost power for weeks. For people in those neighborhoods, climate disasters make the daily struggle to find work, transportation and quality healthcare even more challenging.

The disproportionate impact on low-income communities of color means that climate change is as much a political and economic challenge as it is an environmental one. That is why the people of Northern Manhattan–an area with a long history of environmental injustice–launched the Northern Manhattan Climate Action Plan (NMCA) in 2015.

Created in partnership with WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a local non-profit organization that works to empower residents to improve 150

how residents of northern manhattan are creating an energy revolution • 151

their environmental conditions, the NMCA began with an intensive a community-based planning process. That process produced a plan to help prevent climate change while building resilience to its impacts and addressing systemic inequality. The NMCA seeks to reduce energy costs and pollution from fossil fuels; protect communities from blackouts; and create economic opportunities for the underemployed.

At the core of the NMCA is the concept of “energy democracy,” which puts hard-hit communities at the center of the transition to renewable energy. Energy democracy encourages the development of locally-owned renewable power, which can reverse decades of underinvestment in low-income communities by helping retain energy-related investments and expenditures.

As WE ACT member Shaun Williams recently observed at a retreat of the New York State Energy Democracy Alliance, “energy is an intersectional issue that has an impact on the local economy and environment.

The more that residents can be included in the process of planning and developing energy infrastructure, the more capital we can keep in the community and the faster we can implement environmental improvements.”

Energy democracy also enables residents to manage their own infrastructure and shape local environmental conditions. It invites residents to participate in making decisions that are best for their community— including identifying at-risk buildings and populations, and tapping into local talent and skills.

One of the NMCA’s key energy democracy initiatives is the construction of solar energy throughout Northern Manhattan. The potential is huge: In New York City, two thirds of buildings have roof space suitable for solar panels. According to one study, those panels could supply nearly half of current daytime peak demand, and 14% of the city’s total annual electricity use. Moreover, New York is one of the few states with a shared solar law, which allows renters and others living in apartments without roof access to generate their electricity from off-site solar installations.

The NMCA puts a priority on helping renters and public housing residents get access to solar power. To that end, community members are engaging in participatory research and developing their own enterprises to usher a new era of clean infrastructure for NYC. This includes

152 • section vii: energy

pooling their resources—such as rooftop space and funding–to build solar installations for at-risk populations.

By coming together to discuss their energy needs, residents of Northern Manhattan have developed a rich understanding of where energy democracy is needed most and how it can help transform neighborhoods.

As a result, WE ACT is working with tenants to identify areas that are likely to flood and lose power during extreme weather, and initiating solar projects in those areas to lower costs and reduce dependence on the main energy grid.

WE ACT has conducted spatial analysis to help determine where investments can reap maximum environmental and social benefit. The images below show the vulnerable areas of Northern Manhattan. Areas such as East Harlem, West Harlem Waterfront, and parts of Inwood are exposed to sea-level rise, have a higher urban heat island (UHI) effect, and include higher numbers of people with low incomes who are dependent on public assistance.

And WE ACT is also working to expand access to job opportunities in the growing solar market. In 2005, there were only five solar installers operating in New York; last year there were 55, employing 2,700 workers.

Those job opportunities could be made available for local residents if they had the skills and knowledge of the industry. By forming partnerships with organizations in NYC that provide education on solar engineering and installation, such as Solar One, WE ACT is building the capacity of residents to implement their vision of community resilience.

“Since the sun is free, it means we can cut out the middle-man and retake control of our energy system,” said Tina Johnson, a WE ACT member. “By making our energy system more democratic we can begin to deal with all the pollution we have had to experience over the years, and young people will have a career opportunity in a growing field that can make New York’s future brighter for everyone.”

Thanks to the work of WE ACT members and other community advocates, the first community-led solar installations in Northern Manhattan are being developed. It’s a first but important step towards power that is truly for the people. It also shows that communities can transform their energy systems, and take the lead in fighting climate change.

Building for Resilience Makes (Good Business) Sense Sarene Marshall

Originally published November 16, 2015 on Planetizen.com

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atrina. Sandy. Joaquin. Patricia. If it seems to you that weather-related disasters are on the rise, you’re not mistaken: the number of such disasters in North America has nearly quintupled since 1980. That’s because a changing climate brings more extreme weather, and because more people and property are in harm’s way than ever before.

These disasters—from drought and wildfires to hurricanes and flooding—are spurring forward-thinking architects and developers to “build for resilience.” A new report from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) shows that building for resilience makes sense for people, for the planet—and for the bottom line.

Building for resilience means following emerging best practices in land use, design, and construction to protect buildings—and their inhabitants—from climate risks. The ULI report, Returns on Resilience: The Business Case offers ten case studies of projects that have adopted this approach.

Consider, for example, the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston.

When Partners Healthcare set out to build the new hospital a decade ago, it chose a site on the Boston waterfront, where patients could engage in water sports, including kayaking, as part of their rehab program. But, just as planning began, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and dozens of patients died in that city’s hospitals because of flooding and systems failures—a catastrophe that forced Spaulding to rethink the project.

Determined to prevent a similar disaster, the Partners team built Spaulding to withstand intense storms, flooding, and power loss. They raised the hospital’s first floor well above the 500-year flood level, and all 23

24 • section 1: Introduction to resilience

mechanicals—boilers, chillers, air handlers—are installed in a penthouse so they can operate during a flood. Backup generators are fueled by diesel from a flood-proof vault.

Importantly, the building is designed to save energy, so it’s easier to provide backup power when the grid goes down. High-efficiency mechanicals, a gas-fired “cogeneration” system, and a super-insulated building envelope reduce Spaulding’s energy use to half that of comparable facilities.

Resilience measures raised the cost of the project—adding $1.5 million to the hospital’s $225 million price tag. But the investments quickly paid for themselves. Nearly half the cost was offset by utility company rebates. And energy efficiency shaves $500,000 a year off the hospital’s operating costs. Moreover, resilience measures have contributed to a beautiful, comfortable building that offers priceless peace of mind to patients and staff. Perhaps as a result, Spaulding has a long waiting list of patients seeking treatment.

Spaulding’s experience is not unique. Case studies in the ULI report include 1450 Brickell, a Miami office tower built to withstand hurricane-force winds and flying debris. The building’s high-tech glass windows also deflect heat—saving the building owners $1 million a year on electrical costs. Resilience measures—including two backup generators—help explain why 1450 Brickell was quickly fully leased, while comparable properties remained only half occupied.

As shown by the previous examples, and the others included in the ULI report, sustainability and resilience make good partners. Design and construction choices that can qualify a project for LEED certification do double duty for resilience and triple duty for the project’s bottom line. Sturdy, insulated building shells protect against storms while saving energy and reducing electricity bills. Installing green roofs, recycling graywater, and using cisterns can help conserve precious water during historic droughts and generate regular savings on water bills. Sustainability and resilience efforts, working in tandem, can reduce a project’s negative effect on the environment, including curbing climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions.

building for resilience makes (good business) sense • 25

At the same time, resilience makes a property more attractive. Projects built and maintained with resilience in mind enjoy greater marketing, sales, and leasing success. More resilient projects also benefit from better financing options, more competitive insurance rates, greater long-term savings on maintenance, and higher overall value compared to more vulnerable properties.

And yet—despite all of these advantages—building for resilience is not yet standard operating procedure in the United States. Why not?

Building codes are one issue. City planning and construction codes evolve slowly; they often reflect historic dangers rather than emerging threats. But, in a changing climate, “building to code” might not be enough to safeguard people and property.

And, among builders, planners, and investors, there are still many who take a short-sighted view of building costs. Yes, building for resilience entails greater up-front expenditures. But those costs are quickly recouped, and the payback—in protection and profits—is enormous.

That’s why, as we face an uncertain future in a changing climate, there is no reason not to build for resilience.

Parks: Not Just for Picnics Mitchell Silver

Originally published November 17, 2016 in Public Square

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or generations, parks were viewed simply as an amenity, a way to beautify a city. Whether they were planned for gardens, sports, or picnicking, parks were rarely seen as central to public safety and health.

But that is beginning to change.

As cities around the world continue their growth, the role of parks is shifting. Parks are no longer seen as something nice to have, but rather as a vital system within the city’s overall network of infrastructure. These hard-working public spaces are probably the biggest untapped resource for cities in this century. Why? Livable, sustainable cities must balance density with open space for the health of their residents, their environments, and their economies.

From physical and mental health, to economic development, to resilience and sustainability, parks offer myriad tangible benefits. New York City’s parks, which attract more than 130 million visits a year, model those benefits to the world. For example, our parks are crucial to the city’s resiliency efforts: NYC’s shoreline parks in the Rockaways and Coney Island are being rebuilt since Hurricane Sandy to withstand rising sea levels, storm surges, and to protect waterfront communities. And thanks to our collaboration with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, our parks have become sites of crucial green infrastructure like rain gardens and storm water-collecting bioswales.

Alongside their environmental benefits, parks have demonstrated time and time again their ability to stabilize communities and drive economic development. According to the Trust for Public Land, well-maintained parks add 15 percent to the value of homes within 500 feet. Our experience in New York bears that out. For example, in under a decade the world-famous High Line has brought more than two billion dollars in new real estate investment to the surrounding community –an enormous 134

parks: not just for picnics • 135

return on investment for a $153 million park. An older but well-loved landmark can also drive value: Central Park generates $1 billion dollars of economic benefits annually.

Now we’re working to bring the benefits of well-maintained parks to all New Yorkers, with our $285 million Community Parks Initiative, which will completely rebuild more than 60 historically underserved parks across the five boroughs.

New York is the city I know best, and I am proud of the progress we have made. But as I have traveled, I have seen many cities begin to take parks seriously as part of their urban infrastructure. Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, for example, was created a century ago to control the flooding of local waterways and to provide a recreational area for the city. Now, it is one of the nation’s finest urban parks –and a core element of Houston’s water management infrastructure. On the other side of the globe, Singapore’s spectacular Gardens by the Bay not only offer Singaporeans an awe-inspiring new public space, but they are built to clean and filter water and cultivate biodiversity of flora and fauna.

Lawmakers, designers, and planners the world over are learning that well-designed, well-maintained open spaces makes cities work. As our urban centers become more dense, let’s make sure that our investments— and innovation—in city parks matches their importance in our lives.

In Defense of Density: Rethinking Jane Jacobs in the Era of Climate Change Alec Appelbaum

Originally published August 5, 2015 in The Dirt

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hat makes a strong community? If you’ve read Jane Jacobs, an image immediately comes to mind: side-by-side row houses, corner stores, parks you can see across. But the experience of life with climate change— in its early innings, anyway—suggests that this classic model may need an overhaul. A resilient neighborhood, that is, may not look very pretty.

Take my corner of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It generally lacks awnings and stoops, and provides a view of boxy towers and empty lots for five city blocks. These features bear the legacy of top-down planning, the kind that Jane Jacobs vilified in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But my experience after Superstorm Sandy suggests density can support the formation of urban community.

Superstorm Sandy left lower Manhattan without heat or power. My cluster of brick towers, set back from the street and hulking in a manner that would make Jacobs spit, fairly glowed with civic spirit. Men in their sixties made it their business to climb stairs in the dark, checking on older neighbors. Once we had all swung back into daily life, young families organized donation runs to flooded neighborhoods in Queens.

What about the design fostered civic spirit? I’d offer three overlapping categories: pathways, networks, and scale. Gracefulness had nothing to do with it – not outwardly, at least.

High-rise developments like mine have a limited number of pathways through them. People knew each other’s routine paths, so they happened to see each other coming and going. This made it easy to keep track of 85

86 • section III: Infrastructure & Transportation

who was waiting out the power failure, who had access to supplies, and who needed a check-in.

Pathways became lifelines during the crisis. A much-used community room became a relief station with big jugs of water. A sidewalk became a phone-charging outpost. The two-way street that bisects our complex became headquarters for updates.

Density can support extensive networks—virtual and otherwise. People created digital communities on Facebook and other platforms so they could organize relief runs and share updates across the city. During the outage, this entailed a certain amount of complaining, but it also prompted a trove of donations to truly devastated communities near the ocean, which neighbors delivered for weeks after power returned.

The last benefit of density is scale. For example, our apartment complex employs a large staff, made economical by a sizable tenant population.

During Sandy, that meant many hands were available to coordinate volunteers and tend to emergencies. And there can be safety in numbers: Crudely, going where more people have already chosen to go often means you’ll be safer.

Of course, density has downsides, as well. One is visual. Jacobs’ ideal championed narrow streets with small buildings against Robert Moses’ vision of burly highways-spanning broad skyscrapers. She held, courageously and eloquently, that cities’ character flowed from their randomness.

Make a city into a maze of spires, she insisted, and you make it a sterile pod for the elite.

She was right, if the enemy was a boundless zeal for shopping malls and superhighways. But, as America reckons with the true cost of fossil fuels, urban density becomes more defensible—even desirable, as my friend Andrew Blum pointed out years before Sandy.

Policymakers and designers must take care to craft that density in a way that protects everyone, not just the highest bidders. Today, the cost of fortifying my neighborhood against storm damage begins at $335 million and will only climb. Philanthropy and government have unveiled creative, phased ways to fund the cost of including all residents in the planning. But as costs and danger mount, I can’t promise

in defense of density • 87

the lucky folks uphill, where it’s drier, will voluntarily share the till to protect everyone.

Danger also lies in designing big swaths of cities to depend on cloudstored apps and automatic elevators. These dangers become clear in a power failure. When mechanical systems fail, a high-rise cluster must include ramps, rescue crews, and backup on-site power for seniors who can’t easily manage staircases or darkness (or both).

Human contact becomes more important in cities as climate change advances and sea walls and cooling centers proliferate. That may seem a romantic notion in today’s world, in which much of our contact with others takes place online. Jacobs’ street sweeper might work several neighborhoods via an app today, and her full-time parent might be inside tapping on a screen. But in dense urban developments, you have to work pretty hard to miss noticing your neighbors.

Life in a hulking high-rise might not be the graceful “sidewalk ballet” Jane Jacobs extolled. But in an era defined by climate change, density might hold our neighborhoods together.

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The End of Automobile Dependence How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-Based Planning Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy The rise and fall of automobile dependence.

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What JFK fliers owe Jamaica Bay wildlife Eric Sanderson and John Waldman

Originally published January 7, 2017 in New York Daily News

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he world needs John F. Kennedy International Airport — now set for a major overhaul, if Gov. Cuomo gets his way — but the considerable environmental costs of the airport are largely loaded on a single place: the much-loved and much-abused reaches of Jamaica Bay. It’s time that the world pays back what it owes, via a “fair fare for nature.”

At the dawn of commercial aviation 80 years ago, dry land for new infrastructure was already hard to find. So, in New York and elsewhere, coastal cities built airports on tidal wetlands at the urban edge.

New York City’s first major airport was Floyd Bennett Field, constructed by pouring garbage into marshes and bulldozing maritime forests on the Brooklyn-side of Jamaica Bay. The second was LaGuardia Airport, constructed in the grassy shallows of Flushing Bay. JFK got its start as Idlewild Airport in 1942 by filling in the tidal marshlands around a golf course also constructed on fill.

Back then, the field of ecology was still in its infancy and nature’s benefits to humanity largely unappreciated. Tidal wetlands were thought of as wastelands. Now we know that marshes slow down the waves that come with surges from major storms and give the water a place to go after hitting the shore, increasing resilience from damage.

Salt marshes also provide a nursery for fish, including many kinds that people like to catch and eat and thus creating jobs. They help blunt climate change by sequestering carbon in deep layers of peat.

The marshes also offer important habitat for hundreds of species, including vulnerable diamondback terrapins and saltmarsh sparrows, while offering terrific opportunities to see wildlife from the A train.

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the bipartisan climate solution: A tax swap • 19

These valuable ecosystems have suffered terribly for us and our airport. Landfill was just the beginning. The fill had to come from somewhere — and most was euphemistically “borrowed” from the bottom of the bay, leaving large, deep, noxious holes that slow circulation and impair water quality. The latest research suggests these holes may also worsen flooding of neighboring communities by allowing more water to enter Jamaica Bay — as occurred during Hurricane Sandy.

The bay is further burdened by four sewage treatment plants that release their treated effluent, and over 26,000 pounds of nitrogen per day, into its waters. Ninety-nine percent of the fresh water entering Jamaica Bay today comes via a pipe, not a stream.

The airport, and the development in and around the bay, certainly has harmed wildlife populations, both by covering a vast area of habitat with asphalt and by creating the necessity to kill thousands of birds each year — including some protected species — for aircraft safety reasons.

Of course, JFK Airport is invaluable to New Yorkers, and to the world. Some 60 million passengers and 1.4 million tons of cargo and mail moved through it last year, and — by the Port Authority’s accounting — the economic benefits to our region total over $37 billion annually. However, considering JFK’s environmental impact, couldn’t some modicum of this value be channeled to protect and restore Jamaica Bay? Imagine if we added a small fee — just a dollar — for every passenger ticket in or out of JFK, and for every 100 kilograms of air cargo. It would mean practically nothing to passengers, who already pay an excise tax of 7.5% on domestic travel plus a variety of other fees that can easily add $40 or more per ticket. But this “fair fare for nature” would mean a great deal for local restoration efforts.

It could generate revenues of $73 million every year, which could be used to restore the salt marshes and maritime forests of Jamaica Bay and fill in the borrow pits with clean sand. Bird-friendly places not in the airport’s flight zone could be restored to make up for the lost habitat and thousands of birds “managed” each year to avoid air strikes.

New Yorkers would see diminished flood risk, improved water quality, more green jobs and better nature for all.

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Prospects for Resilience

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iven the realities of climate change and sea-level rise, coastal cities around the world are struggling with questions of resilience.

Drawing on the insights and experiences of more than fifty scholars and practitioners, Prospects for Resilience sets forth an essential foundation of information and advice for those who need to create more resilient cities that work with, not against, nature.

Eric W. Sanderson, William D. Solecki, John R. Waldman, and Adam S. Parris

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ric W. Sanderson is a senior conservation ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Dr. Sanderson is the best-selling author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. William D. Solecki is a professor of geography at Hunter College, CUNY and served as the Interim Executive Di-

rector of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay for its first two years. John R. Waldman is a professor of biology at Queens College, CUNY. Adam S. Parris is the execu-tive director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, hosted at Brooklyn College.

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Ecological Design, Tenth Anniversary Edition

Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan A landmark volume that helped usher in an exciting new era in green design and sustainability planning.

Biophilic Cities Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning Timothy Beatley Any vision of a sustainable urban future must place its focus squarely on nature.

PAPERBACK: $35.00 (208 PAGES. 2010.

9781597267151.)

Resilience Matters Forging a Greener, Fairer Future for All

A compilation of the Island Press Urban Resilience Project’s 2015 short-form work.

E-BOOK: FREE (139 PAGES. 2016.)

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9781597261418.)

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NASA Scientists: Do You See Change? If So, Share It Loretta Williams

Originally published July 19, 2016 in EcoWatch

I

n January, Judy Donnelly noticed that maple syrup collection was starting much earlier than usual near her Connecticut home. “I’ve noticed tubing being strung to collect maple sap in neighboring towns,” she wrote. “This doesn’t usually happen until mid-February.”

Like others who post observations to iSeeChange.org, Donnelly is aware of changes in the weather and climate in her area. “I’ve lived in eastern Connecticut for 40 years and have noticed changes in the blooming time for plants; for example dogwoods are blooming about two weeks earlier than they did in the late 70’s. My daughter mentioned the website to me and I thought it was a good way to track what I see.”

Seeing the bigger picture of climate change in the details of daily life is why Julia Kumari Drapkin started iSeeChange as a public media project in 2012. Drapkin had recently moved from Washington, DC, where she was a science reporter, to work at the local radio station in the tiny rural community of Paonia, Colorado. She realized that journalists were coming at climate change reporting all wrong. If the public was to ever get engaged on the subject, someone should be listening—not just to scientists—but to regular people who had valuable knowledge and experience of how their local weather patterns might be changing.

She started by asking farmers, ranchers and gardeners to send her their questions about weather and climate. And it was a weird year for both: the U.S. experienced its earliest spring ever and the front range of Colorado was hit hard by drought. People sold their cattle because there wasn’t enough hay to feed them. Wildfires broke out so early that the local fire teams were putting them out in the snow.

41

42 • section I: Climate change and adaptation

Citizens would send in their questions and Drapkin would find scientists to answer them on the air. “Sometimes the answer wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear,” said Drapkin. “Climate change is a touchy subject for many people, especially in communities like the North Fork Valley of Colorado that depend on both ranching and coal mining.” The key was to find a balance between what people noticed and a useful explanation of what was going on with the weather.” Not every weird weather event is connected to climate change, Drapkin noted, “but every change sighting helps us create a baseline for knowing when there is something significant.

The goal has always been to give scientific context to people’s questions and add to their own knowledge of the area.”

As the questions rolled in, Drapkin hit upon the idea of an online community almanac to keep track of what was happening, especially as people started bringing out their own journals, noting weather conditions going back decades.

“People are experts in their own backyards,” said Drapkin. “I started to see that it was possible to investigate climate and weather issues on a bigger scale if all these individual observations could be gathered in one place.”

Fast-forward to 2016. Today, iSeeChange fields observations and questions from around the country and as far away as Africa. Molly Peterson, an environmental reporter based in Los Angeles, comments on posts and writes stories and a biweekly newsletter for the website.

Even in the absence of extreme events, people have questions about the weather. “My favorite question so far is from Robin White in Oakland, California, who runs a landscape crew,” said Peterson. He thought he noticed that it seems to rain more on the weekend and wanted to know if that was true. Peterson looked at a few studies and discovered that White’s question has an interesting answer. “Scientists know that ozone can induce rain formation and in the San Francisco area ozone can be as much as 25 percent higher on weekends,” said Peterson. “But it’s tricky, because it’s impossible to say whether there’s enough ozone buildup to cause rain on any particular weekend. There are so many other factors involved. The short answer to Robin is, ‘probably, but it depends.’”

To sort out the differences between weather shifts and climate change, iSeeChange has partnered with the National Aeronautics and

nasa scientists: do you see change? If so, share it • 43

Space Administration’s (NASA) Orbiting Carbon Observatory mission, which tracks changes in carbon dioxide from satellites in space. The two organizations recently collaborated on a mobile app—the iSeeChange Tracker—that can help NASA scientists compare satellite data to what people are seeing on the ground. “We are asking the public to help us look into specific issues such as heat islands or help count urban trees.” said Drapkin. “The effects of heat and the quantity and health of trees have a direct relationship to carbon dioxide and the people’s health. The more people flag what’s happening, the better we’ll be able to adapt our policies and infrastructure to deal with it.” Drapkin said.

As for Judy Donnelly’s observation that maple tree sap seemed to be rising early? She was right. Given the mild winter that wasn’t too surprising, said Peterson. But when Peterson put in a few calls to maple syrup producers she found out something few of us stop to consider. “Apparently changes in the weather can affect the taste, quality or quantity of maple syrup, but that’s not obvious until the maple syrup producers are finished bottling and canning for the season.”

This is the kind of insight that comes from looking for changes in the environment. We learn that what we see one day can resonate months, even years, later. Now researchers are studying the timing of sap rise, to determine whether maple trees will eventually only be able to thrive in higher latitudes.

So the next time you pour maple syrup on your pancakes, think about this: Did your pay more for that bottle of syrup this year? When you lift the fork to your mouth, ask yourself: was it a good year or a bad year for those who make their living tapping trees?

We don’t yet know what our changing climate might do to sugar maples and many other things that are part of our daily lives, but we can all keep an eye out for change.

Gentrification and Food Deserts Got You Down? There's an App for That Charles D. Ellison

Originally published December 29, 2016 in The Root

T

here are a number of social-justice movements, but urbanplanning movements are starting to catch up. With that comes the next generation of “new urbanists” and creative designers of public spaces who are falling in love with big social terms like “equity” while scrambling to create technology that can visualize it.

And if neighborhoods are the heartbeat of cities, wouldn’t it be nice if we had digital maps to give us a candid glimpse into the ugly realities like income inequality, gentrification, residential segregation and eco-apartheid?

Now we’ve got an app for that.

Currently in beta testing and scheduled for a January rollout in Oakland, Calif., Streetwyze is a mobile mapping platform that collects local knowledge in urban areas and then turns that intel into actionable, common-good analytics. The power of the app is that it makes local knowledge accessible within and outside government, thereby creating two-way feedback and data visualizations.

Simply put: Residents can “ground-truth” data—that is, directly observe and report the realities of what’s happening in their neighborhoods, providing digital proof of the existence of troubling urban disparities. Certainly, as cities experience enormous demographic shifts and disruptions, that’s something municipal governments, community organizations and residents would want to know.

But what does “ground truthing” look like?

32

why current disaster planning doesn’t cut it, and what we can do instead • 33

Say you are looking at a digital map of Oakland, generated by information provided by the city and county. If you zero in on East Oakland, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, you would see a bunch of grocery stores on a bunch of street corners.

But Streetwyze users, when testing the app, discover something very different: Those “grocery stores” are actually liquor stores, not that unusual for many poor hoods nationwide. The only food items for sale are Slim Jims, candy and salty potato chips­—all triggers for diabetes and high blood pressure, which plague the black community. That makes East Oakland a food desert, where residents are lucky to find fresh, nutritious ingredients for family meals.

With a digital map, the city of Oakland and community leaders can now target resources more equitably. In this way, they can achieve greater equality in outcomes, like providing access to healthy food.

Growing up in a single-parent, female-headed household, Streetwyze co-founder Antwi Akom became personally sensitive to the plight of folks left out of conversations about urban planning and development. Cities get built and the underserved never know what hit them.

“People of color, poor people, disabled folks, youth, the elderly and —increasingly—lots of middle-income folks in rapidly gentrifying cities have historically been left out of planning conversations,” Akom told The Root. “We wanted to change that. We wanted to build a multilingual and universally accessible app that was useful to everyone—that didn’t leave out or ignore the fastest-growing demographics—not just in the United States but the world.”

Eager to democratize planning practices, the Streetwyze team built an interactive mapping app that allows users to find goods and services, rate their quality and take action on crucial issues. In doing so, Streetwyze offers unprecedented granularity that’s often missed by bigger data sets.

This elevates the power of everyday people by combining their perspective with local data, thereby increasing their clout in municipalplanning conversations.

34 • section i: climate change and adaptation

The Streetwyze team’s work is on the leading edge of a new datadriven cities movement. It builds upon earlier “smart cities” work, like John Powell’s Opportunity Mapping Project, PolicyLink’s National Equity Atlas, the EcoDistrict Protocol (pdf) and Enterprise Community Partners’ Opportunity Index. In the for-profit sphere, Zillow’s Invest in the Future and Redfin’s Opportunity Score are also important platforms.

But what makes Streetwyze different from other efforts is that community groups, artists, advocates and everyday people can integrate their lived experience into those big data sets, computer simulations and advanced modeling techniques. This can help cities function more effectively.

And fairly.

Still, the question remains: Are cities ready to integrate real-time, community-generated data into their planning processes? There are some positive indicators. Initiatives such as Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities and the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities seek to help local governments use civic tech, data democratization and advanced simulation to enhance city services and, ultimately, improve community engagement.

For the equity-mapping movement and tools such as Streetwyze, that entails real-time, crowdsourced early-warning systems to standardize and disseminate local data. More importantly, it encourages governments and communities to achieve full equality as the means, and equity as the outcome.

“For community members to be equal partners in planning and decision-making process, cities are going to have to learn how to use mapping apps,” argued Oakland’s Chief Resilience Officer Kiran Jain.

“Doing so will reveal hidden patterns and relationships in data. That will enable us to be more responsive to—and predict—community change.”

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RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

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Klein

URBAN POLICY | TRANSPORTATION

Inspiring Private & Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun

The public-private partnerships of the future will need to embody a triple-bottom-line approach that focuses on the new P3: people–planet–profit. This book is for anyone who wants to improve the way that we live in cities, without waiting for the glacial pace of change in government or corporate settings. If you are willing to go against the tide and follow some basic lessons in goal setting, experimentation, change management, financial innovation, and communication, real change in cities is possible.

Gabe Klein with David Vega-Barachowitz Cover design by Milan Bozic Cover art courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Foreword by Robin Chase

Advance Praise for

“Cities are leading the change in America. Start-Up City gives a window into how to align all of the stars to make it happen. Gabe’s playbook provides an inside look at how to integrate private-sector skills and processes while instituting strong, public-oriented management and governance. Start-Up City is a must read for anyone interested in making positive change in our cities.”

— Ray LaHood, former United States Secretary of Transportation

“Gabe shows us the art of the possible. This book is not just another lofty call to build more livable cities. It is a practical guide on how to put people first in cities and how to move quickly from idea to execution.”

— Carol Coletta, VP/Community and National Initiatives, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

“Adaptation, innovation, and a commitment to getting sh*t done fast aren’t management strategies limited to the private-sector boardroom. Investment in our cities is mission critical for our future, and Start-Up City identifies a new urban entrepreneurialism in the public interest.”

— Janette Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg Associates; former NYC DOT Commissioner

“Gabe’s lessons in Start-Up City break down the barriers between the public and private sectors in pursuit of a greater city and citizenry. The elusive recipe for successfully innovating within the confines of government is in this book.”

— Adrian Fenty, former Mayor of the District of Columbia

“Start-Up City challenges cities to be more nimble and shows them how. Gabe outlines fixes for the disconnect between cities and the private sector. He mixes the simplicity of bike lanes and the wizardry of self-guiding cars with the sharing economy to paint a new picture of mobility. He brings an impish humor to the serious business of change. City-lovers everywhere should read this book.”

— Martha Roskowski, Vice President of Local Innovation, PeopleForBikes

“Finally—the missing manual for the vanguard of can-do change agents who have discovered in their cities a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a real, lasting impact on American government. What Gabe Klein has learned transforming transportation in D.C. and Chicago will be invaluable as future young leaders take on housing, health care, and other once-intractable urban challenges.”

— Anthony Townsend, author of Smart Cities

“It is amazing that D.C. and Chicago gave entrepreneur outsider Gabe Klein the keys to the transportation bus. Now, in Start-Up City, he pulls lessons from the thrilling ride. Klein’s disruptive wisdom extracts management, communication, and finance advice from potholes, bike share, and a suite of innovative projects for change-makers inside and outside city hall. Klein muses on a future impacted by cars that drive themselves, but more importantly, advises how to steer that future toward the city we want to live in soon.”

— Randy Neufeld, Director, SRAM Cycling Fund

About Island Press

Since 1984, the nonprofit organization Island Press has been stimulating, shaping, and communicating ideas that are essential for solving environmental problems worldwide. With more than 1,000 titles in print and some 30 new releases each year, we are the nation’s leading publisher on environmental issues. We identify innovative thinkers and emerging trends in the environmental field. We work with world-renowned experts and authors to develop cross-disciplinary solutions to environmental challenges.

Island Press designs and executes educational campaigns in conjunction with our authors to communicate their critical messages in print, in person, and online using the latest technologies, innovative programs, and the media. Our goal is to reach targeted audiences—scientists, policymakers, environmental advocates, urban planners, the media, and concerned citizens—with information that can be used to create the framework for long-term ecological health and human well-being.

Island Press gratefully acknowledges major support of our work by The Agua Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Bobolink Foundation, Center for the Living City, The Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, Forrest C. and Frances H. Lattner Foundation, The JPB Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Oram Foundation, Inc., The Overbrook Foundation, The S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, The Summit Charitable Foundation, Inc., and many other generous supporters.

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of our supporters.

Gabe Klein with David Vega-Barachowitz

Foreword by Robin Chase

Inspiring Private & Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun

| Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright Š 2015 Gabe Klein All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street., NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036 Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

This project was made possible with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015941185 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Keywords: autonomous vehicle, bike lanes, bike share, entrepreneurship, participatory government, public participation, public-private collaboration, publicprivate partnership, Six Sigma, social marketing, S.M.A.R.T, technological innovation

For Stephanie and Simone

Foreword

Caption here. Command + Shift + double click this box to change text.

W

ay back at the end of 2002, I hired Gabe to creatively run our fledgling Zipcar office in Washington, D.C. The car-sharing company was young and lean. Our customers were the center of our universe. We were blazing a new path in a long-established and rigid environment. Everyone perceived the transport sector to consist of large-scale infrastructure projects all requiring years of planning, analysis, and high (and low) finance—a realm for civil engineers and bureaucrats. Creating desirable, sexy, consumer-facing products was in the jurisdiction of car companies, who themselves were hardly sprightly, requiring five to eight years to bring a vehicle to market. Innovation—fast-paced or not—was never something associated with the transport sector. This was new ground that Zipcar was breaking.

Six years later, when Gabe was hired to be D.C.’s director of transportation, I was excited for the city, but also skeptical. Gabe would bring to D.C. a focus on meeting residents’ needs with a wholly open mind, unhindered by whatever wisdom was the status quo in city government. I also wondered how he would ever manage to get anything done in that big soup of rules, regulations, power structures, and plodding workforce that I imagined cities to be. Furthermore, what did Gabe know about working in a big, entrenched bureaucracy?

—xvii—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

This book is that answer.

Gabe somehow had the intuition, the common sense, the political skill, the charisma, and the chutzpah to not only get things done, but to get them done quickly and done well. He knows that to make change, you cannot go it alone.

He did it together with his team; together with the help of other departments; together with the engagement of the private sector, and together with the buy-in and support of residents. Now that’s a trick. And he did it twice (hello, Chicago!).

Gabe has understood that cities, much like startups, need to make sure that they leave room for experimentation, learning, adaptation, and ongoing evolution. In fact, cities need to plan for this dynamic learning process. Cities need to assess their strengths and assets so they can effectively partner with the private sector and leverage what individual citizens do best in terms of systems, execution, innovation, creativity, and hyperlocalization. Gabe describes how largescale change should be conceived, and then how it can be done. No more, no less.

Start-Up City is a helpful guide steeped in pragmatic realism. Cities must succeed, and they must become the foundation for thriving lives. With a burgeoning 7.5 billion people on the planet, this is humanity’s only way forward.

Gabe’s book helps make that future possible. And we need to start now.

Robin Chase is cofounder and former CEO of Zipcar, founder of Veniam, and author of Peers Inc.: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism.

—xviii—

—xix—

Preface

Building a New Chicago (Arvell Dorsey, Jr.)

I

had little idea of what I was walking into when Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel recruited me as his transportation commissioner. I had visited Chicago twice for a total of only two days (and never in winter), never read The Devil in the White City, or even tasted a Chicago-style hot dog.

At our first meeting at his house in Washington, D.C., Rahm worked me like a true political operative. “Gabe, I’m sorry I am a few minutes late,” he said. “I was having lunch with the president, and I left him to come meet you.”

Rahm is a master of politics, working a room and connecting eye to eye with people over the most minute issue. We spent hours talking about everything from yoga to transportation policy, finding common ground in our shared impatience for bureaucratic inertia and our mutual drive to see real transformation quickly. I was sold.

When I arrived in Chicago, I set out to accomplish a lot of things that I will elaborate on later in this book, but the future mayor and I connected on the ideas of treating constituents like customers and communicating our policies and actions proactively. I worked up a simple marketing program to connect the dots for Chicagoans, based on a similar effort I had led at Zipcar back in 2004.

Just as the now familiar “Zipcars Live Here” signs in cities told customers where the Zipcars could be found in their neighborhoods, in Chicago, we made a sign for every taxpayer-funded project. The signs read “Building A New Chicago.”

Once I pitched the concept and worked up the basic graphics, the mayor himself supervised the ultimate layout, slogan, and even the subtitle.

—xxi—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

After launching the program, I decided to make a second, blunter version of the sign to hang in my office. My version read simply: “Getting Sh*t Done.” Each day, I reminded myself of what the mayor would really say behind closed doors, and what our actual goal in the new administration was—to serve the people of Chicago, and fast. The sign, which hung in my office for the entire time I served as transportation commissioner, remains the slogan of my tenure there.

Gabe Klein “Getting Sh*t Done” in Chicago (Gabe Klein) —xxii—

P R E FA C E

Chicago, like most American cities, had a room chock-full of old plans. With dusty, yellowing pages, most of these plans were decades old and often bore witness to some of the great, unrealized ambitions of my predecessors. I remember surveying the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) archives during my first week. There was a plan for a light-rail project from the 1990s quashed by the sitting governor; a plan for the Bloomingdale Trail dating back to 1998; and an ambitious, but largely unimplemented, bike plan from 1992 entitled The Bike 2000 Plan: A Plan to Make Chicago Bicycle-Friendly by the Year 2000. We still had a long way to go. Each of these had become stale reminders of how bureaucracy fails itself and its citizens. Today, many of these projects would cost three to four times as much to complete, but due to a lack of political will or foresight or both, all of the social and economic benefits are encapsulated in spiral-bound books collecting dust in the CDOT library.

We can talk, we can plan, we can talk some more, we can shelve a plan, and we can create new plans, but if you don’t get it done, then it didn’t happen, right?

This is no slight to the planning field—quite the opposite. It’s a recognition that moving quickly from conception to planning to engineering to building is hard.

Implementation is painful. It’s also true that planning is an important exercise, and not every idea should be taken to fruition. But it is possible to get things done quickly, even as you trudge through the bureaucratic sludge of city government. If I didn’t see my work implemented (or at least construction started) during my (or my boss’s) tenure, I felt a sense of failure, and ultimately, so will the people you serve.

—xxiii—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

There are a couple reasons to be obsessed with speed of implementation.

The primary reason—and why I wanted to write this book—is that we have no time to waste. With seemingly insurmountable environmental problems created just since the Industrial Revolution, compounded by an ever-expanding population, and a culture that accepts an unacceptable death rate on our streets, the time to act is now.

Also, we need to be realistic about political time frames. The first year a mayor is in office is the best time to strike with a public- or private-sector innovation in your city. By the fourth year, lame-duck syndrome can set in, and/or it’s all about re-election. If you want to get it done, time frame is key or you may lose support.

I also decided to write this book because of two converging trends I have seen emerge over the past several years. First, the public sector, and specifically city government, has experienced a resurgence. Led mostly by large cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. and a new cadre of mayors with a national profile, such as Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, Adrian Fenty, and Rahm Emanuel, as well as mayors of smaller cities such as Portland, Seattle, Austin, and beyond, local governments have increasingly become the engines of innovation and experimentation in this country. In the transportation field, cities increasingly set the tone for national and state-level policies, and, in spite of far too limited resources, are delivering new and better services to their constituents. Second, the private sector, especially in the transportation arena, has ignited a trend toward consumer-oriented, on-demand, and easy-to-use mobility —xxiv—

P R E FA C E

platforms. New technology and analytics-driven companies have sprouted to connect people and places with more flexibility, and are introducing competition with the old twentieth-century business models. Other services are springing up to provide multimodal information, helping traditional transit become more intelligible and responsive, and in the process, more efficient and consumerfriendly. Publicly led, public-private partnerships like bike sharing show that government still has the power and willingness to innovate and plays an important role in facilitating change where the private sector would not go it alone.

In spite of these trends, the chasm continues to grow between the public and private sectors on many fronts and in many places. This gulf stems broadly from divergent cultures, but also from the unmet challenges of change management, a lack of experience and knowledge about the opposite side’s perspective, and a persistent skepticism of the capacity for government to efficiently serve the taxpayers.

During my career thus far, I have toed the line between the private and public sectors, imparting to each side the lessons I have learned from the other, while constantly continuing to absorb knowledge in the process. From my time as an executive with Zipcar and my efforts at starting a large food-truck company, to my tenure as transportation commissioner in Washington, D.C., and then Chicago, to being an entrepreneur again since, I have had the privilege and disappointment of seeing both the private and public sectors struggle to align their goals and ideals. My career to date has focused on bridging this divide, finding or constructing shared incentives that can become shared goals, better projects —xxv—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

or services, and ultimately, better cities with more nimble, consumer-oriented bureaucracies.

Whether in the private or the public sector, a small or a large organization, or government or startup, my goal in this book is to demonstrate how to effect big, directional change—and how to do it fast. The city of tomorrow, and the demands of the future citizen, will not be constrained by narrow political windows and interests. We have learned over the last few years in government to make change, or have change happen to you (Uber, anyone?). I believe that the rate of change we will see in our cities due to exponential technological innovation over the next 5, 10, 25 years and beyond is almost inconceivable to us at this point. So the organizational alignment may get harder to achieve, not easier, and we don’t have time to waste. I have written this book as a recipe for cutting through the morass and as a road map for getting real, meaningful initiatives off the ground in a one- to three-year time frame, but most of all, as a recipe for how to have fun while doing it.

—xxvi—

—xxvii—

Introduction

Why Should You Care about Getting Sh*t Done in Cities?

T

oday’s city leaders and managers face a complex web of regulatory hurdles, struggles for disparate stakeholder buy-in, riskaverse management (or politics), and funding shortages. Local governments often get the short end of the stick when budgets are slashed, even as they bear the brunt of the blame when local constituents see their services cut and their infrastructure crumble. More than ever, cities are charged with carrying out national-level policies and are expected to be at the forefront of our response to climate change, housing inequality, and public health. At the same time, most city government agencies are perennially understaffed and impeded by cumbersome, often counterproductive regulations. Seemingly insurmountable frustrations are everywhere, but you can make change in spite of these realities. If you are willing to go against the tide and follow some basic lessons in goal setting, experimentation, change management, financial innovation, and communication, you can get sh*t done in cities.

Whether in a startup or a complex government agency, the same basic rules of management and communication apply. —1—

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The public sector needs to function much like a midsize, successful startup, embracing the concept of cost-benefit analysis. And private companies need to use their resources and innovation skills to work for the greater good rather than just for profit. If both sides can work toward a triple-bottom-line approach within their organizations, focusing on the new P3—people, planet, profit—then the private and public spheres can meet in the middle. I believe that this is how the public-private partnerships of the future will succeed. The combative, unproductive working relationships that often characterize current government-business dynamics are anathema to building great cities and communities. Whether you are in the public, private, or nonprofit sector, you need to understand the value the other sides bring.

Managers and change makers today theoretically understand what needs to be done to make our cities more livable, sustainable, and economically viable, but have trouble practically putting together a vision and then translating that vision into implementation, never mind doing it within a one- to three-year, politically feasible time frame. As the pace of change increases, managers need to respond and lead or miss opportunities. Technology is dramatically changing the way our work is done, how we communicate information, and the business models that serve our residents. Governments need to evolve beyond the insular, silo-based cultures that are rapidly becoming outmoded in an era of exponential technological change. Otherwise, they risk reducing their own influence and relevance to serve as public policy makers and consumer advocates in a world where aggressive private industries and disruptive, consumer-savvy —2—

INTRODUCTION

Governments need to evolve beyond the insular, silo-based cultures that are rapidly becoming outmoded in an era of exponential technological change. startups are innovating at lightning speed.

I have written this book to inspire the next generation of “public entrepreneurship,” a start-up-paced energy within the public sector, brought about by leveraging the immense resources at its disposal. At the same time, we need corporate America, and start-up America, to embrace “social enterprise,” working for the common good, as their primary objective versus external shareholder wealth. Combining both of these into “social entrepreneurship” allows us to move beyond public and private silos and focus on using our collective energy to solve the world’s problems, regardless of your vantage point or chosen profession at the moment. To be successful in business in cities today, you need to align your goals and values as much as possible with those of city government and citizens as opposed to with profit alone. Such entrepreneurship has the potential to engender the next level of public-private partnership and give rise to new models of shared financial reward working in the interest of the greater —3—

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good. Throughout this book, I will share examples of innovative and effective government, many drawn from my experiences in the Fenty administration in Washington, D.C., and the Emanuel administration in Chicago, as well as my personal experiences as an innovator and entrepreneur in business.

Through these anecdotes, project examples, and even political kerfuffles, I will lay out a road map for change, and a guide for troubleshooting the inevitable conflicts inherent to risk taking in the public sphere. I spearheaded major projects and initiatives in Chicago and Washington, D.C., that I was often told “could not be done,” or “would never happen in the time frame I had planned.”

In proving the skeptics wrong, I became convinced that there exists a recipe for navigating the leadership challenges that span all bureaucracies. I believe that a proactive approach to partnerships between the public and private sectors should be embraced more broadly. This book will address how any individual can come into an organization, public or private, and assess, align, set goals, finance, convince, and implement change.

I want to encourage cross-pollination between public- and private-sector careers and dispel the myth that you need this or that training to be successful in a given area.

—4—

INTRODUCTION

Who is this book for? Is it for me?

I have written this book for anyone who wants to change the way that we live in cities without waiting for the glacial pace of change in conventional government, nonprofit, or corporate settings, where the focus often remains geared toward internal politics and protecting old business models and regulatory schemes. This includes local policy makers, urban planners, urban designers, urban sustainability directors, local business leaders, entrepreneurs, employees of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and citizen advocates. The advent of social media has dramatically changed the interest level and participation rate of the general public in urban design and transportation projects. This has created more opportunities for the public sector to engage people and get valuable input, as well as new pressure on government to be more transparent and respond in real time.

This is absolutely not meant to be an academic text. Many people I talk to lament the academic focus of planning and public policy, with little practical focus on management and implementation. I view this work as a handbook of sorts for those who are changing careers, walking into a new job, or deciding how to have the most impact coming out of school. It’s also very much a recipe for change management, even if you are in a long-standing role. I want to help prepare anyone influencing how we develop in cities to be more effective with the understanding that every situation, every job, every person, and every city is different. From my time in the public and private sectors, I recognize that there are consistent principles and approaches that span most organizations —5—

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and bureaucracies, so I have worked to reference or call these out so that these lessons can apply in your world. I want to encourage cross-pollination between public- and private-sector careers and dispel the myth that you need this or that training to be successful in a given area. I happen to have a business degree, not the planning or engineering background typical for those leading government transportation agencies. If anything, this helped, not hurt, me.

How I learned about local government the hard way Transportation directors typically come into their positions in one of three ways.

(1) They move up the civil service ladder, often starting as civil engineers, and over time, assume managerial responsibilities and make major policy decisions, despite often having little formal policy background. (2) They emerge through political allegiances, often starting in the mayor’s office or some other field of expertise such as public administration, and emerge in the transportation field by being well connected and politically astute. (3) They worked for a private consulting firm, often in engineering, and come in via the revolving door between the public sector and the private-sector firms, such as AECOM or CH2M Hill.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these paths, but I do want to point out that immediately prior to assuming the directorship at the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT), I was a food-truck entrepreneur.

Of course, at that time, there were no food trucks in most cities, and in D.C., just hot-dog trailers selling “dirty dogs” from steam trays with cloudy water.

Food trucks, much like taxis, were subject to a kind of labyrinthine regulatory —6—

INTRODUCTION

and licensing structure that preserves the status quo and ignores what consumers actually want. The public and the politicians mutually supported the idea of selling something beyond just hot dogs and sugar-laden soda on street corners, but the city agencies that regulated the industry had set themselves up to fail, propping up ubiquitous but low-quality services, rather than seeding entrepreneurship, creativity, and risk taking.

D.C. hot-dog cart (Don Hinchcliffe) —7—

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In 2007, after several years at Zipcar, I was ready for a change. I had long been interested in changing D.C.’s street-food scene, and like many in D.C., was frustrated at the lack of healthy and organic food options around some of D.C.’s most bustling Metro stops and public spaces. Having already built up a few public-sector relationships through Zipcar, I approached the D.C. government with an entirely new mobile food concept, which we called On the Fly. My partners and I were eager to fund the development of a fleet of customized electric food trucks, hire a four-star chef, and build a commissary for food preparation, if necessary. We wanted the government’s support, permits for spaces to operate, and a regulatory climate that could foster these kinds of small businesses.

After our initial meeting, the D.C. government agreed to not only explore the issue, but to make the necessary policy changes for us to operate. As a result, we invested our money and time in the business.

Line for On the Fly (Stephanie Klein)

—8—

INTRODUCTION

In certain ways, the regulations and resulting state of the street-food industry at the time mirrored the same rigid regulatory structures that we have observed in other industries ripe for disruption, such as taxis. DDOT controlled the public space in which food could be sold, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) controlled the licensing, and the Department of Health (DOH) regulated the food preparation. DOH had only certified three commissaries for street-food preparation at that time, meaning that every single vendor on the street was linked to one of these three large warehouses. The DCRA limited the number of licenses for food vendors on the street and held a lottery for spaces. These spaces could be occupied by only one vendor at a time and for only a set number of hours. The result was “dirty dogs” for everyone.

Two companies owned by a single family ran the whole enterprise because they owned the commissaries. The commissaries were more like storage facilities for carts and food, with no prep happening, because we’re talking hot dogs and buns. Because they were certified by the DOH and all food prep was mandated off-cart in a commissary, any vendor basically had to work for them, and the whole business became vertically integrated, with little to no variety and a lack of true entrepreneurship. Though many of the food vendors at the time claimed to be small business owners when the competition showed up, those jobs working for the commissary owner actually offered extremely low pay—often below minimum wage—and most of the money went to the family that controlled the government-sanctioned monopoly through cart rental, services, and inflated wholesale food and drink prices.

—9—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

When we entered the market, our business model was such that we wanted to follow demand—that is, the hungry masses. We balked at the idea that we would be tied to a single spot for only a few hours a day (as the current regulations insisted). Why shouldn’t we go where the people go? We wanted to have trucks in the downtown squares at lunchtime and then shift to the ballgame and the clubs at night. When we explained what we were planning to the agencies in charge, their heads nearly exploded. DOH reverted to the mandated commissary model, which we were able to meet only with less-than-ideal large capital investments.

DDOT and DCRA squabbled over who was in charge of what, and how to use the public space, and capitulated to the manipulation of the “hot dog mafia,” as we’d come to call the family-owned commissary-vendor monopolies. Meanwhile, our company, On the Fly, was caught in the middle, because we had already plunged our own money and resources into the venture. Our investment and hard work were compromised by the intractability of government and its inability to see beyond interagency turf wars and monopolistic regulations in the interest of the common good. We survived for a few years around the Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District, where the city rules were relaxed for a few blocks, and by serving tourists on the National Mall (yes, the federal government and their partners were easier to deal with than the city government). We then had to find private space to set up our own commissary and additional private locations to operate our food trucks because so little public space was made available.

In the wake of the more recent food-truck revolution, DDOT and DCRA have developed a formal food-truck policy that mostly works. But that policy —10—

INTRODUCTION

The Street Corner Conundrum

Government had not adjusted to the concept of food trucks as mobile restaurants that shifted based on demand, favoring an archaic system whereby a license to vend was attached to a particular street space.

This was designed for the immobile hot-dog-trailer monopoly and thereby eliminated creativity in food options.

Three different agencies controlled aspects of the food vending scene in D.C., and they were not necessarily communicating or in agreement.

This created a nearly impossible environment for entrepreneurship.

How the Hot-Dog Cart Trumped the Food Truck at Every Turn The Department of Health inadvertently facilitated and protected the hot-dog mafia by requiring all food vendors to store their vehicles and “make” their food in one of three commissaries owned by one family. Result = hot dogs for everyone.

(Infographic by Kate Chanba and David Vega-Barachowitz)

The D.C. Department of Regulatory Affairs controlled business licensing for food carts and trucks. The Department of Transportation regulated what spaces would be allowed for operation. Rarely did they agree. The entrepreneur was left holding the bag.

—11—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

was implemented too late for us, and our venture ultimately wasn’t profitable under the regulations in place at the time. Looking back on it now, especially having seen Uber and other “disruptive” businesses succeed, I think that we should have broken the rules and persevered for the public good. If we had won over consumers’ appetites while breaking the rules, the rules likely would have changed. In this case, it was the dirty dogs that prevailed again, but only for a while. Today, there are more than 200 food trucks in Washington, D.C., serving fare from every continent (along with a slew of novel fusions), as well as a foodtruck association to represent the industry. This makes me happy.

Me? Work in government? I had just run afoul of three city agencies, had a reputation as somewhat of an agitator in city hall, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit (at the time).

My experience in the food-truck business and at Zipcar had earned me a reputation in the D.C. city administrative offices as sort of a rabble-rouser. As I learned more about the necessity of understanding and shaping government policy, I joined the Greater Washington Board of Trade Transportation Policy Group around 2004. It was there that I met then-director of the DDOT Dan —12—

INTRODUCTION

Tangherlini, who was a regular speaker and presence in the group. I was the junior member of the group by at least ten years, but like Dan (who was also young), I wanted to see positive change on our streets, and we formed a lasting relationship.

In 2008, the summer after Adrian Fenty’s election as mayor, I was e-mailing with Dan, who had by then taken over as D.C.’s city administrator, running dayto-day operations and guiding policy for the nation’s capital. We got to talking about his successor as DDOT director. The current director was going to our beleaguered Metro transit agency as chief administrative officer after a short stint at the helm. He told me that they were in the midst of interviewing eight people from across the country to run the department, many of them typical players, but no one seemed quite right. He and Mayor Fenty wanted someone innovative, progressive, and entrepreneurial to run the agency, so he asked me if I knew anyone who fit the bill. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of anyone, because government really wasn’t my field. Three days later, I wrote Dan back and lamented that although I knew the type of combination he wanted, I could not think of a single individual that I knew of who would fit his description. Dan responded and said, “No, dummy! I was thinking of you!”

I was blown away…. Me? Work in government? I had just run afoul of three city agencies, had a reputation as somewhat of an agitator in city hall, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a suit (at the time). I thought he was joking, but I had nothing to lose and walked into city hall for my first interview in my current uniform of jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, hiking jacket, and sneakers. If I was —13—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

going to work in government, I was going to do so on my own terms, and I wanted them to be aware of that from the start. I hadn’t bought a suit since the ’90s.

Dan asked me, “Don’t you own a tie?”

Making the jump from the private sector to the public sector was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but also one of the most fun and rewarding.

To my shock and surprise, they invited me back for a second interview. So I wore a dress shirt. When Dan called me a few weeks later and said he wanted me to meet with Mayor Fenty the next day, I was beginning to get cold feet. Was I really cut out for government? Would I be happy coming into work every day?

It didn’t feel like me, and the more I considered the reality that I had to actually buy (and wear) a new suit, the more nervous I became about the prospect of actually taking on this job. On the way to the interview, I stopped at Banana Republic and bought suit separates off the rack, ripped off the tags, and wore them out of the store to the interview a few blocks away. “I hope this was worth $300,” I remember saying to myself.

Dan was clearly relieved when he saw that I had elected to wear a suit and tie for the interview with the mayor. The Fenty administration wanted someone —14—

Left: Gabe Klein in jeans (on a Divvy bike in Chicago) (Scott Kubly) Right: Gabe Klein in a suit (David Kidd, republished with permission © 2015 Governing magazine. All rights reserved.)

who could go against the grain, and when I shared some of my back story on the bike industry, Zipcar, and food trucks, the mayor and I instantly started exchanging ideas as to how to make DDOT more proactive. As I left the interview, I shook the mayor’s hand and said, “I will see you this weekend, Mayor.” He looked at me, surprised. “I’m catering your birthday party,” I said. He smiled. As I walked out the door, I knew the job was mine if I wanted it.

During this process, President Obama had won the White House after eight years of President George W. Bush, and as an ardent follower of national politics, —15—

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We need more young entrepreneurs in government. Period.

I started to realize the size of the opportunity before me to make change. The magnitude of the challenge and the potential to collaborate at the highest levels in the nation’s capital, combined with my respect for Dan and Mayor Fenty, made this a challenge I could not refuse if offered.

Mayor Fenty called me the day after Christmas in 2008 to offer me the position as director of DDOT. I took the job immediately. Hell, if it didn’t work out, or if I couldn’t push the envelope as much as I wanted, I would ultimately just do something else after giving it my all. Making the jump from the private sector to the public sector was one of the hardest things I have ever done, but also one of the most fun and rewarding. It is something that a lot of people who are frustrated with bureaucracy would be loathe to do, and I understand that. Working for an aggressive young mayor who was game to shake things up in an agency that had been independent for less than a decade made it more like working for a $1-billion, young company.

We need more young entrepreneurs in government. Period. It doesn’t matter that you may not have a master’s of public administration or a degree in ur-

—16—

INTRODUCTION

ban planning and that you can’t tell the DCRA from the DOT from the DOH. It’s fine to be a tech start-up genius or a business school graduate working in Silicon Valley, see the myriad faults and imperfections of government, and work from the outside to be a change agent. In many cases, I actually think it’s the responsible thing to do to persevere in the face of bad regulations and disrupt them. If that’s what it takes to have food trucks, better taxis, or affordable accommodations, then that’s what the private sector should do. But what far too few of these change agents have done is shown the courage, or taken the opportunity, to disrupt and work with these cities from within. That is a primary theme of this book and, I believe, represents the foundation of the Start-Up City.

I’m not a linear thinker by any means, and it’s important to me that this book doesn’t feel like a boring timeline of my career highlights. My career, and the anecdotes that I will share with you, are intended as a device through which I can share the key principles that I believe will drive the public-private partnerships of the future. Still, I realize that jumping between years of my life, and the projects and stories therein, might be a bit disjointed. For the reader’s benefit, I have included a basic timeline of my career and some of the key projects that I will reference in the book. (Infographic by Kate Chanba)

—17—

Lesson #1

(Elvert Barnes, Flickr)

Caption here. Command + Shift + double click this box to change text.

Don’t Be Afraid to Screw Up and Learn It is necessary to make mistakes.

Just make them as quickly as possible, learn from them, and try not to repeat.

W

hen I was announced as director early on New Year’s Eve at the DDOT headquarters with the mayor and D.C. press present, it seemed as if the whole of the agency was standing on the balconies overlooking the atrium. Even as I gave my opening speech, I could sense the skepticism amongst some in the crowd of transportation employees.

Who was this smart aleck from the private sector they’d brought in to shake things up? Why did things need to change?

When the announcement came to a close and the DDOT ranks began to form a line to shake hands with their new director, a middle-aged woman with a familiar face approached. She held a firm regulatory grip in her role as program manager for public space for DDOT and had proven to be somewhat of a nemesis while my food-truck company, On the Fly, struggled to survive on the streets of Washington.

“Should I just pack up my desk now?” she asked half-jokingly under her breath as she shook my hand.

—19—

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“Absolutely not,” I said. “I’m going to make you my food-truck czar.” I smiled, half serious.

This person wasn’t the problem, but her approach was symptomatic of an ingrained culture of risk aversion and an antagonistic attitude toward the private sector. I knew that something, probably a lot of things, had to change at DDOT, and that her actions were a partial reflection of issues throughout the agency, and government as a whole.

For the next few years, I worked with this manager and many of the others in the agency to change not only their attitude about their sometimes adversarial role in relation to the public and businesses, but also to set a new open-minded tone internally and externally for their teams, and their teams’ teams, as they interacted with the public.

Within the first few weeks, I took stock of a few fundamental problems at DDOT: • S aying “yes” meant more work, especially in an era of dwindling resources. This meant that there was very little incentive to innovate or to say “yes” when someone within the agency, or a customer of the agency, wanted to do something different from the status quo.

• Stepping out on a limb meant increasing risk of failure. The aversion to failure was unlike anything I had seen before, and, as I learned later, was actually even higher in many other cities.

—20—

LESSON #1

• T here was a prevailing attitude that businesses and the private sector in general were “on the other side” and were exploiting our city resources for personal gain. All businesses—small or large—were seen as the same by many managers.

• Government defaulted to a black box and was often opaque and uncommunicative in general, and especially when project problems became public or convoluted.

I was taught to iterate and fail fast as a survival instinct in business.

This last issue surprised me. If I was going to try to sell change to the public, how could we resist giving information to people? It just wouldn’t work. But this was the standard way that things were done at DDOT, and at many government agencies. Right off the bat, I realized that the best effort that I could make would be to lead by example: the director of the agency, like the mayor, sets the tone for embracing change and risk. I personally had to show that I was willing to embrace the future now and take on risk. Otherwise, we would never accomplish anything and would be stuck in a cycle of uninspiring, incremental change.

—21—

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In the start-up world, “failure is not only invoked, but celebrated.”

Coming from the start-up world, the idea that I was supposed to be risk averse and instinctively say “no” made no intuitive sense to me. I was taught to iterate and fail fast as a survival instinct in business. We never would have ended up with convertibles or pickup trucks at Zipcar without this philosophy.

In the start-up world, “failure is not only invoked, but celebrated.”1 This has been a basic tenet of technology startups for decades. In Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs, he tells the story of the iPhone launch event, where the thing literally did not work and was sporadic at best, an amalgam of iPod, phone, and computer, with nothing quite functioning as it should, even minutes before the event.

Jobs held the unveiling anyway, and miraculously, when he made that first call from the stage, it went through. If he had given up because the product at that time was unreliable and a borderline failure, where would Apple be now?

So I set the expectation that we were going to experiment, make mistakes, and then make more responsible long-term decisions for the taxpayers as a result. This became the new modus operandi and freed up our teams to take risks.

My first week on the job, I went to work meeting with stakeholders inside and outside of local government in D.C., as well as in other big cities. Mayor —22—

LESSON #1

Fenty had spent time in New York City meeting with Mayor Bloomberg, and emulated quite a few things he learned there. He mimicked Bloomberg’s bullpen office layout, in which he sat in an open cubicle with all of the mayoral staff, setting a dramatically different tone for government business (cobwebs literally grew in his sixth-floor official office, he used it so little).

New York City was doing the most interesting public space and active transportation projects in the nation at that time, and had one of the most progressive and energized teams. I met Janette Sadik-Khan, Mayor Bloomberg’s transportation commissioner, at the end of 2008. Janette had already made a name for herself as a change agent by making much of Times Square into a pedestrian zone. Janette and I shared a lot of ideas, both during this meeting and after, but perhaps the most important thing she told me was to think of many of our projects as “pilots,” if not in name then by approach. This strategy of experimentation and trial-and-error resonated with me. Moreover, it was cost-effective, because we could use cheap materials and fast action by internal teams to show a project’s worth and build a constituency, and then find the funds to make it permanent later on. This also meshed perfectly with my “fail fast” start-up philosophy, and also with my life philosophy more broadly: It’s okay to make mistakes, just make them as quickly as possible and learn from them. We also discussed the importance of documenting your work and publicly stating your goals in a way that government traditionally shied away from: short-term, milestone-based targets to measure against. Again, this was a perfect fit with the private-sector yearly strategic and budget plans that I was used to.

—23—

Gabe Klein, Secretary Ray LaHood, and Mayor Adrian Fenty opening the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (Vikrum Dave Aiyer)

As a new guy with no experience in government, planning, or engineering, I set about asking a lot of questions, many of them “dumb” questions that would have seemed obvious to anyone who had spent time in municipal transportation. I got different reactions from people. The technical “experts” gave me an eye roll and must have thought, “Who hired this guy who doesn’t even understand the federal funding formulas?” Others were delighted at the prospect of a refreshing, energized, and youthful director who didn’t mind baring his lack —24—

LESSON #1

of knowledge about the bureaucracy he had walked into, but was also asking everyone for input on his agenda. I had hundreds of conversations, with my assistants, the heads of the divisions, and everyone in between, asking, “What do you think is important that we do, that we don’t currently do?” I gathered small groups that cut across the agency and presented my rapidly growing vision for the next two years. People seemed to really appreciate being heard as well as the idea of increasing the pace of change. When I started talking to people about the detriment of saying “no” to new ideas and instead encouraging staff, and the public, to float any idea they saw as worthwhile, I got a bifurcated response: excitement at this attitude from the planning group and the communications and government relations folks, and then an “ugh” from the engineers and civil technicians. I knew that some of the best ideas were going to come from laypeople, those who live, work, and play in their own neighborhood. We needed to engage and empower them.

The combination of trying new ideas, failing fast, and doing low-cost pilot projects was a lot for some people to stomach, even for me as I tried to learn all of the government protocols. In my first few months, I bungled a few things (following my own philosophy as much as possible). At one point, shortly after starting, I accidentally contradicted the mayor in the Washington Post regarding the funding of late-night Metro subway service from the Washington Nationals stadium. In hindsight, this mistake wasn’t that big a deal, but at the time, it felt like a critical error. The mayor called me. I apologized profusely for not paying attention to his stated policy and told him it would not happen again. He —25—

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responded, “All that matters is that you are willing to take responsibility for a mistake and move forward.” When your boss has your back, it gives you the freedom to take risks and experiment more boldly. My boss’s great example reinforced my own resolve to experiment.

Richard Branson, in his autobiography, Losing My Virginity, tells a great story about the redesign of the interior of the Virgin Atlantic fleet in the 1990s.

When Virgin started installing the new interiors on the planes, a host of design problems surfaced, the sum of which cost Virgin millions of dollars as they struggled to salvage the overhaul. However, instead of firing the designer responsible for the snafu, Branson did just the opposite. He asked the same person to design the interior again, and this time, to succeed and prove himself.

The designer did just that, and the resulting interior proved to be a seminal, award-winning design, as well as one that could have been carried out only by an eternally grateful, loyal employee hell-bent on salvaging his own reputation.

I knew that some of the best ideas were going to come from laypeople . . . We needed to engage and empower them.

—26—

LESSON #1

Learning the hard way: The Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes snafu There are, unfortunately, times in management when you must assert your leadership by altering a design, critiquing a plan, or prodding your staff to do more by elevating expectations. Yet most often, whether you are the manager or the managed, such errors and misgivings provide opportunities for teachable moments.

Shortly into the first year of my tenure as DDOT director, I heeded a challenge put forth to me by Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Portland, Oregon. A stalwart of the sustainable transportation field for decades, Blumenauer had long fantasized about a bike lane on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, and the national and local statement that it would make about the importance of active transportation.

As a student of history who was also working on the streetcar system vision and plan for Washington, D.C., I knew that the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue had once carried a streetcar line. This was, in fact, the last streetcar to run in Washington, D.C., before it shut down in 1962. In the original 1791 plan for the District by Pierre L’Enfant, the avenue had been designed as a grand boulevard with a park running along its center. This and many other proposals had gone unrealized (or been erased), leaving, in the wake of the streetcar’s removal, an asphalt expanse commonly used as a staging ground for government vehicles.

Pennsylvania Avenue wasn’t ideal for conventional bike lanes. There were constant right turns and poor sight lines, and the overall width of the street —27—

The bike lanes went in on Pennsylvania Avenue where the streetcar lines historically had been (shown here in 1919). (Ken Booth/Shorpy)

made cyclists along the curb feel exposed. Although traditional bike lanes proved inadequate in concept, the center median presented an intriguing possibility for experimentation. Not one of the engineers said, “It can’t be done.” So we went forward with the project full speed.

I consulted Mayor Fenty on the project early on. He said that he was fine with the lanes in concept as long as they were safe and aesthetically suited —28—

LESSON #1

Pennsylvania Avenue’s stature as a grand boulevard. He embraced the idea of using the empty space in the middle that once housed the streetcar. Over the course of several months, we met internally with our bike lane task force that crosscut the agency and had planners and engineers working together to further develop this and other bike lane projects. I made regular appearances at these weekly meetings to reinforce the importance of Pennsylvania Avenue, monitor progress, and make sure that the engineers were saying “how” instead of “no.”

With my broad portfolio of projects, including the 11th Street bridges, myriad streetscapes, and a new D.C. streetcar, I took my eye off the ball for a month or so as the bike lanes reached final design. Our staff and consultants had finalized the engineering and were ready to go into construction. The last I had looked at the schematic, we were 80 percent of the way there and everything looked fine.

There are many lessons to be learned from this project, and the first is to regularly check in on major milestones with your team. I failed to see the design decisions at 90 percent and 100 percent completion, and I paid the price for my mistake.

As the crews started scraping up the old markings and setting down the new ones along the first three-block segment, I received an urgent call from the city administrator. Something didn’t look right with the new bike lanes. He told me to come down to see it ASAP. Then Mayor Fenty called me and said, “Director, I don’t think this is what we talked about, you need to come down here and see what they are doing.” I called the team, told them to stop, and went down to —29—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

the site, the United States’ “Champs Élysées,” and the center of the universe for American politics.

To my horror, the design being applied to the street looked completely different than what I had last seen, and instead of taking the center median as had

The botched Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (Stephen Davis)

—30—

LESSON #1

been agreed upon, the engineers left this space empty, and instead took one travel lane on either side of the median space. I was mortified. I had unintentionally deceived my boss and all of our other stakeholders, including those at the federal level. Worse, these bike lanes were completely unsafe and obtrusive.

Why? Drivers were instinctively driving down the auto lane–width bike lanes, which could hardly be differentiated from the travel lanes that were there beforehand. How could this have possibly happened!?

By the time I called the crews to stop working, they had already striped three blocks of the avenue and the blowback was coming. Taxi drivers, AAA, reporters, and council members in the Wilson Building were all asking, “What the hell is this, Gabe?” They had caught me with my pants so far down that I broke a cardinal rule: I tried to defend DDOT and the current design to the mayor, the city administrator, and others, rather than admit my lack of oversight and move on right away.

So what had happened? As best as I can tell, the consultant designer/engineers, our planners, and our traffic engineers had a massive groupthink lapse.

While I had been preoccupied with other projects, they had reverted back to an earlier idea, and what they knew versus what was possible, convincing themselves and each other that this was the better way to do the project. I failed as a leader by neglecting to check their work when I knew I should have on such a highly visible and symbolic project. As built, the design was politically untenable, aesthetically inadequate, and to the average rider, patently unsafe, even though this was the primary objective of the project.

—31—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

Sometimes things look one way on paper, or work from a technical standpoint, but prove disastrous when implemented. Laypeople, those without the credentials or the signatures or the jargon, often catch these fatal flaws immediately on sight. In this case, our team, fearing the unprecedented, had taken two travel lanes and turned them into bike lanes at close to the same width, rather than reusing the median as a center path. Cars didn’t know what to do, bicyclists were overexposed, and the median—the ingenious centerpiece of the project—remained conspicuously empty, still as hollow as the day the streetcars had been removed in the early sixties.

The mayor was concerned about the botched design and rollout, but I found out from Neil Albert, the current city administrator, that Mayor Fenty was equally concerned about bursting my creative bubble and dampening my enthusiasm. Here I had defended the failed design, even after he’d given me the creative freedom to carry it out with little oversight. Now I was blown away by his empathy as a boss, even with my poor handling of our mistakes. But there was no time to reflect. Rumors were flying among advocates and bloggers that the mayor had stopped the project in its tracks. The Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes were news—and a growing embarrassment instead of the great story they should have been. Facing the media and the politics and all of these mistakes, I did what any transportation director with no planning or engineering degree would do—I personally began redesigning it on the street, in real time, with my deputy director, Terry Bellamy, and our team that had put together the original design. We had to scrape up the brand new thermoplastic markings that we —32—

LESSON #1

had just put down and move everything into the central median as originally planned.

I slowly backtracked with a very patient mayor and assured his team that we would fix it expeditiously. The mayor’s office had our back with the press and constituents. Then we hit a second roadblock. The consultant engineer on the project adamantly refused to sign off on the redesign, meaning that the project lacked the approval of a certified engineer. I was blown away. He insisted that the bikes would conflict with pedestrians at the intersections, even though the alternative he and our team had put forth instead placed them in conflict with 4,000-pound metal vehicles. We certified the project ourselves and moved forward.

Mayor Adrian Fenty shaking hands with Minnesota congressman Jim Oberstar at the opening of the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (Kurt Raschke, Flickr)

—33—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

The Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes opened to great fanfare in June 2010.

Representative Blumenauer, U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, House Transportation Chair Jim Oberstar, Ward 2 council member Jack Evans, and my boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, all came out with their bikes, rode it, and beamed during the ribbon cutting. Equally important, the team members and consultants that had made design mistakes, then corrections, and re-implemented the project in record time, also celebrated its success.

The completed Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (Elvert Barnes, Flickr) —34—

Kids enjoying the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (Elvert Barnes)

In the end, the mayor called me out on my mistakes, and then gave me the opportunity to fix them. As a result, we had one of the best ribbon cuttings of our tenure. I learned a lot of lessons from Adrian Fenty about having your team’s back, letting them screw up, getting back on track, and celebrating their ultimate successes. My own failure and redemption on the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes project perfectly reflected my inherent support for risk taking that I needed to inspire in DDOT staff.

—35—

S TA R T - U P C I T Y

You need to push boundaries and undermine the status quo, or your work reverts to the codes, regulations, and standards that have become the caricature of bureaucracies. What’s worse is that these standards often fail us, as they did in this instance, because they fail to encapsulate the dynamism of the city, the potential for engineers to creatively solve new problems, and the capacity of our citizens to see and embrace change. Today, Pennsylvania Avenue is a complete street with bike lanes, as it was once a street with streetcars, and may once have been a street with a tree-lined median (but never was). DDOT staff is still improving the project to this day and, after much prodding by the public, including yours truly, recently installed physical separation along almost the entire corridor. Years from now, another transportation director may change this street, the symbolic heart of American politics, yet again. I should hope so, for this will prove that our society continues to slough off its old skin and old habits in favor of new ones.

The ability to be open-minded and try new things often comes down to personality profiles. Mayor Fenty and I demanded that we change the way we did business in Washington and DDOT even when members of my own team dissented.

Because the public was also demanding change and we were servants of the public, we persevered, and my tenure oversaw positive transformation on the ground.

Notes 1

Rory Carroll, “Silicon Valley’s culture of failure… and ‘the walking dead’ it leaves behind,” The Guardian, June 28, 2014; http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/28/silicon-valley-startup-failure-culture-success-myth —36—

LESSON #1

Pennsylvania Ave Bike Lane LESSON #1 The Making of America’s Complete Main Street 1 Until the 1960s, trolleys ran down the center of Pennsylvania Avenue, running past the White House to the Capitol.

2 The initial installation of the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes forwent the planned center-running design for a “safer” removal of two traffic lanes.

3 Untenable for many reasons,

The story of the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lane (Infographic by Kate Chanba and David Vega-Barachowitz)

most significant being safety of cyclists dodging confused cars, the project was redesigned to the original plan, on the street, in record time.

—37—

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“Start-Up City is a must read for anyone interested in making positive change in our cities.”

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Part inspiration, part how to; learn how the public sector can get projects done quickly and have fun.

ISBN: 9781610916905 Paperback: $22.00 NOW $17.60 October 2015

Gabe Klein is the former DOT director under Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration in Chicago and former Director of the District DOT under Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. Before working in local government, Klein worked at a few startups, including Zipcar. In 2015, in addition to his other roles, he joined Fontinalis Partners as an SVP (Special Venture Partner) on their new fund. Klein continues to advise a number of technology/transportation startups including Transit Screen and Phone2Action, where he provides leadership on strategy. He is on the board of NACTO and Streetsblog.

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Doing More Using Less 3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

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How Solar Power Can Make Affordable Housing More Resilient Laurie Mazur

Originally published October 14, 2015 on Grist.org

W

hen you think of residential solar power, you might envision an upscale home in Marin County, or a compound in rural Idaho.

You probably don’t think of low-income apartment buildings in the outer boroughs of New York City. But that’s exactly where new solar technologies can do the most good.

Remember Superstorm Sandy? Three years ago, when Sandy slammed New York, thousands of low-income apartment-dwellers found themselves in high-rise hell. Many lost power and heat—in some cases, for weeks or months. Lacking functional elevators, the elderly and disabled were stranded without food, water, and medicine.

Solar power with battery backup storage systems (solar + storage) would have been a lifeline in that crisis—and it could prevent the next one. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the Clean Energy Group, a national nonprofit that works to increase access to clean energy technologies.

The report, “Resilience for Free: How Solar + Storage Could Protect Multifamily Affordable Housing from Power Outages at Little or No Net Cost,” looked at data for buildings in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. to examine the financial case for installing solar + storage systems in multifamily affordable housing. It found that—given the plummeting cost of solar power and the introduction of game-changing backup batteries—the time is now for solar + storage in affordable housing.

“This analysis shows us something we didn’t expect—these new resilient power technologies can make economic sense for building owners to install now, not years from now,” said coauthor Lewis Milford, president of the Clean Energy Group and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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Milford and his colleagues ran the numbers and determined that solar + storage can reduce operating costs in affordable housing, and even generate revenue where markets permit. And, with payback periods as short as a few years, solar + storage can be implemented at no net cost over the lifetime of a project. You got that right: It’s basically free.

For those who live in, own, or manage affordable housing, the potential benefits are substantial. Solar + storage can provide crisis-proof power for essential services like water booster pumps (so people on upper floors can drink and flush), lighting, fire alarms, elevators, and heating and cooling.

That can allow people to “shelter in place” during an emergency—reducing the human and financial costs of a disaster. And (bonus!) by reducing carbon emissions, solar power helps mitigate climate change, reducing the likelihood of future climate disasters.

Crucially, solar + storage can increase the resilience of those most at risk. Low-income, vulnerable populations—those requiring supportive services—have the most to lose in a disaster: They often lack the income, savings, insurance, and access to information needed to recover from the adverse impacts of disruptive weather events. These vulnerable residents have the most to gain, then, from technologies that can keep them in their homes with the lights on.

And yet, to date, “big solar” companies like SolarCity and Tesla have focused primarily on large-scale, private, commercial customers who want to reduce their utility bills. The challenge now is to make sure that the huge benefits of solar with battery storage flow where they are needed most.

“Policymakers should implement more targeted incentive programs to encourage solar + storage deployment in low-income communities now, so we don’t wait another decade for the benefits of these technologies to trickle down to the those in need, as happened with stand-alone solar,” said Seth Mullendore, a project manager at Clean Energy Group and coauthor of the report.

As the authors of “Resilience for Free” conclude, “There is now no economic or technical excuse to leave low-income and vulnerable people at risk.”

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RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

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nterested in learning more about urban resilience in the era of climate change? Resilience Matters 2016: Sustainable, Equitable Solutions is an

e-book compilation of articles, blog posts, and opeds from the Urban Resilience Project in 2016.

E-BOOK: FREE PAGES: 164 PUBLISHED: JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9781610918657

Highlights include: •

Like Under a Trump Presidency •

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Malign Neglect? What Will Urban Policy Look What Can the Abolitionists Teach Us About Climate Change?

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People Power: How Residents of Northern Manhattan are Creating an Energy Revolution

•

If Roads Are Gridlocked in Rush Hour, What Happens When Disaster Strikes?

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Bee Bans and More: How Food Laws Sting Producers

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Green Farming Blue Fishing 3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Speakers: Moderator: Jeremy Jackson, Senior Scientist, Smithsonian Brandon Dennison, Exec. Director, Coalfield Development Corp.

David Festa, Senior Vice President, Environmental Defense Fund Jeff Moyer, Executive Director, Rodale Institute Sarah Redmond, entrepreneur, innovator, and seaweed farmer, Sorrento Seaweed David Rosenberg, CEO and Co-founder of AeroFarms

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Tear Down That Fence: A Tale of Urban Farms and the Barriers in Their Way Dwane Jones

Originally published December 20, 2016 in The Afro

W

hen applied to scenic farms nestled in quiet rural country-sides, the maxim “good fences make good neighbors” might ring true.

But that’s not always the case when you’re trying to build an urban farm. As essential as they can be, we actually find more than a few barriers in their way.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about fences and barriers in my role as Director of the University of the District of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development & Resilience inside the Columbia College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability, and Environmental Sciences. We call it “CAUSES” for short. In that role, I work on introducing urban agriculture to some of Washington, D.C.’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Given the large amount of vacant properties and unused space in many underserved urban areas (cities like Baltimore and Detroit come to mind), it may sound easy. But it’s not. Case in point: In 2015, CAUSES leased three acres of vacant property directly across the street from a Metro stop in D.C.’s struggling Ward 7 to construct the East Capitol Urban Farm. A partnership between several agencies and organizations, East Capitol Urban Farm is the District’s largest-scale urban agriculture and aquaponics facility. It’s an ambitious effort to bring healthy produce to an underserved area of the District.

We began planning the project in early 2015. During the University’s initial site visit, the first order of business was to determine how we would actually walk the vacant parcel—considering the 8-foot high chain link 66

tear down that fence: a tale of urban farms and the barriers in their way • 67

fence surrounding it. Residential properties surround the site on the south and west. The Capitol Heights Metro stop is on the east and a vacant parcel is to the north.

That parcel, incidentally, was under construction at the time for use by Wal-Mart. That project was shelved at the lot stayed empty.

What seemed like a straightforward walk through the site became much more complicated since we didn’t have a key to the gate. Searching for a way in, the team eventually climbed over a wall and through a small opening to access the site. But the physical barrier of the fence and our valiant attempts at scaling it led to much deeper questions. What social implications did such a fence have in Ward 7? What was the purpose of erecting it? How was it interpreted or perceived by the community?

We came to realize that the chain link fence, while probably erected as a safety measure, sent a powerful message of exclusion to people in the neighborhood. It’s a message that echoes the larger story of access and food security in places like Ward 7. For a long time, society has sent a message (intentional or not) to underrepresented populations that fresh, local produce, as well as access to community-oriented landscapes, is out of reach—or, at best, a real challenge to access. The nature of fencing, in this case, may play a role in how the urban farm is perceived and utilized.

So, in our first major site planning for East Capitol Urban Farm, when someone asked “Where do we start?” I couldn’t help but recall those now-famous words from former President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech to West Berliners: “Tear down that wall!” I quickly responded: “Let’s tear down the fence. It sends the message to keep out or stay away.

“That’s the very opposite of what we intend.”

Rather than continue limiting community access, we eventually erected a 4-ft. high wrought iron fence to encompass a portion of the farm which set a boundary around the different zones contained within the space.

Since then, the gates are always unlocked and the community has access to the farm from sunrise to sunset, seven days a week.

East Capitol Urban Farm is now embraced, supported, and operated by its community. Removing barriers has afforded Ward 7 residents the

68 • section ii: health, food, and water

opportunity to: plant over 3,600 produce plants; operate 70 garden spaces; engage over 300 D.C. Public School Students in over 2,500 hours of trade learning; launch a Farmers Market; and employ (part-time) three residents and three UDC students.

As an urban planner and designer, I’ve always had a certain fascination with neighborhoods and communities, and the boundaries that surround and define them. I particularly remember those early years of my undergraduate program in Urban Planning at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, where we dissected scholarly articles on the pros and cons of “gated communities”—surrounded by fences that act as barriers to the larger world. In the case of East Capitol Urban Farm, the fence merely delineates a boundary, a line that outlines the zones of each portion of the farm. It does not represent limitations on a better quality of life.

For the people of Ward 7, this is a very crucial and important distinction that removes one barrier at a time.

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RESILIENCE MATTERS 2015 Foreword by Laurie Mazur

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nterested in learning more about urban resilience in the era of climate change?

Resilience Matters: Forging a Greener, Fairer Future for All is an e-book compilation of articles, blog posts, and op-eds from the Urban Resilience Project in 2015.

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• Tackling the “Wicked Problem” of Urban Street Planning • In Defense of Density: Rethinking Jane Jacobs in the Era of Climate Change • Got Food? How Local Food Systems Can Build Resilience for Turbulent Times • Can We Talk? Here’s the Conversation African-Americans Need to Have About Climate Change Visit www.islandpress.org/resilience-mattersdownload to download your free copy.

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Speakers: Moderator: Ginette Hemley, Senior Vice President, WWF Kathleen Gobush, Senior Program Officer and Wildlife Biologist, Vulcan Kali Holder, Morris Animal Foundation Global Health Fellow with Smithsonian’s Global Health Program David Lodge, Director, Cornell's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Ted Schmitt, Senior Program Manager, Vulcan Sam Wasser, Director, Conservation Biology, University of Washington

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Natural Defense

Natural Defense Enlisting Bugs and Germs to Protect Our Food and Health

Emily Monosson

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright © 2017 Emily Monosson All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036 Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957614 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: antibiotics, pesticide resistance, microbiome, genomics, viruses, blight, GMO, pathogen, phage, fecal transplant, machine learning

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Natural Allies: Our Bacterial Protectors 5 Chapter 2. Natural Allies: Microbial Farmhands 25 Chapter 3. The Enemy of Our Enemy Is Our Friend: Infecting the Infection 41 Chapter 4. The Enemy of Our Enemy Is Our Friend: Replacing Pesticides with Nature’s Chemistry 59 Chapter 5. Provocation: Disease-Resistant GMOs 77 Chapter 6. Provocation: The Next Generation of Vaccines? 95 Chapter 7. Know Thine Enemy: Images of Disease 113 Chapter 8. Know Thine Enemy: The Future of Diagnostics 131 Epilogue 149 Notes 155 Index 181

Chapter 3

The Enemy of Our Enemy Is Our Friend: Infecting the Infection A toddler suddenly becomes deathly ill. In the ER she is diagnosed with dysentery, caused by a rare but particularly aggressive form of Salmonella. One antibiotic after another fails because the strain, picked up when her family was traveling across Asia, resists multiple antibiotics; but there is an alternative new drug. Like a guided missile, the drug targets this particular strain of Salmonella. Not only that, but as long as Salmonella remains, the drug particles replicate, increasing in number until the infection subsides. Despite the carnage, the toddler’s gut microbiome remains unharmed—no need for probiotics or fear of complications like C. diff. If the Salmonella responds by evolving resistance, the drug may respond in turn, engaging in an ages-old evolutionary dance. By the next morning, the color returns to her cheeks.

By evening, she is cured.

While still a fantasy here in the United States, scenarios like this have been playing out in Eastern European hospitals and clinics for nearly a century. The “new” drug is a cocktail of viruses called bacteriophages (known simply “phage therapy”) that attack bacteria. It is a cure nearly

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as old as life—at least as old as bacteria. Microbiologists have suggested that for every strain of bacteria on Earth, from the oceans to those populating our own microbiomes, there is at least one, if not multiple bacteriophages. We are fast becoming desperate for new antimicrobials that are both effective and that cause minimal damage to our own microbiomes. Bacteriophages are potent antimicrobials. Once disparaged here in the United States and in Western medicine in general, these bacteriainfecting viruses are making their way back into academic and biotech laboratories. If all goes well, they may be coming to a pharmacy near you.1

It’s Only a Phage While we have been slow to recognize the benefits of bacteria, we are even farther behind when it comes to viruses. Essentially tiny bits of genetic material wrapped in protein, viruses are so minuscule that they slipped through the early ceramic filters designed to isolate bacteria.

And so as nineteenth-century medical scientists began identifying one pathogenic bacterium after another, viruses remained undiscovered, indistinguishable from any of the common molecules or particles in lab solutions—except that these “particles” could replicate and seemingly thrived on living tissues. Like spirits, they were invisible, enigmatic, and potentially deadly. Despite the medical and technological advances that were made throughout the golden age of microbiology, viruses continued to cause havoc. One of the most notorious outbreaks was the great influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed tens of millions of men, women, and children—possibly over a hundred million.

What exactly these infectious particles were—animal, vegetable, mineral, or none of the above—would remain a mystery for decades.

“When viruses were found to possess the ability to reproduce and to mutate, there was a definite tendency to regard them as very small living organisms,” wrote Wendell Stanley upon receiving the 1935 Nobel

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

Prize for his role in revealing their nature.2 Yet even Stanley was initially reluctant to acknowledge that viruses were not just bits of protein, but also, at their core, contained some genetic material.3 It is that bit of genetic material that makes them so relevant to our lives. Eighty years later, we know that Earth is teeming with viruses, some causing us to sniffle and sneeze, others killing within hours. We know that they are parasites: they not only invade a cell but use the cell’s machinery to essentially clone themselves, sometimes leaving the infected cell in tatters as hundreds of new viruses emerge, sometimes leaving bits of their own genetic material behind, embedded within the host’s own genome. Most of these bits are harmless, some are helpful, and a relative few are harmful. We now know there are a billion viruses in a teaspoon of ocean water and trillions living within us.4 And we know that, throughout our existence, viruses have woven in and out of life—leaving their stamp on most if not all living things. By some accounts, up to 8 percent of our genetic material came to us by way of viruses.5 Yet, for all the fear and harm we associate with viruses, many (if not most) are phages, infecting bacteria, like those in our microbiome.

Genomics is just beginning to reveal the diversity and representations of these entities in nature and within our bodies.6 But the role that phages can serve as potent antimicrobials is no mystery. As infectious agents of bacteria, they are a normal and pervasive component of Earth’s flora.

When directed toward human pathogens they can save lives. One day they just might save us or our loved ones—as they did more than half a century ago when phage treatment saved Gary Schoolnik’s mother.

Schoolnik, an emeritus professor of medicine at Stanford University with a specialty in infectious disease, tells the story of his mother as she was dying from typhoid fever in 1948. At the time there were no antibiotics effective against the particular Salmonella bacterium that caused the disease. His father, a Seattle surgeon, had read about some doctors in

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Los Angeles using bacteriophage to cure typhoid. Desperate for a cure, Schoolnik’s father contacted the group, acquired the phage, and injected his wife. Within two days, her fever disappeared.7 This was a time when antibiotics were becoming the symbol of modern medical success, but typhoid was still one of the last holdouts. When an effective antibiotic was finally discovered, any enthusiasm for phage quickly waned. The therapy also suffered from conflicting reports about efficacy, poorly controlled clinical studies, and a lack of quality control by companies producing phage. As a result, the science of healing with viruses, writes Anna Kuchment, in her aptly titled book The Forgotten Cure, “had been all but forgotten in the West.” Now, though, Western scientists and physicians are trying to bring the therapy back to the American pharmacopeia, but doing so means navigating what has—for good reason—become a rigorous and expensive drug approval process under the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This process, though, is also relatively rigid, so that even if phages were to pass efficacy and safety trials with flying colors, roadblocks to approval would remain.

The drug-testing gauntlet set up by our FDA was designed to test chemicals, with dosages based on chemical concentrations, taking into consideration absorption, distribution, excretion, and the safety of specific molecular structures. FDA approval is thus also based on well-defined dosages and known chemical makeup. But phages don’t work that way. They may be administered in huge numbers and in combination cocktails, depending on the infection—and they may replicate within their host. This explains, in part, why phages are not yet an option for treatment of human disease here in the United States.

And why, rather than more stories like Mrs. Schoolnik’s, instead we have more recent tales of desperate patients like Laura Roberts, a Texas mother who suffered from a chronic and nearly lethal infection caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In 2006, after

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

being told that it was time to get her affairs in order, Roberts, who has shared her story in books and magazines, as well as on CNN, traveled to the Phage Therapy Center in Tbilisi, Georgia, a world-renowned center for developing the therapy.8 As she tells it, she made the trip using a walker and with her brother for support, her body frail and under attack.

After three weeks of treatment, including phages specific for her MRSA strains, Roberts left for home—sans walker.9 While the combination of treatments Roberts received makes it difficult to give the phage mixture all the credit, it likely played a significant part in curing her.10 Shigellosis—a severe form of bacterial dysentery—was the first human disease targeted with phage therapy. Working around the turn of the twentieth century, microbiologists Félix d’Herelle, a French Canadian, and Frederick Twort, an Englishman, discovered (independently of each other) an invisible agent that made bacteria magically disappear. D’Herelle continued to study the oddity, eventually pitting the mysterious cure against dysentery. After ensuring that the therapy was safe by ingesting phage (he did so along with other willing participants), d’Herelle cured his first young patient, a twelve-year-old suffering from severe dysentery, with phage collected from the feces of infected soldiers. The results were miraculous. The fever and characteristic bloody stools subsided within twenty-four hours.11 He repeated the treatment on three other desperate young patients, with similar success. Within a decade, phage therapies, packaged into oral, injectable, and topical medications, were treating infections due to Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, and cholera bacteria, with varying degrees of success. Phage cocktails, or mixtures, ensured that despite (or, in some cases because of ) the phage’s specificity and the lack of rapid accurate diagnosis, treatments would be effective. Pharmaceutical companies on both sides of the Atlantic—including Abbott Labs, Squibb, and Eli Lilly here in the United States—joined in, developing various phage therapies of their own. D’Herelle’s work was recognized with multiple nominations for

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the Nobel Prize in Medicine.12 But then came antibiotics. And the Cold War. And, it should be noted, poor practices by some pharmaceutical companies: commercial products in the United States were often found to be lacking in potency. Finally, a couple of damning reviews in the esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association helped to close the door on phage therapy in Western medicine.13 Meanwhile, Eastern European countries continued to refine the therapy. Researchers understood that bacteria evolve resistance under pressure from killer viruses, but viruses evolve even faster. Phage cocktails could be updated as newly resistant bacterial strains emerged. Today, in at least some parts of the world, such treatments continue to heal.

Elizabeth Kutter, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, has devoted her career to the study of bacteriophages.

Speaking about phage therapy at the International Conference on Biotherapy in 2010, Kutter assured the audience that, yes, “it’s a real thing.”

The therapy, says Kutter, is targeted, self-replicating, can penetrate more deeply into infections than antibiotics, can evolve, and can even behave as an “infectious cure,” spreading from one infected animal to another.14 After working on basic bacteriophage research throughout the seventies and eighties, Kutter was first introduced to phage treatment in what was still, in 1990, the Soviet Union. At first, recalls Kutter, she was suspicious. “I thought, you know, if nobody is using it anywhere and if I’ve never heard of it, how could it be true?” Kutter has since become a proponent, devoting her laboratory to phage therapy research, hosting conferences on the topic, and collaborating with research organizations. Today, more-powerful and less-expensive DNA sequencing means that infections can be more accurately diagnosed, and their associated phages more readily identified. Phage “banks” provide an opportunity for responding to infections with individualized cocktails.15 Yet, without an approved therapy here in the United States, one version or another of Laura Roberts’s story continues to play out, with

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

patients traveling to places like the Phage Therapy Center in Tbilisi for a cure. In 2015, out of options and desperate, Suzanna, a forty-threeyear-old Chicago mother, took the plunge and, like Roberts, traveled across the Atlantic. For five years she had been suffering from incessant sinus and bronchial infections; a slew of different antibiotics provided no relief. Surgery didn’t help either. “I was given hope that all would heal,” she says of the surgical option, but after surgery the symptoms not only persisted but grew worse over time.16 Two years later she was diagnosed with MRSA, but doctors had no good suggestions about how to overcome it. Miserable from her symptoms in addition to having developed allergies to many medications and foods, Suzanna says she had nearly given up when her husband came to the rescue: “My husband found Chris Smith [founder of Phage Therapy International] and the Phage Therapy Center in Tbilisi. I was skeptical but willing to try anything to feel better and overcome MRSA.” After doing some due diligence, Suzanna decided she had nothing to lose by giving the therapy a try. For ten days, she shuttled between her hotel room and, across the street, the Phage Therapy Center, where she was subjected to a combination of therapies, including phage therapy and also immune therapy to boost her immune response, that were designed to treat MRSA and root out the rampant candidiasis she had developed after years on antibiotics. (Candida yeasts, like C. diff, are a notoriously opportunistic group of microbes that can grow out of control in response to antibacterial treatment.) She was also treated for Klebsiella, another microbe that had apparently slipped past her own doctors in the United States. Each day, she spent two hours at the clinic and then rested at the hotel, where Suzanna says she “drank fluids and inhaled or nebulized with phages.” Within days, she was feeling better.

By day nine, both her sinus and any intestinal problems she’d been having cleared up. “I came back to the US and surprised my doctor with my general appearance,” she says. “We then tested again three months later

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to find that the MRSA and Klebsiella were nonexistent. . . . It is a story of a second chance. My entire life turned around after being made well.”

Stories like Laura’s and Suzanna’s are hard to ignore, even for practitioners of traditional Western medicine, or drug developers, or regulators. In 2013, the European Commission funded a large study testing phage against skin infections that commonly plague burn patients.17 Results are expected in 2017.18 In 2016, AmpliPhi Biosciences, a biomedical firm headquartered in San Diego, California, that is just one of many companies hoping to bring phage therapies to market, reported that they had a couple of phage products in the early phases of clinical trials. And in June of 2015, Randall Kincaid, senior scientific officer at the National Institutes of Health, organized a meeting of international bacteriophage scientists, entrepreneurs, and regulators hailing from the United States, France, Georgia, China, and elsewhere.19 Ever since heading up a US Department of Defense program in 2009 to counteract possible attacks with engineered bacteria, Kincaid has been thinking about phages. “There are ten- to fifty-fold more phages than bacteria in nature. They are very successful. If there are concerns about (engineered) anthrax, then there must be a collection of phages that can attack it.” So what’s the holdup here in the United States and other Western countries? In a word, research.

“The conclusion from the conference,” says Kincaid, “is largely that many treatment effects are poorly documented”—at least in Western terms. Here in the United States, drug testing, particularly once it moves into human trials, requires randomized, blind studies where physicians don’t know whether they are providing the test drug or a drug that is already approved. Kincaid explains that in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and in Poland, the studies are not done this way. “Not that they are not credible,” he says, “but they didn’t apply the same standards to evaluating the treatment . . . so there is skepticism that they would be broadly useful.” That is one key to turning phage into drugs: dem-

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

onstrating that they are effective in treating an infection again and again and again. But such skepticism may be quelled with sufficient attention: more funding, testing, and interest in developing phage therapy. And the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria may well be the factor that will move phage from Eastern Europe to a hospital near you.

Doctors at Tbilisi’s Phage Therapy Center were able to treat Laura Roberts’s and Suzanna’s infections with a customized phage mixture, but this kind of customization doesn’t yet fit into the FDA framework.

“This is an ultimate view of precision medicine,” says Kincaid, “but from a product point of view and a regulatory point of view, that is a much different way of looking at the world.” This wouldn’t be the first odd duck that the FDA must regulate. Because influenza viruses are notorious for evolving, each year we are offered a new flu vaccine. The active ingredients are viruses (either inactivated, live, or fragmented).

New combinations are prepared, depending on the prevailing and predicted flu strains. For decades, the FDA has worked with vaccine producers to ensure safe, effective vaccines. How this model might apply to a product like phage is anyone’s guess. But like flu vaccines, phage therapy may require some modification of the cocktail over time in order to “adapt” to bacterial resistance. As phage-therapy products make their way through the testing and clinical trial phase here in the United States, developers will soon be knocking on FDA’s door. (Testing aside, there are other issues, too, like intellectual property rights. Nature cannot be patented, and while patent applications for phages are piling up here in the United States, it is unclear how these therapies will be handled by American patent offices. If pharmaceutical companies don’t own the exclusive rights to manufacture brand-name phages, it could deter investment in research. Perhaps in this case, need will win out over profits.)

While a drug must work it must also be relatively safe. No one wants another thalidomide—the sleep aid that caused an epidemic of

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deformed limbs in newborns in the 1960s; it was approved elsewhere in the world, but not the United States. Phages, though, are not synthetic drugs, nor are they human pathogens. Our bodies are already teeming with phages. Many are engaged in an age-old battle with bacteria in our guts, our mouths, or on our skin, helping to keep dominant and beneficial species in check, and ensuring microbial diversity.20 If we are squeamish about being exposed to a live virus intentionally, we would do well to recall that we’ve been ingesting them for decades in processed meats and cheeses, in addition to whatever viruses we encounter naturally. Phages used for infecting food-borne pathogens like Listeria and Salmonella have been “generally recognized as safe” (that is, “GRAS”) by the US Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies around the world for years. And, of course, they are 100 percent organic.21 In fact, says Kincaid, “what it says to me is that in other parts of world, phages have the ability to solve other types of problems, perhaps in some ways more important to human health initially than the actual treatment of disease.”

Still, until phage therapy passes regulatory muster, Western physicians will continue to yearn for the treatment, perhaps ordering phages from afar and using them at their own risk. And patients in need will suffer the consequences, whether from a treatment in need of some regulatory oversight or for lack of a treatment that could save their life.22 As we embrace our microbiomes, we are increasingly trying to understand how complex societies of bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microbes interact. How can one strain or species be controlled, without indiscriminate destruction? Bacteriophages are one way. But there are others.

“Nature,” says Kincaid, “has provided us with a great deal. We could try and leverage that.”

Chemical Warfare, Naturally Another treatment to emerge from nature’s bounty is a group of highly specific killer proteins called bacteriocins. University of Massachusetts

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

microbial ecologist Margaret (Peg) Riley has studied bacteriocins for most of her thirty years in research. Much of her work has focused on ecology and evolution. But now, like Elizabeth Kutter, Riley is on a medical mission. Her goal is to infuse some ecology into disease treatment, to turn bacteriocins into medicine. “We are very ignorant of the biology of the microbial world,” she says, but with new approaches such as metagenomics and microbiome studies, “we are getting glimmers of a whole world full of wonder” and a world potentially full of cures.23 These small proteins, produced by the vast majority of microbes and active against closely related microbes, promise targeted destruction of infectious bacteria. Bacteriocins are like weapons in a fratricidal war.

One strain of E. coli against another strain of E. coli. Salmonella against Salmonella. Like phages, their power lies in their specificity: they are good for the microbiome and good for slowing the evolution of resistant bacteria.

“All of my early work had nothing to do with therapeutics,” explains Riley who, like a kid bursting with an idea, exuberantly turns to the whiteboard in her university office and begins sketching a diagram of how bacteriocins kill. What makes bacteriocins so specific and potent, she says, is not just the protein, but the ability of the cell on the receiving end to recognize the protein. It’s like a futuristic lock that attracts a key magnetically, and once the door is unlocked—that is, once the bacteriocin begins interacting with receptor proteins on the cell surface, it begins to cause structural changes. Pointing to the diagram, Riley says, “this killing bit right here can enter and form a pore and all the guts pour out.” Game over. “These are cool proteins,” she enthuses, and when Riley recalls her earlier encounters with bacteriocins, her eyes light up: “Wow, it looks like microbes are in constant warfare. I just thought that was amazing.” Eventually, a colleague suggested they might try to turn these bacterial weapons into therapeutics: an antidote to the menace of antibiotic resistance. But the work was slow going. The benefits of specificity notwithstanding, the market for a drug that treats only MRSA or

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only tuberculosis would be very narrow. There were other issues as well.

Proteins can be metabolized in the body and so put out of commission.

They may have a relatively short shelf life and, in many cases, would have to be injected. But now, with the very real threat of resistance, the new focus on maintaining the integrity of our microbiome, and a host of technological advances, the playing field has changed.

Earlier in her career, Riley and coworkers demonstrated how bacteriocins interact with their bacterial targets and how they promote intraspecies (“within-species”) diversity. Unlike the phage, which essentially clones itself once it attacks, microbes that produce bacteriocins make the ultimate sacrifice. “If you are carrying a bacteriocin, you die when you produce it. It is a very lethal weapon just to carry on your body. You lyse open [break apart] and release the bacteriocins. I think of it as form of bacterial altruism.” Cells that are closely related (bacteria reproduce mainly by cloning) will survive because they have genes for immunity. Any other strain will die, save for those very few that evolve resistance. But there is a cost to producing the deadly proteins and for becoming resistant; the result is a rock-paper-scissors kind of dynamic.

A producer strain kills the sensitive strain; the sensitive strain outcompetes the resistant strain; and the resistant strain beats the bacteriocin producer.24 Eventually the population reverts back to a sensitive strain.

It’s an uneasy balance that ensures diversity rather than the emergence of a single victorious strain. This complex dynamic plays out wherever bacterial communities exist, from the rhizobiome of plants to our guts, where coliforms, Salmonella, and others are probably lobbing bacteriocins at one another as you read. As with phages, we have a very long history of bacteriocin exposure.

Riley isn’t the only one singing the praises of bacteriocins. One bacteriocin in particular, nisin, has been added to our foods for decades.

Produced by strains of Lactococcus lactis bacteria, nisin is a common inhabitant of naturally fermented foods like pickles and yogurts. Unlike

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

many other bacteriocins, it is broadly active. This property, in combination with its “GRAS” designation by the US FDA, has turned the little protein into a modern-day food-preservation rock star.25 And well before that, for thousands of years our ancestors have unwittingly been in cahoots with Lactococcus and other fermentation bacteria. Lactobacilli on cabbages and cucumbers and in milk products churned out nisin that killed harmful bacteria like Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes (both of which can cause fatal infections, and in more modern times have triggered food recalls).26 It is an effective and relatively harmless little protein, which makes it attractive to companies like Immucell in Portland, Maine. Immucell, with whom Riley now collaborates on some bacteriocin-related products, is hoping that theirs will be the first bacteriocin-based medicine to be approved by the FDA, albeit as a drug for veterinary use. Their goal is to provide a cure for mastitis, a common infection in dairy cows.27 Riley hopes that approval of a bacteriocin for veterinary use will open doors for similar drugs in human medicine.

Each year, more than 20 billion gallons of milk are produced here in the United States. But our milk, cheese, and ice cream rely upon an antibiotic-heavy industry, in part because of mastitis—a painful udder infection that can be caused by a constellation of bacteria, including species of strep, staph and coliform, and that costs the industry billions of dollars. At worst, farmers cull chronically infected cows. At best, cows suffer from low-level infections that reduce milk production and quality. Somewhere in the middle, milk is discarded by the tankful. Infected cows (including those suspected of infection but not yet diagnosed) are treated with a handful of FDA-approved antibiotics, most of them belonging to a group of antibiotics called beta-lactams. If that term sounds familiar, that’s because drugs like penicillin, amoxicillin (which is approved for use against mastitis in cows), and Keflex, all part of our human pharmacopeia, belong to the same class of drugs. Which means

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that it’s even more important to reduce their use on the farm.28 To protect consumers from direct exposure (treatments are often administered intramammary—right into the mammary gland), milk from treated cows is discarded until the presence of antibiotics drops to acceptable levels, adding to the cost of the disease. Improved hygiene and vaccination can help. But when prevention isn’t enough, Immucell is betting on nisin as an alternative. Aside from taking antibiotics like beta-lactams out of the equation, nisin’s GRAS designation, along with its effectiveness at very low concentrations, means farmers would no longer have to toss out all that milk.

Meanwhile Riley, along with recent graduate student Sandra Roy, is targeting human urinary tract infections, or UTIs, with a bacteriocin other than nisin. Hundreds of millions of new UTI infections occur each year, mostly in women, and they are notoriously antibiotic-resistant.29 UTIs associated with catheterization are the most commonly reported health-care-associated infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 15–25 percent of hospital patients will be catheterized during their stay.30 As a catheter wends its way into the urinary tract, it may pick up microbes normally associated with a patient’s bowels—an unfortunate consequence of our anatomy. Most healthy people won’t be bothered, but others, depending on their condition and how long they have to use a catheter, may become infected. If the invading bacteria form a biofilm (a dense, nearly impenetrable layer that can build up on devices like catheters), they can be particularly difficult to reach with antimicrobials. Riley and Roy hope to reduce the chances of such infections occurring. One of the most common causes of UTI is E. coli, which also happens to produce one of the best-studied and the oldest-known class of bacteriocins: colicins.

Unlike nisin, colicins are highly specific, active against certain strains of coliform bacteria. Both can penetrate biofilms. But as with phage therapy, large-scale testing and eventual approval of bacteriocin-based

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

drugs is expensive and daunting. So Riley and Roy are taking a different tack. “We can create a lubricant that can eliminate catheter-acquired UTI. So that’s what we are going to go after first.” Getting approval for new medical “devices,” like a lubricant for use with catheters, is far easier. UTIs may not be a sexy first target for a potentially groundbreaking advance, but Riley and colleagues have even bigger plans. What if bacteriocins—even one specific for E. coli, like colicin—could be directed toward more-intractable infections like MRSA or tuberculosis?

About a year or so ago, says Riley, a Chinese researcher named XiaoQing Qiu contacted her about reviewing a paper he was trying to get published. For the previous fifteen years, Qiu had been working with colicins, trying to make them into medically useful antimicrobials. “He was interested in MRSA and noticed some work on the discovery of pheromones in bacteria. Staph was one genus for which a lot of work was done on pheromones.” Bacterial pheromones are proteins that cells produce when populations get dense. As a form of intercellular communication, pheromones can induce populations to react. They may cause cells to form a biofilm, or to move away, or to produce other chemicals. Like bacteriocins, they are species-specific. Qiu’s idea was to fuse together a well-known but very specific killer, colicin, with pheromones for disease-causing bacteria like MRSA. “Lo and behold,” exclaims Riley, as if she were just now witnessing it anew, “it worked!”

Not only did the new pheromonicin kill MRSA in animal tests, but was harmless when mixed up in a test tube with other kinds of bacteria.31 Unlike the nisin that is directed against mastitis or used elsewhere, however, pheromonicins aren’t all-natural, requiring a bit of genetic engineering to link bacteriocin to pheromone. Despite the implications of a potentially powerful and directed drug, Qiu’s publications barely made a ripple here in the United States. “Probably because he is a Chinese scientist,” says Riley. “Unfortunately, there are huge problems with being a Chinese scientist.” It probably didn’t help that Qiu was accused of fraud

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by other Chinese scientists.32 In the end, though, as reported in the journal Science, Qiu was cleared of any wrongdoing.33 A decade later, after continuing with his studies, he reached out to Riley, who not only reviewed his papers but has become a collaborator, testing his drugs in her laboratory. “I thought it [the work] was extraordinary. I have confidence that what he is publishing is real data.” Riley describes the whole thing as almost too good to be true: “Until we actually have a drug out to market, I’m still going to think it’s still a fairy tale.” Working with Qiu has brought Riley closer to her goal of developing “designer drugs”: highly specific, safe, and administered with lessons learned from our antibiotic-resistance debacle.

For nearly a century, we have managed bacterial infections with traditional antibiotics. Penicillin, streptomycin, and vancomycin are pitted against all-too-common infections, from pneumonia to staph to tuberculosis. Strains of these pathogens now resist multiple antibiotics. Over the course of a year, 2 million Americans become infected with resistant bacteria. Tens of thousands die as a result, according to the Center for Disease Control’s annual statistics. Yet discoveries of new antibiotics have been rare enough that when molecular microbiologist Kim Lewis reported a new method of seeking out antibiotic-producing bacteria, news of his discovery went viral. But even if we do manage to enter into a new age of antibiotic discovery, scientists and doctors agree that we need not only effective antimicrobials, but also antimicrobials that act more like targeted drones rather than cluster bombs. A more potent and specific killer is a more difficult weapon to resist.

Resistance aside, there are other reasons to become more respectful of our antibiotics; we are so accustomed to the drugs that we forget how powerful they are. According to the CDC, antibiotics are the most common cause of medication-related pediatric emergency visits.34 In addition, antibiotics may also contribute to serious chronic side effects such

the enemy of our enemy is our friend: infec ting the infec tion

as diabetes, asthma, and some inflammatory bowel diseases, though a causative link has not yet been proven.35 And then there are the opportunists like C. diff.

Both phage and bacteriocin could open up a whole new cornucopia of drugs. But they must first make their way through the long road to FDA approval before entering the doctor’s office or our medicine cabinets. Some new drugs—particularly those that exist in nature—may make it more rapidly than others. Others may require some tinkering: removing or adding bits of protein to make them more effective, longer lasting, or better able to reach their targets. Phages and bacteriocins probably will not replace antibiotics even when they are approved, but they will certainly bolster our arsenal against infections.

And once they do enter the drug pipeline, we’ll do well to learn from the past. For eons, nature has kept life in check, from the largest predator to the smallest. As we learn better how to live with microbes, we will increasingly be looking to nature as a collaborator. Phage and bacteriocins are powerful examples, in medicine and increasingly in agriculture.

These are biological solutions that may target a particular problem without causing another. Our lives may one day depend upon them.

As difficult as human infectious diseases are, they are relatively simple compared with the vast array of pests and pathogens on the farm. Consider this: we are a single species infected by microbes that have adapted to thrive in and upon our body. But those who grow the wheat for our daily bread and the fruit and vegetables for our table must contend not only with pathogens adapted to infect a diversity of species, but also a mind-boggling number of insects and weedy pests. Some favor apples, others corn or cassava or potatoes. In recent decades, broadly acting pesticides have become the obvious answer, but they carry enormous drawbacks. And so, like medical researchers, innovative farmers are now seeking natural alternatives to synthetic chemicals.

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www.islandpress.org Phone: (202) 232-7933 Fax: (202) 234-1328 Island Press 2000 M Street NW Suite 650 Washington, DC 20036

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or more than a century, we have relied on chemical cures to keep our bodies free from disease and our farms free from bugs and weeds. Fortunately, scientists are finding new solutions that work with, rather than against, nature.

In this book, Emily Monosson explores science’s most innovative strategies, giving readers a peek into the fascinating and hopeful world of natural defenses. Natural Defense is full of optimism, not simply for particular cures, but for a sustainable approach to human welfare that will benefit generations to come.

Emily Monosson

E

mily Monosson is an environmental toxicologist and writer. She is an independent scholar at the Ronin Institute and an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In recent years, her focus has turned toward

the impact of industrial age chemicals and technology on food and medicine. She is the author of Unnatural Selection and Evolution in a Toxic World and her work has been published in The Scientist, LA Times, American Scientist, and more.

More books of interest: Unnatural Selection How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene Emily Monosson Shows how drugs, pesticides, and pollution are evolving in response to our chemical age.

PAPERBACK: $24.99 (232 PAGES. 2016.

9781610914994.)

Toms River A Story of Science and Salvation Dan Fagin Winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and hailed by the New York Times as a “new classic of science reporting.”

PAPERBACK: $18.00 (576 PAGES. 2015.

9781610915915.)

Evolution in a Toxic World How Life Responds to Chemical Threats Emily Monosson Traces the development nof life’s defense systems from more than three billion years ago to today.

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9781597269773.)

Chasing the Red Queen The Evolutionary Race Between Agricultural Pests and Poisons

The first book to apply the Red Queen Hypothesis to agriculture.

PAPERBACK: $30.00 (240 PAGES. 2014.

9781610915199.)

Phone: 202.232.7933 Fax: 202.234.1328 Island Press 2000 M Street NW Suite 650 Washington, DC 20036

Did you attend this session?

Philanthropy Roundtable 3:15 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Speakers: Moderator: Fern Shepard, President, Rachel's Network Alison Carlson, Founder and Director, Forsythia Foundation Barry Gold, Environment Program Director, Walton Family Foundation Winsome McIntosh, President of The McIntosh Foundation Erin Rogers, Program Officer in the Hewlett Foundation’s Environment Program Ed Warner, Sand County Foundation

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Solar Power With Storage for All? Philanthropy Can Help Make it Happen Lewis Milford and Rob Sanders

Originally published February 14, 2017 in Inside Philanthropy

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ew forms of solar and battery-powered energy could soon be accessible to all—with some strategic assistance from the philanthropic sector.

Recent years have brought revolutionary changes in clean, renewable solar energy markets. The cost of solar panels has plummeted. And there have been breakthroughs in supporting technology: Sophisticated battery backup systems store excess power for when the sun doesn’t shine, reducing utility bills in multiple ways. These “solar + storage” systems are reaching a robust, market-acceleration phase as costs decline and technology becomes cheaper and more efficient.

Unfortunately, solar + storage has yet to penetrate the markets where it’s needed most: low-income communities in rural and urban areas.

Clean energy companies are mainly marketing their innovations to commercial customers seeking to improve their bottom lines. Lowincome communities are still awaiting their turn.

That’s a huge missed opportunity. Solar + storage systems in affordable housing could slash utility bills for low-income tenants and homeowners, helping to keep families from sliding further into poverty. Installed in food banks, fire stations and emergency shelters, those systems could build community resilience by maintaining critical services when grid power is disrupted. (And we can expect more power disruptions, as a warming planet brings more extreme weather.)

Finally, by reducing reliance on fossil fuels, solar and battery power can slow the advance of climate change.

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protecting communities from climate change • 39

Why has the market failed to deliver clean energy to those most in need, and what can foundations do about it? A new report offers some timely answers.

The report, "A Resilient Power Capital Scan: How Foundations Could Use Grants and Investments to Advance Solar and Storage in LowIncome Communities," is the first empirical analysis of the solar + storage market. It was informed by interviews with over 30 industry leaders, advocates, foundation officials, and state and local policymakers.

Commissioned by the Kresge Foundation, the Surdna Foundation and the JPB Foundation, the report was authored by the Clean Energy Group (CEG), a nonprofit working to bring about clean energy equity.

The report suggests a rigorous, comprehensive approach to bring solar + storage power to low-income communities—one that understands and harnesses the free market while acknowledging the market’s limitations.

The report found a series of structural market barriers, including gaps in technical capacity, data, finance and regulatory policy. Importantly, the authors identified more than 50 interventions—ranging from grants to program-related investments and endowment investments—that could surmount those barriers. For example: Working capital. Provide pre-development funding to support the identification and development of appropriate sites and projects, and to help low-income groups build capacity to capitalize on opportunities in their communities.

Reduced risk. Provide credit enhancements to reduce risk for investors and building owners through “performance loss reserves” that reimburse monetary losses from unrealized economic benefits.

Financial incentives. Create incentives to encourage owners of affordable housing to implement solar + storage solutions as they renovate their properties or plan new ones.

Project software. Support the creation of an online software platform to assess the technical and financial feasibility of solar + storage in affordable housing and nonprofit-owned facilities.

40 • section i: climate change and adaptation

Better data. Collect and disseminate data on the potential of solar + storage to reduce electricity bills, particularly in affordable housing and community facilities.

Community mandates. Support mandates for localities to require installation of solar projects in community facilities.

Standardized transactions. Support nonprofit intermediaries’ efforts to streamline and standardize deal structures and documents to facilitate the aggregation of financing for bundled projects.

If deployed at scale, these strategies could reshape markets and greatly improve access to solar and stored energy. “This report is an important step toward ensuring that the benefits of solar + storage are shared equitably,” said Lois DeBacker, managing director of the Kresge Foundation's Environment Program.

That’s important, for obvious reasons: Low- and moderate-income families have the most to gain from affordable, clean energy. It’s also important to secure ongoing political support. If the benefits of new solar + storage technology accrue mostly to affluent corporations and homeowners, there will not be a broad constituency for policies and programs to encourage the rapid diffusion of renewable power. Broad support is especially needed now, as we face a new administration whose clean energy strategies seem unclear at best.

Foundations have a crucial role to play. They can step in where markets fail, making strategic grants and investments to extend solar power to underserved communities. In this way, they can jumpstart a just energy transition, with clean, affordable power for all.

www.islandpress.org Phone: (202) 232-7933 Fax: (202) 234-1328 Island Press 2000 M NW Ste. 650 Washington, DC 20036

RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

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nterested in learning more about urban resilience in the era of climate change? Resilience Matters 2016: Sustainable, Equitable Solutions is an

e-book compilation of articles, blog posts, and opeds from the Urban Resilience Project in 2016.

E-BOOK: FREE PAGES: 164 PUBLISHED: JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9781610918657

Highlights include: •

Like Under a Trump Presidency •

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Malign Neglect? What Will Urban Policy Look What Can the Abolitionists Teach Us About Climate Change?

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People Power: How Residents of Northern Manhattan are Creating an Energy Revolution

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If Roads Are Gridlocked in Rush Hour, What Happens When Disaster Strikes?

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Bee Bans and More: How Food Laws Sting Producers

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Species & Spaces 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.

Speakers: Moderator: Jon Paul RodrĂ­guez, Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission; Professor at the Center for Ecology of the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Investigations; Founder and President of Provita Joel Berger, Senior Scientist at Wildlife Conservation Society Matthew Dillon, Director of Agricultural Policy and Programs, Clif Bar & Company Sean Gerrity, CEO American Prairie Reserve and National Geographic Explorer John Hoffman, Discovery Channel Amy Johnson, Smithsonian Pete Marra, Center Head, Migratory Bird Center, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Matthew Ogburn, Marine Ecologist, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Enric Sala, National Geographic Explorer; Founder of Pristine Seas Patricia Wright, MacArthur Fellow, Madagascar Conservationist, SUNY Stony Brook

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CLIMATE

Hilty Chester

Advance Praise for Climate and Conservation

Cross

“Finally, a book that takes state-of-the-art, large-scale climate science and packages it in a form accessible to planners and managers. These authors know firsthand what needs to be done ‘on the ground’ to help prevent species extinctions. Climate and Conservation is broadly applicable around the globe, addressing species found in habitats stretching from the equator to the poles, and on land, in fresh water, along the coasts, and in the oceans.”

“Climate and Conservation is a global tour de force that clarifies where we stand today on important landscape conservation efforts and where we need to go to accommodate climate change. Long on science and planning, its comprehensive case studies should serve as a clarion call for conservation action while reminding us that the greatest challenge for adaptation is working across our own political boundaries.”

— Craig Groves, Director, Conservation Methods Team, The Nature Conservancy “Climate and Conservation offers fresh perspectives on the challenges that climate change brings to the already daunting task of conserving biodiversity. What distinguishes this volume from other assessments is the authors’ collective experience in engaging with managers and stakeholders to incorporate climate change into conservation planning and, importantly, action at sites around the globe.”

— Lisa J. Graumlich, Dean, College of the Environment, University of Washington Jodi A. Hilty is Director of the North America Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Charles C. Chester teaches global environmental politics at Tufts and Brandeis Universities.

Molly S. Cross is the Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for the North America Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Cover design by Maureen Gately Cover art: Map designed by Andra Toivola; grizzly bear photo by Julie Larson Maher; wolverine photo by Anna Yu; cutthroat trout photo by Joseph Skorupski.

Climate and Conservation

— Terry L. Root, University Faculty and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University

Climate and Conservation Landscape and Seascape Science, Planning, and Action

Edited by Jodi A. Hilty Charles C. Chester and Molly S. Cross

Washington | Covelo | London www.islandpress.org All Island Press books are printed on recycled, acid-free paper.

cl i mate and conservation

Climate and Conservation landscape and seascape science, planning, and action

Edited by Jodi A. Hilty, Charles C. Chester, and Molly S. Cross

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright Š 2012 Island Press All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009

Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Climate and conservation : landscape and seascape science, planning, and action / edited by Jodi A. Hilty, Charles C. Chester, and Molly S. Cross. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-61091-170-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-61091-170-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-61091-171-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-61091-171-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Biodiversity conservation. 2. Climate change mitigation. 3. Endangered ecosystems. 4. Ecosystem management. I. Hilty, Jodi A. II. Chester, Charles C. III. Cross, Molly S. QH75.C56 2012 333.95'16—dc23 2012001573

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 keywords: Island Press, Landscapes, seascapes, conservation, climate change, climate stress, climate strategy, adaptation, conservation planning, biodiversity, resilience, resistance, transformation, conservation area networks, livelihoods, science, connectivity, corridor, ecosystem-based adaptation, wildlife, ecosystems, large-scale conservation.

PA RT 7

Lessons Learned

Based on this volume’s nineteen case studies from around the world, an examination of how climate change is being incorporated into landscape and seascape science, planning, and action in these scapes offers valuable insights. Guidance comes both from seeing how some tools and approaches may be robust across scapes, and from understanding how others necessarily differ in response to local ecological, political, and socioeconomic circumstances. The case studies represent an ongoing set of experiments as to how best to conserve biodiversity during this time of rapid climate change.

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Chapter 22

Moving Forward on Climate Change Science, Planning, and Action jodi a. hilty, molly s. cross, and charles c. chester

Working in more than seventy landscapes and seascapes around the world, the Wildlife Conservation Society is but one example of many institutions working to bring about conservation at the large scape level (see extended definition of scape in chap. 1). Many of these locations face serious and imminent threats that, if left unresolved, will lead to the loss of the wild areas and wildlife within them forever. For example, the Western Ghats region of India—essentially, the mountain range running parallel to the country’s southwestern coast—is one of those scapes where rising human population pressures translate into expanding impacts including agricultural expansion, road development, livestock grazing, and habitat fragmentation. It is an all too familiar panoply of threats, but one that conservationists have no choice but to face head on. Quite simply, if conservationists are to ensure that populations of globally imperiled tigers (Panthera tigris), Asian elephants (Elaphus maximus), and other rare species maintain their stronghold in this region, they must bring immediate attention and redress to these threats.

Biodiversity in the Western Ghats faces all of these challenges with or without the manifestation of regional climate change. We do not want to understate this critical point, particularly in a volume that focuses on “scape-level responses to climate change.” At the same time, we are impelled to juxtapose—not to contradict, but to juxtapose—the equally critical point that climate change will likely entail serious rami281

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fications in the Western Ghats not only as a direct threat to biodiversity in and of itself, but also as (1) an indirect threat due to climate change’s exacerbating effects on current threats such as habitat change and invasive species, as well as (2) an indirect threat via interference with traditional conservation responses to the familiar listing of the drivers of biodiversity loss.

Admittedly, these may at first seem to be fine distinctions, but they are not— far from it. Looking backwards in time, we face the prospect that our failure to address the already evident and increasing impacts of climate change could ultimately imperil many of our myriad conservation efforts to date. Even more ominously, those conservation solutions being proposed today for the Western Ghats may or may not work under conditions of climate change tomorrow. Consequently, it has become important to take into account a wide range of questions that climate change will likely entail: • • • • • • •

How might climate change directly affect tiger populations?

How will climate change affect the prey populations upon which the alreadythreatened tigers depend?

What type of vegetation shifts could occur that would affect elephant diets?

How will humans respond to vegetation shifts associated with climate change?

Can the current forms of local and regional governance within the Western Ghats effectively respond to these kinds of shifts?

Will historical and ongoing conservation activities continue to serve their stated purpose as climate changes?

What new conservation options or altered management practices might be needed to achieve conservation goals given the impacts of climate change?

These questions become all the more pertinent in light of the expectation that the Western Ghats will be one of the most vulnerable areas to projected impacts of climate change in India (Chaturvedi et al. 2011). They are also examples of questions that may vary in degree and emphasis from scape to scape but exist everywhere. In essence, failure to address climate change questions in the context of conservation may well result in long-term conservation failure. For this reason, we need to begin incorporating climate considerations into conservation around the world and share the lessons as we learn.

Of course, be it within the Western Ghats or at the global level, conservation is fraught with complexities and challenges even without considering climate change.

With the global expansion of threats ranging from habitat destruction and invasive species to acid rain and endocrine disruptors, the vast majority of the Earth’s surface has felt the impacts of human activities (Sanderson et al. 2002). Conservationists have

Moving Forward on Climate Change Science, Planning, and Action 283

achieved a number of key successes, including increased protected areas, new regulations, halting or slowing human impacts in globally important ecosystems, and many others. Still, conservation remains a low priority to society, posing persistent challenges to the mission of protecting biodiversity in its many manifestations. As but one example, the portion of private charitable donations directed toward environmental causes constitutes about 2.3 percent of all giving in the United States, of which only a small portion is targeted for biodiversity conservation (GUSAF 2011).

So why should climate change be added as another factor when we have not been able to eliminate other threats and when resources to do so are scarce? We argue that failure to consider climate change in protecting biodiversity would be failure to recognize a new and permanent organizing factor in conservation. As the nineteen scapes in this book demonstrate, today’s changing climate is already affecting biophysical factors such as the relative distribution and abundance of many species. Predictions of potential future impacts are even more dire. For example, in 2004 the journal Nature published an article covered by newspapers worldwide suggesting that of the approximately five million terrestrial species that currently exist, 18 to 34 percent of them are likely to go extinct, given current climate projections (Thomas et al. 2004). This would amount to somewhere around a million species lost forever. The article did not pass by without a good deal of critical review from within the scientific community.

But as one critique noted: Whether or not we can improve our ability to forecast the magnitude of impending species losses, however, one generalization from available knowledge seems robust. All estimates using available methods point to a huge impending extinction episode from unmitigated anthropogenic climate warming and that the uncertainty in these methods are likely to underestimate the extent of extinctions in the coming centuries. The data suggest that life on earth, as we have known it, is going to change dramatically over the coming century. (Harte and Kitzes 2011) In other words, regardless of any specific estimate, it is widely acknowledged that a substantial number of species are likely to experience extinction due to climate change. For that reason alone, natural resource managers, conservationists, and others interested in maintaining the diversity of life on earth need to pay attention to climate change.

The chapters in this book offer cautious hope of how climate change can be and is being incorporated into scape-scale conservation. These case studies touch on three basic tenets of incorporating projections into management: science, planning, and action. While not new to conservation, these three tenets will be vital to successful climate change adaptation. Although the degree to which science, planning, and action occur in each scape varies across the case studies, these examples illustrate how the

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conservation of large scapes is moving forward since at least some stakeholders located in each geography are exploring ways to incorporate climate change.

The take home messages from these chapters are nuanced, revealing similarities and differences across the case studies. Many scapes would benefit from expanded basic science and most are trying a variety of tools to identify and implement actions that address a changing climate. They also are situated in different political contexts.

Below, we distill key messages, highlight unique approaches, and lastly close with a list of recommendations for others who may be embarking on efforts to address climate change adaptation at a scape scale.

Reasons for Addressing Climate Change Given that biodiversity in each of the case study scapes is imperiled by numerous threats independent of climate change, we want to understand why the stakeholders in these nineteen scapes have decided to incorporate climate change into their thinking and action. The answer is varied. In the Yellowstone to Yukon landscape, the founding conservation vision was formed with climate change in mind, although it played a more subdued role compared with general concerns over genetic connectivity (chap. 19). Along with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation initiative, the Sundarbans mangrove forest in Asia (chap. 12) and the northern Appalachian/acadian ecoregion (chap. 18) are all focused on existing protected area networks. In recent years, these scape conservation efforts have more formally incorporated climate change as an explicit programmatic priority, reassessing whether the envisioned protected area networks will be adequate to achieve their original intent of preserving target species and ecosystems as the climate changes.

Other entities are following international or national political imperatives. In the case of freshwater conservation in the Alps (chap. 11), European Union-wide agreements and resulting directives strongly influence the direction of conservation efforts.

In Australia, the federal government made climate change adaptation a continental priority, resulting in the Great Eastern Ranges Corridor becoming a federal priority for conserving biodiversity from the threat of climate change (chap. 16). In the state of Washington, United States, the state government mandated a closer examination of and planning for climate change (chap. 10). One of the challenges with jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction efforts is that they often do not include consistent planning across state, provincial, or other political boundaries, which is necessary for planning to be ecologically meaningful. Although Washington State has a strong plan, ensuring compatibility with activities in neighboring jurisdictions remains an ongoing challenge for which strong cross-jurisdictional collaboration is essential (chap. 10).

For other scapes, conservation efforts have begun addressing climate change as a result of pressure from international entities or funders. In the Albertine Rift in Africa, funders largely drove the push for integrating climate change into conservation plan-

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ning and actions (chap. 3). This is similar for the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor in Latin America, which offers strong cautions on donor-driven agendas (chap. 5).

The history of conservation in Central America has long been fraught with donorinfluenced priorities, and chapter 5 offers a refreshingly frank assessment of how donor-driven agendas can derail conservation priorities and how the region could recover using climate change adaptation as a way to refocus on biological conservation.

Relative Priority of Climate Change The understanding that climate change and biodiversity are interrelated is generally accepted across all of the case studies. Most case studies suggest that current efforts to protect biodiversity can make the impacts of climate change and subsequent biodiversity loss less profound. Similarly, all the case studies infer that incorporating climate change adaptation into conservation will be important for conservation to be successful over the long term. Despite these similarities, the relative priority of addressing climate change adaptation varies significantly across the different case studies.

As previously mentioned, the creation of the Great Eastern Ranges Corridor in Australia (chap. 16) was driven by a plan to conserve biodiversity during a changing climate. There, the federal prioritization of climate change as an issue drove the announcement of this continental conservation effort. The authors go so far as to say that climate change “has helped introduce a new paradigm for conservation land use for Australia� (chap. 16, p. 214).

For many scapes, climate change is increasingly recognized as a dominant organizing factor for conservation, particularly those more isolated from human activities (e.g., Ramirez-Llodra et al. 2011). In Antarctica (chap. 21), this recognition is driven by the fact that climate change may have more sizeable impacts on species and ecosystems in the near term than will human activities since that area currently has a relatively low human footprint. Similarly, in Arctic Alaska (chap. 20) where the polar scape presently benefits from being less affected by human activities, one of the key threats of a changing climate is that it enhances the potential expansion of the human footprint. As both Arctic Alaska and Antarctica become more accessible with climate change, the consequences of increased visitation, introduction of invasive species, and various types of natural resource extraction grow. Also, the fate of species currently thriving in polar regions is unclear, and conservation efforts are focused on identifying those places that are most likely to serve as refugia or functional habitat in this time of rapid change.

For other regions where human activity levels are already high, the presence of a notable human footprint is part of the motivation for focusing increased attention on climate change. In low-lying coastal areas such as Fiji (chap. 13), rising sea levels could have significant effects on both biodiversity and the human communities living along the coast. For this reason, the urgency and acceptance with which climate change is being addressed is arguably stronger than in many other regions.

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In contrast, for the majority of case studies, climate change has not risen as a singular priority, but rather has come to modify how conservation strategies are being prioritized and how they are being conducted. For example, for places such as the Northern Appalachian/Acadian Ecoregion (chap. 18), climate change is not what made connectivity or the strategic design of a protected area network imperative. Instead, the destruction and fragmentation of species’ habitats are the major threats to biodiversity. Placing climate change on top of those other threats does, however, raise the level of urgency associated with these actions, and can offer better direction as to where to focus connectivity and land conservation activities within the landscape. In this way, climate change-adaptation planning can influence the priority of myriad conservation needs, and is being incorporated as one factor in existing conservation planning and decision-making processes (IPCC-WG2 2007). For other scapes such as Africa’s Albertine Rift (chap. 3), although climate change is recognized as a necessary component to consider in a long-term vision for conservation success, it is also seen as a low immediate priority despite donor attention to the matter. In the case of the Amazon (chap. 4), authors of the case study make a compelling argument that current local land-use change is the driving factor affecting local Amazon climate and that this land-use conversion, exacerbated by global climate change, will transform the system if it continues to expand. Further, the major priority for climate change adaptation is to stop this land-use change although the authors recognize that analyses and planning around climate change adaptation are lacking in the region.

If the impacts of climate change become more profound in these and other scapes, it is likely that the priority of addressing it will also rise—hopefully not too late to be able to respond effectively. While it is commonly recognized that failure to address immediate threats will render moot the consideration of climate change in longterm biodiversity conservation, various stakeholders in each case study are emphasizing the need to factor climate change into longer-term planning. Indeed, if the nineteen case studies share a common trait, it is the recognition that waiting for reactive reprioritization is counterproductive and that incorporating climate factors into conservation planning now is the right approach. Moreover, what is especially promising is that many of these scapes have demonstrated ways of incorporating climate change adaptation into ongoing conservation efforts. In other words, the land, sea, and wildlife management decisions and priorities in these scapes address both ongoing, immediate threats as well as climate change. Whether or not their efforts will be adequate is highly uncertain, but we suggest that important steps, albeit initial steps, are being taken in all of the scapes discussed in this volume.

Importance of Collaboration A striking similarity across the nineteen scapes is that virtually all are engaged in complex partnerships including local, subnational, and national government agencies;

Moving Forward on Climate Change Science, Planning, and Action 287

regional and/or international nonprofit conservation groups; businesses; academics; local communities; and/or individuals. Given the nature of large scape conservation, the success of a broad geographic vision arguably will require the engagement of a large subset, if not all, of the interested entities in a region. Where the science, planning, and implementation were the strongest, the products or outcomes appeared to be strongly driven by collaborative efforts, such as efforts to conserve marine turtles in the Wider Caribbean Region (chap. 14). The Madrean Sky Island landscape (chap.

17) details how success in working across the United States–Mexico border has been based on shared learning, networking, and building capacity across the region—all necessary prerequisites for collaborative adaptation projects to move forward. As the Madrean Sky Island example indicates, collaborations do not just appear, but rather the right circumstances need to be created and fostered for successful partnerships.

Failure to create these circumstances can hamper projects; lack of collective action across whole scapes meant that in several case studies implementation occurred in only some parts of large scapes. The Northern Appalachian/Acadian Ecoregion (chap. 18) is but one case where a strong international vision and scientific foundation exists to enact climate adaptation actions on the ground, but funding for implementation is lacking on the Canadian side such that the United States partners are moving forward ahead of their Canadian counterparts. This theme exists in other scapes as well, including the Altai-Sayan landscape (chap. 15). For the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (chap. 5), actions are dependent on players within individual countries such that Costa Rica and Mexico moved further ahead on implementing the vision than most of the other partner countries. Decisions for Antarctica and surrounding waters (chap.

21) are dominated by consensus processes, which require collective action and are more challenging politically to move forward quickly. Even in-country political lines can mean that visions are acted upon differently. In Australia, Queensland’s efforts were reported to remain weak compared to those of Victoria, New South Wales, and Australian Capital Territory (chap. 16). While there are many factors underlying the circumstances in each particular case, in general understanding what drives these differences should be examined more closely. Even as it is all too evident that politics and financial resources play important roles, it is likely that biophysical factors, land ownership regimes, and other issues also come into play.

While many scapes are challenged by multijurisdictional contexts, others seem to be engaging across borders fairly well. Although the United States and Canadian governments do not formally recognize a shared agreement about the whole region, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and vision has now been operating for over fifteen years (chap. 19). The efforts of many entities, from governments and local communities to nonprofits and academics, have been steadily driving forward policies and land practices to advance the vision. In the Wider Caribbean Region, an NGO has led efforts to build regional capacity and reduce climate change threats to coastal ecosystems that support marine turtles and human communities; this effort

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has successfully engaged existing regional collaborations and a vast network of science experts to advance adaptation planning and action (chap. 14).

Although some transboundary mechanisms exist through international law, such as the 1916 Migratory Bird Treaty or the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation under NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), the formalization of shared biodiversity priorities at a scape scale across borders is lacking in most international conservation efforts. One example of where such agreements exist is in Europe where shared directives assist in pushing forward a European environmental network including a focus on freshwater conservation in the Alps (chap. 11).

For existing and new transboundary scape-scale projects designed to address climate change adaptation to be successful, a careful evaluation of what mechanisms and partnerships need to exist for the region to progress as a whole will be important.

Role of Science In all scapes examined in this volume, science played a role in guiding climate changeadaptation priorities. But it did so at significantly varying levels and in different ways.

For some scapes, conservation actions have been broadly informed by syntheses of climate change impact research. In the Yellowstone to Yukon landscape (chap. 19), a climate change-informed conservation agenda was laid out in response to a comprehensive overview of relevant research in the region (Graumlich and Francis 2010). Climate change impacts reports for other scapes, such as the Altai-Sayan region (chap.

15), have clearly played an important role in amassing information to motivate and inform conservation actions. In other scapes, conservation planning is being driven by targeted climate change analyses and/or focused engagement of experts. For example, in the eastern Mongolian grassland steppe, The Nature Conservancy has developed new models of climate change effects on net primary productivity to prioritize areas for protection and for inclusion in regional “grass banks� to support domestic grazing needs during drought periods (chap. 8). In the Northern Great Plains (chap.

9), regional experts considered downscaled climate data and associated vegetation model outputs during a scenario planning workshop, and developed recommendations on managing grasslands to maintain a diversity of habitats for birds and providing incentives for maintaining wildlife habitat on private lands. In the Wider Caribbean Region (chap. 14), marine turtle scientists and managers have been engaged in region-wide climate change adaptation planning since 2007 through workshops and self-administered surveys. These examples, and others covered in this book, illustrate the ways that climate science is being integrated into conservation planning at the scape scale.

Incorporating climate science into conservation planning has yet to become an integral and automatic part of any planning process, and such will never happen unless

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and until scientists, managers, and conservation practitioners ensure that it does. In the Madrean Sky Island landscape (chap. 17), a priority has been placed on the “coproduction of knowledge� by having decision makers, stakeholders, and scientists from both the United States and Mexico work together to create usable science for framing climate change-adaptation policy. Even when climate science is successfully integrated into planning, the challenge remains on how to move that science and planning into action. In the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa (chap. 7), conservation scientists met with officials from a public institution with the statutory responsibility for biodiversity conservation in the region to discuss their use of models to identify priority areas for conservation given climate change. While it remains to be seen just how much of that modeling will inform land protection efforts in the Cape, this kind of effort to link the science to relevant decision makers is necessary for adaptation planning to be meaningful and result in successful implementation.

Several case studies noted that a paucity of data and uncertain forecasts for the future pose significant hurdles to integrating climate change into conservation. The lack of adequate weather stations, such as in the Albertine Rift and Arctic Alaska (chaps. 3 and 20), was cited as a limitation to understanding historic climate trends and correlations between climate and ecological conditions, thereby limiting the capacity to generate effective and useful models of future conditions. Even in regions with more extensive history of and capacity for ecological and climate science, uncertainties in modeling future conditions presents substantial difficulties. As is the case with much science related to natural resources, there is often a desire for more precise data and analysis, and yet also a pressing need to take action under imperfect information. In response to this common dilemma, several scapes presented scenario planning and adaptive management as tools for moving forward without perfect information (chap.

2). During the scenario planning workshops in the Northern Great Plains (chap. 9), managers were able to identify a range of conservation actions that are relatively robust to uncertainty since they would apply under differing yet plausible scenarios of the future. Scenario planning is also recommended for Antarctica (chap. 21), along with adaptive management of Antarctic fish and krill stocks to adjust actions and priorities in response to monitored changes.

The continuing need for science to support climate change adaptation in these scapes is clear. First, we need science to detect and understand the changes happening at a species and ecosystem level. Second, we need to integrate the climate sciences and conservation sciences to understand impacts and management options at the scape scale, which in turn will guide our decision-making and adaptive management processes. In the Canadian boreal forest (chap. 6), the Conservation Matrix Model demonstrates a way to prioritize protection of large functioning ecosystems, conserve special elements, and design a human land-use matrix that complements conservation in the region. Third, interdisciplinary science that connects across social, political, eco-

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nomic, and biological sciences will help us understand the links between these different fields and find solutions that may be beneficial for both ecosystems and humans, a concept utilized in the Madrean Sky Island case study (chap. 17). Finally, since information is often, although not always, inversely proportional to acrimony, the creation of shared information at the scapes level can drive different stakeholders to work together toward common solutions.

End Goals The goals for climate change adaptation can range from resisting change, increasing resilience to change, and facilitating transformation (see chap. 2 for a review of concepts). In most scape case studies, transformation is not overtly mentioned as a goal and at most vaguely referenced. The Northern Great Plains and Antarctic landscapes (chaps. 9 and 21) do recognize that current species composition may not be possible to maintain in the future, but none of the scapes set an explicit way forward to plan or prepare for such a transformation. Some species may benefit from climate change and others may perish, and such a transformational tenet has not yet deeply penetrated the natural resource management or conservation psyche. Perhaps part of this is embedded in the history of conservation that has focused on referencing back to historical baselines (chap. 1). This might also be due to the uncertainty of future scenarios and/or humanity’s general denial of what the future may look like.

Overall, the emphasis on resistance and resilience-building strategies over transformation in the case studies covered here is not unusual. As but one example, when The Nature Conservancy integrated climate change into twenty conservation projects from around the globe, project teams identified a total of forty-two adaptation strategies—only two of which addressed transformation (Poiani et al. 2011).

Such a limited focus on transformation is probably shortsighted. Managers in these and other scapes considering climate change adaptation should take pause and explore what the scape could look like, to ensure that near-term actions are conducive to plausible longer-term future scenarios. That said, there are valid reasons to focus on building both resilience and resistance in the near term, and even if ultimately unsuccessful, those strategies may help a scape be amenable to transformation as systems inevitably change.

Whereas the term resistance indicates to resist changes or maintain status quo, resilience and adaptation are used and interpreted a number of ways. For example, when stakeholders in the Yellowstone to Yukon landscape suggest that the purpose of incorporating knowledge of climate change is to enhance ecosystem resilience (chap. 19), it is difficult to deduce from such general statements if the entity or entities laying out such a vision expect ecosystems to be able to persist as climate changes. In other words the goal of resilience could be for ecosystems and the components to

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more or less remain where they are currently located, continue to be located somewhere within the scape, or to be functionally replaced. Another general concept that appears in a number of the case studies that leaves much room for interpretation concerns providing opportunities for adaptation. This could mean different endpoints as well. It could mean allowing or facilitating transformative change, or it could suggest adaptation toward the end of maintaining current systems, or some combination of both.

Because these are relatively new terms for conservation in the context of climate change, we suggest that visions and goals that use these terms should be as explicit as possible about what they mean with respect to what kinds of changes might be inevitable, and which changes we are trying to reduce or prevent. And just as we must be careful about language and definitions, we must also be mindful of the possibility that we find ourselves in the midst of a dramatic shift in conservation philosophy. For example, in the United States where national parks were first established, society has not really grappled with what it means to “protect and preserve” if fifty years from now most of the country’s national parks look very different from what they look like today. There is no easy solution to reconciling our traditional outlook with looming changes, but the sooner we recognize the significance of these changes and begin grappling with them, the sooner our management of national parks and other such important conservation places will allow for “best-possible” protection of a changing ecosystem.

Connectivity Establishing, maintaining, and restoring connectivity as a scape-scale adaptation strategy is a recurring theme through many of the chapters. This includes the marineterrestrial connections inherent in the Sundarbans mangrove forest and the “ridge to reef ” continuum in Fiji (chaps. 12 and 13). Similarly, conservation practitioners in a number of terrestrial landscapes are adopting various approaches to protecting connectivity as a climate change-adaptation tool (box 2.2). In some cases, such as the Altai-Sayan landscape (chap. 15) and the Y2Y landscape (chap. 19), connectivity efforts are focused on linking large and sometimes near-contiguous protected areas that span north-south latitude and low-high elevation gradients. In other scapes, conservation scientists are explicitly incorporating climate and/or species modeling tools into establishing connectivity priorities. For example, researchers in the Cape Floristic Region (chap. 7) are coupling future climate models, species distribution models, and reserve selection tools to examine the connectivity needs of species as they track shifts in suitable habitat through time and space. Given the caveats associated with downscaling future climate model outputs to fine resolutions (box 2.1), connectivity modelers in Washington State (chap. 10) have developed a new technique for identifying

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what they call “climate-smart connectivity” that relies on information about current climatic gradients, land-use patterns, and topography.

Given that connectivity is one of the most frequently recommended tools for climate change adaptation in the scientific literature (Heller and Zavaleta 2009), it is hardly surprising to find connectivity as a common theme across many scapes. As with many of the proposed climate adaptation principles (chap. 1), the protection and restoration of connectivity specifically for the purpose of enabling species responses to climate change remains largely untested, and there are numerous uncertainties and complicating factors in assessing the effectiveness of maintaining connectivity. Yet, as we suggested elsewhere: Despite these unknowns, it is hard to think of any alternative to connectivity conservation, reasonable or unreasonable. Translocation? Genetic manipulation?

Controlling greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level? Connectivity conservation areas appear to be our best comparatively reasonable hope for protecting biodiversity in the long term. (Chester and Hilty 2010, 31) As mentioned in chapter 1, one alternative to enhancing connectivity is translocation of species (also described as “assisted colonization,” “assisted migration,” and “managed relocation”; see Loss et al. 2011). Connectivity and translocating species may be seen as opposite ends of a movement spectrum—at one end of which connectivity allows for species to move on their own, while at the other end humans move species from one locality to another. Although translocating species likely to perish because of climate change has gained significant traction in the literature as an option that should be on the table (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2008), it is notable that none of the case studies entertained translocation of species as a tool under consideration. We do, however, feel safe in asserting that this generally results from a long-standing preference on the part of conservationists and biologists in favor of enhancing connectivity over translocation as an adaptation strategy, a preference grounded in the assumptions that managed relocation: (1) is generally costly and inefficient, (2) may be ineffective in terms of long-term survival, and (3) will increase the possible spread of what could inadvertently become invasive species (Ricciardi and Simberloff 2009). The long list of invasive species that were intentionally introduced by humans make this last issue particularly relevant because it is extremely difficult to predict how a new species will “fit” in the context of other species in a new ecosystem. Although the resistance to considering translocation as a viable adaptation strategy is unlikely to change in the near term, the door has been opened to discussion of it as a possible conservation strategy. If worst-case climate change impacts become a reality and we see more species teetering on the edge of survival, we might expect discussions about translocations to escalate, necessitating the need for detailed cost/benefit assessments. For now, it seems that for most scapes such measures are not being seriously considered.

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Bridging Adaptation and Mitigation Although not the intended focus of this book, many chapters compellingly argue that addressing mitigation—the reduction of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere—has to be part of a comprehensive adaptation strategy. Failure to address greenhouse gas emissions will ultimately doom adaptation efforts as the magnitude of climate changes reaches a dire level. In this context, the irony of increasing pressure for oil drilling in the Arctic (chap. 20) deserves particular notice given that burning of such oil will only contribute to already strong climate change challenges in the region.

While reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere is the most important approach to altering our current trajectory, the sequestration and storage of carbon such as in soils, peatlands, and vegetation is also an important component of mitigation. Several chapters described how conservation actions can simultaneously contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation if projects are designed with both goals in mind. In the case of the Amazon (chap. 4), the government pledge around climate change is focused solely on mitigation and not adaptation. Since mitigation-related funding is currently higher than that for adaptation efforts, identifying projects that achieve mitigation and adaptation goals can essentially increase available resources for adaptation. Currently within the international arena, the primary mechanism for funding carbon storage projects is through Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), a controversial and evolving program that offers forest owners (e.g., governments, private companies, or local communities) rewards for keeping their forests intact rather than cutting them down (Harvey et al. 2010; chap. 1). REDD had evolved to REDD+, incorporating conservation, sustainable management, and increasing forest carbon storage as well. In the case of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (chap. 5), the opportunity exists to store carbon through reduced deforestation in key protected areas and corridors. However, the selection of areas for carbon sequestration and storage projects in Central America is not closely tied to biodiversity conservation priorities. If the international community follows through on its commitments and the implementation of REDD and similar types of “payment for ecosystem services” become more widespread, conservationists must take advantage of and build on this exceptional opportunity—indeed, one of the only such opportunities that seem practicable—to enhance the overlap between such mitigation and adaptation activities.

Actions in the Alps were viewed both as adaptation and mitigation measures (chap. 11), such as the example of marshland and forest restoration to enhance carbon dioxide storage. They also point to the restoration of rivers for mitigation, pointing out that doing so can reduce natural hazards such as flooding and landslides from increasingly common extreme rainfall events. The boreal forest in Canada (chap. 6) offers another example for aligning mitigation and adaptation priorities. Linear fragmentation from roads, pipelines, and habitat loss due to natural resource extraction

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not only diminishes the integrity and related resilience and resistance of the boreal system to climate change, but also leads to enormous carbon release into the atmosphere.

Forests and underlying peat at the growing edge in boreal systems are more likely to dry out, experience changes in species composition, and be susceptible to fire. Prioritization of carbon storage in key intact boreal forests could both diminish carbon release and provide incentives to maintain large blocks of boreal forest as part of a climate change-adaptation strategy.

Adaptation for Biodiversity and Human Systems Similar to finding win-win scenarios for mitigation and adaptation, several case studies discussed the value of connecting adaptation strategies for biodiversity conservation with maintaining or improving human livelihoods. The Mongolian grassland steppe landscape (chap. 8) insisted that, “overall, the climate adaptation strategies employed must consider the natural landscapes as well as the social, cultural, and political contexts in Mongolia.� Conservation practitioners in Mongolia are explicitly integrating human needs into climate change-informed biodiversity conservation by identifying areas that can largely be set aside as protected areas, but in which cattle grazing is allowed during particularly bad droughts (i.e., grass banks). In the Vatu-i-Ra seascape in Fiji (chap. 13), practitioners are focusing on maintaining and restoring ecosystems for the role they play in increasing the ability of humans to adapt to climate change, and on building the social resilience of local human communities to allow for flexible and adaptive management of natural resources. Freshwater conservation in the Alps (chap. 11) provides yet another example where the current and future outlook for both biodiversity and humans can be improved through maintaining and restoring key waterways. In the case of the Amazon (chap. 4), deforestation for crops and pasture must be stopped before the Amazon reaches a tipping point such that local climate moves from a moist recirculating system to a hotter drier system. Continued agricultural expansion will imperil the Amazon as we know it, while simultaneously negatively affecting human livelihoods as neither system benefits from hotter and drier conditions. By recognizing the mutual benefits to biodiversity and human communities afforded by particular conservation and management actions, there is an increased likelihood that those actions will be embraced and implemented.

Recommendations The issues discussed in this and the preceding chapters lead to some clear recommendations for strengthening current and future efforts to incorporate climate change adaptation into scape-scale conservation (table 22.1).

The first and most obvious step is to evaluate conservation priorities in light of climate change. We need to step back and evaluate what conservation means in this

Moving Forward on Climate Change Science, Planning, and Action 295

TABLE 22.1 Summary recommendations for strengthening efforts to incorporate

climate change adaptation into scape-scale conservation Conduct a critical examination of what conservation looks like, given increasing climate changes.

Define and be explicit about goals from resistance and resilience to transformation.

Create broad and inclusive collaborations at all levels within scapes.

Work at the appropriate scape scale to address conservation needs in the face of climate change.

Ensure that federal and sub-federal governments as well as international agreements prioritize climate change adaptation.

Advocate for and enable international entities to form agreements or other binding mechanisms that support transboundary scape conservation and climate adaptation.

Establish mechanisms to fund both national and transboundary collaborations.

Prioritize science that informs climate-relevant decision making and actions, including adaptive management.

Reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Link relevant mitigation efforts in scapes to climate change-adaptation priorities.

Practice ecosystem-based adaptation: connect conserving and managing scapes to maintaining and improving livelihoods.

rapidly changing world. Doing so means formally letting go of the perception that ecosystems are static, and balancing our human tendency to look backwards at past conditions with the difficult challenge of looking forward to likely future changes in order to understand what actions are needed to maximize biodiversity conservation over the long term. This returns us to the strategies of resistance, resilience, and transformation, and the critical importance of being clear about our goals. While humancaused climate change impacts have been increasing for many years, we are more or less just beginning to see confirmed signals and more extreme impacts are predicted to come such that we will be forced to make hard decisions about what to do with scarce conservation resources. Establishing clear priorities, to the degree possible given inevitable uncertainties about the future, will help ensure that we ultimately maximize our ability to conserve biodiversity.

Building a suite of collaborators even at the early stage of goal setting helps move climate change-adaptation priorities forward over the long term. Both setting of goals and building a team of collaborators must occur at the appropriate scale. We argue

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that a large scape scale is necessary given that some parts of such a larger scape may offer refugia, and that looking at too small an area may lead to the unneccessary prioritization of species or ecosystems that are expected to fare well in other parts of a scape.

With goals articulated and collaborators on board, it is advantageous to develop a policy framework under which climate adaptation priorities can move forward.

Ensuring that climate change adaptation and mitigation become federal or other government-level priorities is a game changer in accomplishing scape-scale conservation; indeed, it appears to be one of the strongest ways to obtain recognition, funding, and prioritization. Similarly, a lack of clear international agreements can hamper progress across international scapes, leading to unevenness in funding levels and differential priorities along political boundaries. Mechanisms to formalize large scapescale conservation that incorporates climate change are needed. Such mechanisms could be in the form of legislation, or establishing formalized but voluntary collaborations and incentive systems. The challenge of securing funding to work across large scapes and especially across political boundaries is ongoing, so developing funding streams in parallel with formal mechanisms is crucial.

As with collaborative mechanisms and funding, sound science that addresses applied conservation questions also is needed to drive priorities forward. The reality is that the field of climate science is new and evolving. New information can change priorities, and yet the threat of climate change to biodiversity conservation is so evident that we cannot afford to wait until the climate science is clearer. Given this, science is key for guiding decisions and informing adaptive management into the future.

Moveover, to assist with decision making in light of the uncertainties associated with climate change, we suggest that climate change planning and action prioritization consider multiple plausible scenarios for the future.

The use of mitigation funding mechanisms to address not only mitigation of climate change but also climate change-adaptation priorities makes intuitive sense.

Stronger links between mitigation and adaptation priorities should be sought across scapes as well as at global, country, and even sub-regional levels.

Similar to finding win-win scenarios with mitigation and climate change, connecting biodiversity conservation adaptation strategies to maintaining or improving human livelihoods also make sense. That said, if biodiversity conservation receives lower priority compared to improving livelihoods, then conservation will not succeed.

It may be that some conservation adaptation priorities are not associated with human livelihoods but should still be supported and implemented.

Conclusion Because of the scale at which many species and ecosystems need to be conserved, and because of the scale at which climate change is causing impacts, conservation

Moving Forward on Climate Change Science, Planning, and Action 297

today requires working across large scapes. Failure to do so will shortchange conservation significantly. We cannot afford to continue to consider conservation only within the jurisdiction of a single national park, a single forest, a single stretch of river, or a single community, but rather we must understand how these entities contribute to conservation across a broader scape. The case studies in this book give compelling examples of both why and how to do so. These scapes are at different stages and engaging at different levels in the science, planning, and implementation of climate change-adaptation strategies. At the same time, both individually and as a whole, they offer important jewels of information as to how to incorporate climate change adaptation into conservation. It is not that the case studies are necessarily adding major innovations to the conservation toolbox. Rather, they illustrate shifting priorities that range from minor adjustments in the scape’s conservation agenda to profound alterations in stakeholder priorities. We are early in incorporating climate change into scape conservation. Watching these “experiments� going on around the world will be important to building on our understanding and honing our tools and approaches.

We hope this book will serve as inspiration and guide for others to now engage in climate change adaptation at the landscape or seascape scale.

Now Available from Island Press Climate and Conservation Landscape and Seascape Science, Planning, and Action Edited by Jodi A. Hilty, Charles C. Chester, and Molly S. Cross Animals and plants will respond to climate change in a number of ways, including shifting across the landscape toward more favorable climates. To no small degree, whether and how this epic passage takes place will depend on human decisions about how we protect habitat at a large scale. Through a variety of regional analyses, this edited volume provides tangible, place-based examples of work to protect large landscapes and seascapes as a means of protecting biodiversity from the looming threat of climate change.

The book begins with an introductory section that frames the issues and takes a systematic look at planning for climate change adaptation. The nineteen chapters that follow examine particular case studies in every part of the world, including landscapes and seascapes from equatorial, temperate, montane, polar, and marine and freshwater regions. Projects profiled range from North American grasslands to boreal forests to coral reefs to Alpine freshwater environments.

7 X 10. 416 pages. 2012. 35 figures, 7 tables, 3 boxes, references, index.

Paper: $35.00 978-1-61091-171-9

Chapter authors have extensive experience in their respective regions and are actively engaged in working on climaterelated issues. The result is a collection of geographical case studies that allows for effective cross-comparison while at the same time recognizing the uniqueness of each situation and locale.

Climate and Conservation offers readers tangible, place-based examples of projects designed to protect large landscapes as a means of conserving biodiversity in the face of the looming threat of global climate change. It informs readers of how a diverse set of conservation actors have been responding to climate change at a scale that matches the problem, and is an essential contribution for anyone involved with large-scale biodiversity conservation.

Jodi A. Hilty is Director of the North America Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society. Charles C. Chester teaches global environmental politics at Tufts and Brandeis Universities. Molly S. Cross is the Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for the North America Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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safe passages

iii

Safe Passages highways, wildlife, and habitat connectivity

edited by

Jon P. Beckmann Anthony P. Clevenger Marcel P. Huijser Jodi A. Hilty

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright © 2010 Island Press All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009 Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

No copyright claim is made in the works of Frank T. van Manen, employee of the federal government.

Design and typesetting by Karen Wenk Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Safe passages : highways, wildlife, and habitat connectivity / edited by Jon P. Beckmann . . . [et al.]. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-653-6 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-59726-653-1 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-654-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-59726-654-X (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Wildlife crossings. 2. Habitat conservation. 3. Roads—Environmental aspects.

4. Animals—Effect of roads on. I. Beckmann, Jon P. SK356.W54S34 2010 639.9′6—dc22 2010001416 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Chapter 17

The Way Forward: Twenty-first Century Roads and Wildlife Connectivity Jodi A. Hilty, Jon P. Beckmann, Anthony P. Clevenger, and Marcel P. Huijser

Global change and human expansion are occurring at a pace more rapid than at any other time in the history of humankind, and roads are a major component of human impacts across the world. Wildlife–vehicle collisions cause property damage, human injury, and possible human fatalities in addition to loss of wildlife. Roads also fragment once continuous wildlife populations. Our understanding of the impacts of roads on wildlife and approaches to mitigate these impacts is in its nascence.

While still an emerging field, the science of road ecology is expanding rapidly. Research on both terrestrial and aquatic species is providing insights into the likelihood of their use of different crossing structures and fish passages, and this is informing transportation and land management as they develop new approaches for helping wildlife cross roads safely. At the same time, mitigating wildlife–vehicle collisions is increasingly being prioritized by communities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), state/ provincial, and federal agencies. As a result of these trends, the integration of concerns for wildlife into road construction and expansion is becoming more common, although not necessarily the norm that we argue it should be. The case studies presented in this book are set in unique and varied environments with different stakeholders and circumstances. Yet they share a number of common factors that likely provide a clear path to each project’s 323

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successful road–wildlife mitigation effort. This chapter offers a reflection on the components that are likely to contribute to any project’s successes.

Project versus System Level A clear message that emanates from several of the case studies is the need to take a project- and systems-level approach. As was demonstrated in chapters 5 and 6, the success of a systems-level approach depends on ensuring that the right stakeholders are engaged throughout the process and that the process is transparent. Vermont’s statewide linkage analysis approach emphasized how a systems approach may increase conservation effectiveness, connectivity, predictability, and transparency of projects from beginning to end (chapter 12). Such a prioritization also ensures that limited conservation dollars are spent where most needed. The Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan—developed with Pima County citizens, NGOs, and agency engagement—offers a site-specific example on how to move toward systems planning through integrating habitat conservation, transportation, and landuse planning across multijurisdictional levels (chapter 15). Such systematic approaches demonstrate the benefit of enabling states, NGOs, and collaborators to weigh project priorities across a state and direct investment toward the highest-need projects.

Though there are clearly benefits to systems planning, connectivity conservation actions occur one location at a time, meaning that engagement at specific priority sites is of utmost importance to achieve connectivity goals. For this reason—and that conservation sometimes stalls in creation and refinement at the planning stages rather than implementation—we believe that most resources should still ultimately be concentrated at the project level. That is not to say that these large context plans should not be developed, but rather they should be developed relatively quickly such that they can be easily updated and not be the major focus of ongoing human and financial investment.

The Role of Good Information Science is viewed as an influential component that should underlay decision making. Interestingly, in the case studies science provided the inspiration for developing projects as well as guiding priorities. In the example of Arizona (chapter 13), monitoring elk movements provided the information

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that transformed an original partial fencing design to a more extensive fencing design despite initial resistance. Also, the wildlife monitoring in Tijeras Canyon offered a benchmark of success demonstrating that project goals are being achieved and reinforcing community, NGOs, and agencies’ perspectives. Such positive feedback provides incentive to engage in additional, related projects as several case studies indicate.

Science also offers several types of input for designing road-mitigation projects. First, preconstruction planning uses data on wildlife distributions, health, population dynamics, movements, and other behaviors within the area affected by road construction. Second, the latest engineering and ecological data regarding highway mitigation performance for both terrestrial and aquatic species can inform project design and reduce impacts on the ecosystem. Finally, follow-up monitoring and research examine if the mitigation has met stated goals and is functioning as intended so that project improvements can be made to ultimately achieve project goals (e.g., chapter 13).

High-profile science-based projects, such as research in Banff National Park, Alberta (chapter 7), have informed and inspired new efforts throughout North America and even worldwide. With many projects in this book underscoring a common struggle for funding, particularly for monitoring, the Banff research is valuable because it exemplifies the importance of longterm monitoring. This level of monitoring revealed that conclusions made on wildlife use of crossing structures a few years after construction would have been different from the now long-term monitoring results. A concerted monitoring effort also potentially enables examination of longerterm questions such as the link between highway mitigation, gene flow, and population viability. Ideally, all projects should monitor several levels of biological organization from genetic, species-population to communityecosystem functions and processes. However, in reality, most projects will have to target their monitoring. The ecology and road transportation community should prioritize investment in a number of longer-term monitoring efforts to use as case studies that can inform future projects and test collective working assumptions.

Clear Goals The goals of each of the constituents in any transportation mitigation project may differ. In some cases, transportation agencies may focus primarily on motorist safety issues, while state/provincial wildlife agencies, private

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citizens, and/or environmental NGOs may prioritize wildlife connectivity or other environmental issues. Prior to the start of any proposed mitigation project, a common understanding of the issues and effective communication between transportation agencies and other stakeholder groups, including other governmental agencies and NGOs, is necessary (e.g., chapter 15).

Dialogues among partners need to articulate the main concerns, how to integrate them into the project, and what the expected mitigation will look like. Such an effort early on in the planning phase yields better collaboration and a mutually agreed upon direction in planning transportation projects that incorporate wildlife conservation measures. This approach is also likely to streamline projects and permitting processes, and may ultimately reduce costs. In our opinion, the failure to define clear goals is one of the most common causes of stalled projects and friction between partners.

The case studies in this book demonstrate that human safety often serves as the initial incentive and even the funding lever that moves the project forward. That said, the opportunity exists to increase motorist safety at the same time as creating well-designed wildlife crossing systems that improve wildlife connectivity. Most of the projects discussed throughout this book demonstrate such a win–win scenario because partners identified clear goals that they together could support.

Successful Partnerships Perhaps one of the most consistent messages across case studies is that functioning partnerships drive projects to success. Some partnerships, such as in Vermont (chapter 12), are primarily between governmental agencies, but many other entities supported their planning efforts. In Vermont, strong citizen support of wildlife conservation contributed to agencies’ ability to carry out road–wildlife mitigation projects. Also, nongovernmental agencies played a key role in inspiring and educating agency personnel through their wildlife training course.

Engagement with all potential stakeholders early and throughout the project is instrumental. In North Carolina (chapter 11), late engagement of the state wildlife agency on highway 64 meant that, despite recommendations, options for underpasses were limited. Later projects in North Carolina engaged the wildlife agency earlier and throughout projects, which contributed to improved wildlife crossing structures.

The inception of some case study projects required creating new alliances and even organizations, such as in the Tijeras Canyon example (chapter 9). While other projects demonstrate that existing regional al-

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liances, such as in Pima County (chapter 15), can provide needed structure and support. In either case, alliances are a productive mechanism to ensure ongoing input from NGOs and citizens that facilitates dialogue with agencies engaged on projects. Several case studies also indicate that once alliances are successful on one project, they often build on their experience and engage together on new projects.

Mixed partnerships offer additional potential benefits. For example, citizens and nonprofits can engage in actions not appropriate for agencies such as in lobbying the state, raising project profile or issues in the local media, and coordinating community outreach (chapter 6). While additional partners undoubtedly require more coordination, a diversity of organizations generally seems to offer strengths toward moving the project forward.

Conversely, lack of engagement of partners including the local communities may threaten a project’s success.

Public Support A clear force for moving many case study projects forward is public support. In Tijeras Canyon (chapter 9), early citizen involvement helped sway initially reticent transportation officials, and ultimately Tijeras Canyon public input was accepted as peer review of the proposed project. Similarly, project ideas for Highway 93 in Montana (chapter 8) did not progress until the Confederated Salish and Kootenai agreed to a set of goals with the Montana Department of Transportation. Ultimately, community engagement on the Highway 93 project altered the initial plans for improving the highway. The changes in the plan better matched community needs, including conserving their wildlife heritage through maintaining connectivity, while still achieving safety goals. In North Carolina, lack of initial public support—because of negative media that portrayed the project as wasteful governmental spending—stalled the project (chapter 11). Those committed to the project had to communicate real costs, ecological impacts, and human safety issues clearly to the public to move the project forward again.

Government agencies often require public comment periods, but the organizations arguably best suited to garner public support are nonprofits and community-based groups.

Creation of coalitions is one way to garner organized public support as discussed above, and direct citizen engagement is another. The Road Watch program in Crowsnest Pass (chapter 14) provided an opportunity for community volunteers to engage directly on road matters as a means of increasing support of potential mitigation projects in the region. As the authors

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point out, such efforts are only one tool to increase awareness and involvement. One challenge is measuring the short- and long-term impact of such programs. That said it is hard to believe that such efforts would not increase awareness at some level.

Other Incentives Necessary partners for a proposed project are not always initially eager.

Case studies discussed incentives ranging from training, policy approaches, and regulatory incentives (North Carolina, chapter 11). This speaks to the need to ensure that all involved agencies recognize the importance of road ecology to their respective missions and cultivate the expertise and interest.

Transportation agencies that have not addressed wildlife connectivity in past projects engage in such “new� activities either because of a concerted effort within their entity or because of outside pressure. In Vermont, the transportation agency training course helped staff understand how to gauge the effects of roads on wildlife and habitat and was in high demand.

Anecdotal reports of individuals who attended suggest that the class altered the way staff thought about the environment more generally (chapter 12).

Initial engagement on wildlife connectivity issues in road projects by agencies is sometimes resisted. Case studies described external pressure from one agency to another agency as being effective. It wasn’t until the U.S. Forest Service refused to permit the second phase of reconstruction in Tijeras Canyon (chapter 9) that funding was found to support the research on the project, for example. At the project level, the importance of individuals cannot be underscored enough. One individual can make it very hard for a project to move forward, and one individual can also be the driving force that pulls the pieces together to make the project move. At the same time, making sure that many different groups are partnering and have access to good information is one of the apparent shared factors in the studies that moved projects toward completion. An individual or several individuals, often external to partnering agencies, are essential to guiding participants through the process to keep the project on course.

Long-Term Maintenance It is clear that a persistent challenge across several projects is the lack of long-term monitoring and maintenance of structures, especially fences. The

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Florida I-75 project (chapter 10) illustrates how broken fences, including human cutting of fencing, may pose an ongoing problem, compromising the long-term project success. In such a case, it may be that an intensified commitment to maintenance should be paired with continuing and even expanded community outreach to limit gaps, especially human-created holes, in the fencing. Addressing the long-term monitoring and maintenance plan at the project inception would alleviate some of these issues.

The Landscape Context Over the longer term, highway wildlife mitigation projects need not only to address the site-based project but to place these projects in the context of the larger landscape and ecological processes. This means moving away from thinking linearly (i.e., the linear road corridor). Planning should occur with awareness of roads in the context of surrounding habitats, ecosystems, and ecosystem processes as well as the infrastructure network and land use (e.g., agriculture, urbanization, sprawl). This contextual approach will also assist in making decisions about what type of mitigation will best ensure safe wildlife crossing opportunities.

The broader Florida panther monitoring demonstrates the need for addressing the larger landscape context. The I-75 project nearly eliminated panther road-kill on that highway, but road-kill of panthers is still a source of mortality for these animals on other nearby roads. Failure to address this systemic issue could ultimately threaten the long-term success of I-75 project goals for panthers, although the crossing structures will still be important for other species. It may be appropriate to assess mitigation needs for panthers on other roads in the larger landscape now or in the future to conserve this species over the long term.

A useful way to understand the context of a proposed project within a larger landscape is systems planning, as discussed earlier. If systems planning does not yet exist, other resources exist that can be tapped into relatively easily and can assist in developing a rapid assessment of landscapelevel issues. For example, state wildlife action plans as well as state efforts to develop statewide connectivity plans may provide at least a view into that larger landscape context (chapter 6).

Finally, road projects should incorporate an ecosystem approach. Currently, decisions are mostly based on human safety concerns and are heavily biased toward mitigating impacts to large ungulates. In the future, transportation engineers, ecologists, wildlife managers, planners, and decision

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makers should make decisions based on population viability for a wide range of species and consider indicators of ecosystem health and integrity.

Such a broader view will ensure that project scopes are not too narrow and will address short-term species-specific needs and longer-term ecosystem integrity.

Next Steps This book provides ample evidence for the need to continue to integrate wildlife concerns in the planning, design, and construction of future transportation projects. These examples offer lessons on how this is currently being achieved as well as discussing the many challenges. These case studies represent attempts to utilize the best available science and project experience, and are novel efforts that should be followed over time to judge how effective they are at achieving meaningful conservation goals.

As awareness about the need to maintain connectivity or reconnect wildlife populations across highways grows, so too does the need to support such projects and programs. We make five general recommendations that would move such efforts forward: 1. Policies: Clear policies and transparent guidelines that consider and incorporate wildlife concerns into transportation planning at the local, state/provincial, and federal levels are needed.

2. Ecological research: Expanded wildlife and road ecology research that tests existing hypotheses and refines our understanding of how wildlife respond to roads, and the mitigation measures designed for them should guide future projects. Long lists of research needs could be compiled by gathering recommendations from existing papers or by convening transportation agencies, but we believe that some of the top priorities include (a) more rigorous and longerterm monitoring (≼ 3 years) of wildlife use of crossing structures and study designs that will provide results with high inferential strength (i.e., using a before- and after-control-impact or controlimpact assessment; (b) expanding our knowledge of not only how individuals within populations use linkage habitats, but how their populations benefit in terms of demographics (movements) and genetics (gene flow); (c) testing and developing more cost-effective monitoring approaches and measures of performance; (d) developing models that identify habitats that will best maintain the ability

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of wildlife to move between core habitats and across roads through crossing structures, and validate the models with independent data; and (e) developing tools that allow land managers and stakeholders to compare habitat linkage design to alternative designs that minimize costs or achieve other ecosystem goals.

3. Engineering: Incentives are needed to (a) explore creative new approaches, materials, and designs that address the fundamentals of transportation engineering and road ecology; (b) increase the number of potential solutions for cost-effective, innovative crossing designs that can be replicated or modified for widespread use in other locations; (c) engage engineering and design professionals and students in the interdisciplinary nature of road ecology through informal and formal training and education.

4. Agencies should dedicate and increase funding for restoring wildlife connectivity across highways at local, state/provincial, and federal levels. Wildlife crossing projects are expensive and without proper appropriations, it will be difficult to move forward many projects in a timely way.

5. Public support: The public needs to understand the societal and environmental benefits of road mitigation strategies. A well-informed public can influence political decisions in local communities affected by transportation or suburban development projects. Greater awareness and transfer of technology need to be conveyed to local decision makers in areas where critical decisions are being made as to whether expanding road projects are mitigated for wildlife connectivity. Far too often, the public as well as local transportation practitioners do not fully understand the current science and benefits accrued from properly designed mitigation.

Conclusions During the past 30 years, the environmental impacts of transportation have been addressed primarily through policy initiatives, planning and analysis, new programs, and new technologies. Wildlife conservation and habitat connectivity concerns have typically received little attention by transportation agencies until the last decade because the primary concern of most transportation agencies has been regulatory compliance with federal and state laws (e.g. in the United States, the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act). Traffic and roads are strongly implicated in

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many of the major environmental problems we face today: air and water pollution, fragmented natural habitats, wildlife and biodiversity losses, and urban sprawl. During the next 25 years, significant growth and changes in North America’s population and economy are expected to occur. The U.S. population alone is anticipated to increase to 438 million by 2050, more than a 40 percent increase from the 2008 population of 304 million. Both will undoubtedly require increasing infrastructure support, including roads. The impacts of roads on natural environments and the means of mitigating their effects are undoubtedly one of the most important land and wildlife conservation challenges of this new century.

Healthy and well-functioning ecosystems are vital to the protection of our diverse biological resources, and to sustaining the economies and communities that rely on their products and benefits. Sustainable transportation systems must provide effectively for healthy ecosystems and safe and efficient human mobility. The environmental planning process requires multidisciplinary involvement and input from review/permitting agencies.

Federal and state/provincial transportation agencies have recognized that ecosystem approaches and early stakeholder involvement in identifying issues and areas of concern are essential if their projects are to be environmentally sustainable and streamlined. Therefore, partnering and collaborative approaches, like we have seen in this book, are essential when developing ecosystem and habitat conservation initiatives.

The future holds great promise for new and improved transportation planning. This planning can look at the past, present, and beyond, by envisioning future conditions under which ecological, economic, and social factors are integrated. However, this cannot be realized without political and agency support. The emerging principles of road ecology are providing useful guidelines and best practices for mitigating road impacts on ecological connectivity, but they ultimately need to become embedded in federal and state/provincial administrative policies and legal frameworks. The need for more science-based knowledge for decision making is urgent and unprecedented, as a vigorous transportation program is being carried out across the land. This will provide a sound scientific basis for effective planning, policy, and implementation.

There is progress being made to connect agencies, stakeholders, and other concerned citizens with a keen interest in working toward a new way of transportation planning and systems design. There is a growing trend among agencies, communities, and academia in accepting and implementing crossing structures to mitigate road impacts to wildlife populations.

Only 10 years ago, there was little interest by transportation agencies in

The Way Forward: Twenty-first Century Roads and Wildlife Connectivity 333

mitigating roads for wildlife (other than from a motorist safety objective), and the public was not well informed about societal and environmental benefits of road mitigation. As little as 15 years ago, environmental sciences and transportation engineering were completely isolated disciplines that never connected or communicated. The eighth International Conference on Ecology and Transportation (September 13–17, 2009 in Duluth, Minnesota) brought together more than 400 participants from transportation agencies, fish and wildlife agencies, NGOs, and engineering firms for five days to learn about many case studies in addition to the most recent advances in operating transportation systems in a landscape context. The conference was initiated in 1995 by a state transportation agency and primary sponsor in the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.

Where will road ecology and safe passages for wildlife be in the next 10 years? We hope that examples such as those shown in this book become commonplace throughout North America and that there will be new case studies to report on and newly conceived mechanisms in place to implement landscape-based conservation measures in and around roads. These projects should help populations of turtles, grizzly bear, elk, and many other species continue to thrive. We hope this book will serve as an inspiration and motivator for others to now move forward and make the need for another “Safe Passages� book possible in 2020.

New from Island Press Safe Passages Highways, Wildlife, and Habitat Connectivity Edited by Jon P. Beckmann, Anthony P. Clevenger, Marcel P. Huijser, and Jodi A. Hilty Safe Passages brings together in a single volume the latest information on the emerging science of road ecology as it relates to mitigating interactions between roads and wildlife. This practical handbook of tools and examples is designed to assist individuals and organizations thinking about or working toward reducing road-wildlife impacts. The book provides: •

an overview of the importance of habitat connectivity with regard to roads

•

current planning approaches and technologies for mitigating the impacts of highways on both terrestrial and aquatic species

•

different facets of public participation in highway-wildlife connectivity mitigation projects

•

case studies from partnerships across North America that highlight successful on-the-ground implementation of ecological and engineering solutions

•

recent innovative highway-wildlife mitigation developments

ECOSYSTEM STUDIES

Detailed case studies span a range of scales, from site-specific wildlife 6x9. 383 pages crossing structures, to statewide planning for habitat connectivity, to national Paper : $40.00 978-1-59726-654-3 legislation. Contributors explore the cooperative efforts that are emerging as Cloth : $70.00 978-1-59726-653-6 a result of diverse organizations—including transportation agencies, land and wildlife management agencies, and nongovernmental organizations—finding common ground to tackle important road ecology issues and problems. Safe Passages is an important new resource for local-, state-, and national-level managers and policymakers working on road-wildlife issues, and will appeal to a broad audience including scientists, agency personnel, planners, land managers, transportation consultants, students, conservation organizations, policymakers, and citizens engaged in road-wildlife mitigation projects.

Jon P. Beckmann is an associate conservation scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society and an affiliated professor at Idaho State University. Anthony P. Clevenger is a senior wildlife research scientist at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University.

Marcel P. Huijser is a research road ecologist at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University. Jodi A. Hilty is director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s North America Program.

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After Disaster, Tactical Urbanism Builds Resilience Mike Lydon

Originally published May 1, 2015 on Resilience.org

W

hen two major earthquakes hit Christchurch, New Zealand in 2010 and 2011, this coastal city of 400,000 was all but destroyed. What remains—historic facades propped up by shipping containers, buildings crumbling in on themselves, razed blocks covered in well-mowed grass— looks as though multiple post-apocalyptic movie sets were placed side by side.

But, walking around post-disaster Christchurch, it becomes clear that the earthquakes also shook loose a deep reserve of creative talent. Soon after the quakes, activist groups like Gap Filler and Greening the Rubble began developing temporary projects designed to bring community life, joy, art, and commerce back to the decimated city center.

In this way, Christchurch has become an epicenter of tactical urbanism – a strategy that harnesses the ingenuity and spirit of communities to improve city life. Tactical (also called emergent, adaptive, and user generated) urbanism deploys a broad range of short-term, low-cost, scalable interventions. It is audacious—breaking through the gridlock of planning processes and responding to city-dwellers’ needs in real time. City dwellers around the globe are using these strategies for everything from guerilla wayfinding to pop-up retail and DIY traffic calming.

And, as I learned on a recent trip to Christchurch, tactical urbanism really shines in times of crisis. As I toured the city, I got to see the stunningly simple Cardboard Cathedral, built as a temporary replacement for the city’s badly damaged 19th-century cathedral. I lingered in a community gathering space called The Commons, which until recently included the Pallet Pavilion, a venue for live music constructed entirely of wooden shipping pallets. Throughout the city, I encountered community gardens, 37

38 • section II: Resilient communities

bike repair kiosks, container markets, streetscape installations—and even a mini-golf course spread out across the rubble. What struck me about these projects was their variety, but also their human scale, use of recycled material, and their “world made by hand” aesthetic.

Developed by artists, organizers, academics, developers, small business owners—and yes, even architects and planners—small-scale projects emerged as the dominant paradigm for remaking the city while the Crown government got its house in order. Together, these projects proved that social networks could mobilize faster than any government agency (though the city’s local government deserves much credit, for investing in grassroots groups and giving them wide berth.)

What has transpired in Christchurch over the past four years is nothing short of remarkable. These projects have mobilized the ingenuity of the city’s people. They created precedents for open and participatory city planning. And importantly, they helped the city heal by bringing people together—drawing residents and visitors back into the physical and cultural heart of the city.

In this way, tactical urbanism has also made the city more resilient. An emerging body of literature shows that resilient cities are characterized by innovation, participatory governance, and strong social ties—all of which are celebrated and strengthened by tactical urbanism.

Today, as Christchurch begins to rebuild in earnest, the fate of its quirky, post-disaster projects remains unclear. The City and the Crown-appointed rebuilding authority (CERA) are moving forward on a recently completed master plan. Dollars—big dollars—are flowing into the city, as evidenced by the half dozen cranes and roadwork projects seen around nearly every corner.

While the cranes and construction crews are a welcome sight in this battered city, let’s hope they don’t signal a return to the status quo ante. In the wake of disaster, the people of Christchurch mustered great creativity and solidarity—building their own resilience and that of their city. In a century that promises many shocks and surprises—from extreme weather events to financial crises and terrorism—that resilience will serve them well. And we have much to learn from their response to an extraordinary challenge.

after disaster, tactical urbanism builds resilience •†39

Perhaps the work they accomplished has served its initial purpose, as an effective transition between what was and what will be. But maybe, just maybe, the upstart energy of tactical urbanism can be married to well-considered financial capital, and something altogether transformative will emerge and be sustained. We’re all watching.

Tactical Urbanism Short-term Action for Long-term Change

Short-term, community-based projects—from pop-up parks to open streets initiatives—have become a powerful and adaptable new tool of urban activists, planners, and policy-makers seeking to drive lasting improvements in their cities and beyond. These quick, often low-cost, and creative projects are the essence of the Tactical Urbanism movement.

Whether creating vibrant plazas seemingly overnight or re-imagining parking spaces as neighborhood gathering places, they offer a way to gain public and government support for investing in permanent projects, inspiring residents Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia ISBN: 9781610915267 Paperback: $25.00 March 2015

and civic leaders to experience and shape urban spaces in a new way. In Tactical Urbanism, Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia provide background on the movement they helped found and offer case studies and a toolkit for conceiving, planning, and carrying out projects. Tactical Urbanism promises to be the foundational guide for urban transformation.

The bible on Tactical Urbanism Mike Lydon is Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative. An internationally recognized planner, he was a co-author of The Smart Growth Manual and the creator and primary author of the reports “The Open Streets Project” and “Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action, Long-Term Change” Vol.1 and Vol. 2. Anthony Garcia is Principal of The Street Plans Collaborative. A leader in civic advocacy in South Florida, he was Managing Editor and Publisher of TransitMiami.com, an award-winning blog dedicated to planning and transportation in South Florida.

He was also Project Director for six years at the firm of Chael Cooper & Associates Architects.

He serves as part-time faculty at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

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N AT U R E ’ S ALLIES

Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World

Fo r e w o r d b y C U RT M E I N E

LARRY A. NIELSEN

Nature’s Allies

Nature’s Allies Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World

Larry A. Nielsen

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright © 2017 Larry A. Nielsen All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street, NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036 Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946591 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Keywords: Island Press, John Muir, Yosemite National Park, Robert Underwood Johnson, Sierra Club, Hetch Hetchy, Ding Darling, Duck Stamp, National Wildlife Refuge System, John Salyer, US Biological Survey, National Wildlife Federation, Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac, The Shack, Game Management, Thinking Like a Mountain, Rachel Carson, Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us, The Edge of the Sea, Silent Spring, DDT, Chico Mendes, Extractive reserves, Brazilian rainforest, Rubber-tapping, Deforestation, Billy Frank Jr., Judge Hugo Boldt, Hank Adams, Nisqually Tribe, Treaty of 1854, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, Wangari Maathai, Green Belt Movement, Uhuru Park, Nobel Peace Prize, Gro Harlem Brundtland, World Commission on Environment and Development, World Health Organization, Sustainability definition.

To the memory of Joe Florini, as true a conservationist as those whose stories appear here

Contents

Foreword

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: John Muir: Earth-Planet, Universe

13

Chapter 2: Ding Darling: The Best Friend a Duck Ever Had

39

Chapter 3: Aldo Leopold: A Very Large & Important Sumpin

65

Chapter 4: Rachel Carson: The Lady Who Started All This

95

Chapter 5: Chico Mendes: Gandhi of the Amazon

121

Chapter 6: Billy Frank Jr.: The Getting-Arrested Guy

147

Chapter 7: Wangari Maathai: The Green Crusader

171

Chapter 8: Gro Harlem Brundtland: Godmother of

Sustainable Development

197

Notes

223

About the Author

245

Index

247

Chapter 8

Gro Harlem Brundtland Godmother of Sustainable Development

T

he party had been a great success. A lovely wedding, good friends, delicious food, excellent red wine, and, for a time, a welcome Friday evening pause in the hectic life of a minister of the environment. April in Norway could be beautiful, and this particular evening glowed with the promise of spring.

Until 11:55 p.m., that is, when a messenger approached with a serious look: “Telephone for Gro.”1 An unexpected call at midnight strikes fear into the heart of a mother—or a cabinet minister. Fortunately, the children were fine. Unfortunately, the North Sea was not.

An offshore oil-drilling platform—the Ekofisk Bravo—had malfunctioned. Oil and gas were spewing high into the air, just like in old movies about Texas wildcatters. Gro Harlem Brundtland immediately switched gears, from relaxed wedding guest to focused leader. “I was concentrating so intently. . . . I recognized the feeling from my days as a doctor when I could be awoken in the middle of the night to deal with a serious accident or a patient suddenly entering crisis.”2 Two hours later, details began to emerge. The blowout was raging uncontrolled. Miraculously, no explosions or fire had occurred, and all 115 workers on the platform had escaped without injury. The problem 

 Nature’s Allies

was a safety device that had been installed upside down, causing it to malfunction when a “kick”—an unexpected entry of gas or fluid into a well—rocketed up the pipe. The platform was 200 miles offshore, so there was no immediate threat to the coast, but high seas were hampering efforts to stop the rupture or contain the spill.3 Saturday morning passed in a flurry of intense activity—continuous updates from the oil field, conversations with other cabinet officials and the prime minister, notifications to other North Sea nations, establishment of a local action team, briefings with the owner of the platform and licensee for the Ekofisk oil field, Phillips Petroleum. In the afternoon, she flew with the prime minister to the site.

Brundtland took control, as usual, making decisions with the confidence of a medical doctor and the aplomb of a politician. Yes, of course, she would take all questions from the press. Yes, Phillips Petroleum needed to prepare to drill relief wells, regardless of the cost. No, they would not be allowed to use chemical dispersants. No, Norway was not going to stop offshore oil drilling in the North Sea. One journalist, normally a critic of Brundtland’s party, admiringly summed up her demeanor: “Look at her as she takes her place before the cameras, completely at ease and relaxed, lovely as a jewel, nerves and brain cells under complete control. She speaks concisely, always to the point, seriously, but unsentimentally, and yet with a tough optimism that many of her male colleagues from the world of politics might envy her, instead of indulging themselves in a mixture of hysteria and opportunistic pointscoring.”4 On April 22, 1977, a generation before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill made history in the US waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Norway had experienced its first marine oil spill. In the next few days, the blowout would become the largest ever in the North Sea and, at the time, the largestever marine spill in the world. The actions of Minister of the Environment Gro Harlem Brundtland ended the disaster quickly: she brought in the famous American oil-well firefighter Red Adair to help—and he succeeded in short order, reportedly telling the minister, “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll fix it.”5 The success planted Brundtland firmly in the hearts of her fellow Norwegians as the leader of environmental sustainability. She was someone who could be trusted to do the right thing, the right way.

Gro Harlem Brundtland 

As one journalist described, she was a “Viking warrior incarnate, smiting others down not with the sword but with the strength of her beliefs.”6 Brundtland’s reputation for environmental stewardship grew continuously over the coming years, until not just Norwegians but people across the world saw her as a beacon for hope. Along the way, she earned a number of affectionate labels that expressed the world’s trust, admiration, and confidence in her—the Green Goddess, Earth Mother, Mrs. Green, and Godmother of Sustainable Development. In Norway, she became the nation’s Landsmoderen—Mother of the Nation. But mostly, everyone just calls her Gro.7

Gro Growing Up The question goes unresolved whether nature or nurture has more influence on how a child develops. In Gro Harlem Brundtland’s case, the question is moot. Both her genes and her environment shouted the same prediction: she was going to be a rabble-rouser.

Gro—pronounced “Grew”—came from generations of strong activist, socialist stock. She was born on April 20, 1939, just a few months after the marriage of her parents, Inga Brynolf and Gudmund Harlem.

Inga was a firebrand: “a radical, a socialist who dreams of a coming era of justice and equality.”8 Gudmund had similar liberal inclinations. He was a medical student when he met Inga, but also the local leader of an international organization that pursued a socialist and pacifist agenda.

Soon after their marriage the Harlems set up housekeeping in Oslo, but it was hardly a traditional home. They purchased an apartment at Camilla Collett’s Way, No. 2, in the neighborhood of the royal palace. The address rapidly became known throughout the community of young radicals as “CC2,” a place where they could find both a free bed and politically charged discussion. The Harlems subdivided the large, formerly elegant rooms into seven small bedrooms, providing sleeping space for a constant stream of visitors. “People came and went,” Gro remembers. “Strangers often stayed overnight.”9 Nazi Germany invaded Norway just before Gro’s first birthday. Oslo changed virtually overnight from an open, welcoming community into

 Nature’s Allies

a dangerous place, especially for radical socialists. Her mother gathered up baby Gro and hid in a delivery truck that secreted them out of Oslo to a rural hideaway. From there, they journeyed carefully on to Sweden, where Gro waited out the war with her grandmother.

With Gro safe in Sweden, her mother returned to Oslo and worked beside her husband in the underground anti-Nazi resistance. Nazi rule grew steadily harsher and more dangerous. In 1942, the Gestapo came to arrest her father, who fled the apartment and ran down a fire escape just ahead of his pursuers. It was clearly time to leave. The Harlems made their way by a treacherous and circuitous route to Stockholm, where they were reunited with Gro and her grandmother.

As soon as the war ended, the family returned to Oslo and their home at CC2. Needing to support a family that now included Gro and two younger brothers, Gudmund reestablished his medical practice. CC2 rapidly regained its earlier status as a refuge that liberal thinkers could also call home. The circle enlarged to include a broader range of intellectuals, radicals, socialists, and artists. “On the bookshelves at home, classics like Marx stood next to Karl Evang’s Sexual Education and the Workers’ Lexicon,” Brundtland remembers. “There were history books, polemical tracts, party literature.”10 The Harlems were particularly interested in the plight of workers, and hence Gudmund Harlem, although far from meeting the definition of “worker,” became a leader in the Norwegian Labour Party.

This liberal environment nurtured every part of Gro’s early life. She recalls being “proud of my father for voting Labour because it’s right, even though he doesn’t benefit from it.”11 Dinner conversation was about politics and human rights, and Gro “was always the one asking why the government could not do more to help its citizens.”12 Gro and her siblings took up their parents’ causes, helping out by spreading pamphlets and posting announcements for speeches, meetings, and protest actions.

“Throughout my childhood the workers’ movement and the ideals of social democracy had influenced me,” she recalls.13 “I was . . . lucky to be brought up in a family of strong convictions, deeply held values of solidarity, justice, and equality.”14 The Harlems lived what they preached. They shunned luxuries even though a physician’s income could afford them. Gro’s clothes were simple and few, and she learned to sew her own dresses from plain cotton

Gro Harlem Brundtland 

fabric: “Simplicity pattern, Mamma’s sewing machine, Singer thread.”15 An exasperated aunt once commented, “Look at you, Gro, you’re dressed like a domestic missionary!”16 The entire family loved being outdoors. Their socialist youth organization emphasized the value of outdoor activities, like camping and hiking, that discouraged competition in favor of cooperation. Crosscountry skiing was a particular favorite, perhaps because it also permitted freedom, “where nature was for everyone and you could just fasten your skis and set off in any direction you liked.”17 Gro was always a good student, but so independent as a thinker that she often ended up on the short side of classroom opinion. When a teacher asked her class whether they thought it better to have a king or a president, everyone shouted support for their popular king. Except Gro. She raised her hand and said, “President, because that way you can choose, and if you don’t like it you can change it.”18 Being in the minority was never a problem for Gro. “I liked to obey my impulses, and I wasn’t afraid of others’ opinions. I had a lot of energy to use up, a lot of limits to test.”19 Despite her political upbringing and activities, politics as a career had never crossed her mind. Science was much more attractive. “Law, economics, and engineering were attractive to me, but medicine had never been far from my thoughts since I was a little girl. . . .”20 She had learned the linkage between poverty and illness from her father, and she was compelled to follow his footsteps as a physician. After graduating from high school, she entered medical school at the University of Oslo.

Once again, however, she was hardly the traditional medical student, entirely consumed by the demanding disciplines of chemistry and biology. Her classmates and their perspectives were as important as her classes. “We had heated discussions about sex education, sexual equality, and abortion; about Christianity and religion; about religious fundamentalism and hell. I was always an active participant, curious to discover the strength and variety of other people’s views.”21 If, as the saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows, this was proven by Gro Harlem. A devoted liberal and socialist, she fell in love with Arne Olav Brundtland, an equally devoted conservative student from the Institute of Political Science. She was attracted not to the

 Nature’s Allies

content of his ideas, but to his willingness to speak and act on them.

“He had a bold, open way about him that I liked. . . . He certainly wasn’t afraid of me.”22 Rumors were flying, and her friends were incredulous. Olav was a fine fellow, they admitted, but this was treasonous! On the street one day, she met the wife of the prime minister, a family friend. “What’s this I hear, Gro?” she asked, “Are you going out with a Conservative?”23 Her father was equally doubtful, asking her “to think deeply about whether [she] was making the right choice.”24 In typical Brundtland fashion, these rebukes just stiffened her resolve: “I felt a growing sense of defiance.

This wasn’t right. I was a free woman, after all. The Labour Party didn’t own me. I was still Gro, and Olav was Olav. That was equality, if you like—and this was life in a free, modern country.”25 Gro and Olav married on December 9, 1960, in a home ceremony at CC2. For the next several years, she was fully occupied as a medical student, wife, and, soon, mother. “Nothing can compare with the moment when your first child passes through you and separates from you. The sense of wonder when you can feel the shape, the shoulders, and even the arms along the sides of the little body.”26 Medical school and motherhood don’t always get along well, but Brundtland thrived at both with the help of her husband and mother.

She nursed her children, so mother and child needed to come together regularly during the day. She reports that her mother “wheeled Knut down to the national hospital where I was studying in the reading room, sometimes twice a day. I nursed him in the ladies’ cloakroom.”27 Olav was equally helpful with the baby and other duties, a role he gladly performed. He was a good sport—press photographs in later years often showed him in the background holding her purse—but he did demand that he run the household his way, not hers. Less fastidious than his physician wife, he hung a sign in their home’s hallway: “A House Must Be Clean Enough to Be Healthy and Dirty Enough to Be Happy.”28 Within a few years, the children numbered four—three boys and a girl, all born within an eight-year span. Just as in her childhood home, mother and father shared the chores—except one. After a year or so, Brundtland lamented that “Olav had acquired an extraordinary ability to not hear the children at night. It is a talent he has preserved.”29

Gro Harlem Brundtland 

Figure 8.2 Even as a medical student and young mother, Brundtland was actively involved in social welfare and politics; she is seen here marching in a Labour Party parade on May 1, 1960. (Reproduced courtesy of the Labour Movement Archives and Library in Norway.)

With medical school behind them, the family journeyed to the United States. Olav had been invited to study with Henry Kissinger at the Harvard Center for International Affairs, and Brundtland entered Harvard’s public health program. They lived in International House, where they made friends from across the globe. The time in Boston had a deep effect on Brundtland: “The most important part of our trip was the inspiration we received from all the new people we met, both

 Nature’s Allies

teachers and fellow students. . . . Each day we learned about the poverty, population trends, food resources, and health problems that affected different parts of the world.”30 Her immersion in public health issues fueled a new academic interest—ecology. Always interested in nature, she was now making the connection between the human condition and the environment, spurred by the new ideas that swirled around her. During a visit by her father, she remembers, they were “talking with great enthusiasm about ecology, about how important it was to work toward a condition in which people lived in harmony with nature.”31 She was shocked that her father knew nothing of the concept, and she couldn’t “understand why ecology was not universally viewed as a crucial issue.”32 Once back in Norway, Brundtland began her medical practice, but always in a public health setting. She worked for the Oslo Board of Health as a school doctor and at the Municipal Health Center for Mother and Child; one night each week, she doctored at a hostel for homeless men. As a young physician, she “was preoccupied by medicine’s role in society, by the need to educate people, by how best to improve public health, safety, equality, and dignity of treatment in the broadest sense.”33 As a public health doctor, she sat on a committee that judged, on a case-by-case basis, whether needy women would be allowed to have publicly supported abortions. The experience moved her deeply.

“This was an area, like so many others, in which those with the fewest resources found it most difficult to tell their stories and to explain their point of view.”34 When the abortion issue heated up in Norway, Brundtland waded into the battle. “As a professional, as a woman, and as a politically active person, Gro became infuriated by the anti-abortion activities of the Conservative Party in the 1970s and launched a press campaign that made her name well known.”35 With a colleague, she wrote a series of articles for newspapers and journals. “I wrote about real cases I had dealt with on the abortion committee. . . . In general, the abortion debate was being conducted over the heads of most people; it lacked a recognizable human dimension. . . . I felt I had a duty to fight for women.”36 And when, in August 1974, she received a summons to meet with the nation’s prime minister, she assumed that the topic would be her role in the abortion issue. She was wrong.

Gro Harlem Brundtland 

Minister of the Environment Getting a personal call from the president or prime minister would shock most of us, but not a member of the Brundtland family. The Brundtlands brushed shoulders with the nation’s leaders regularly. Gro’s father had risen to chief physician for the Norwegian Research Institute and, thus, had been the personal physician for a string of prime ministers. His prominence in the Labour Party also led to government appointments; over a ten-year period he served first as minister of social affairs and then minister of defense. Contact with the prime minister was just part of everyday life.

But Brundtland was not prepared for what she heard that day from the prime minister. He didn’t want to discuss her role in women’s issues.

He didn’t want to discuss her father’s work. He wanted her to join his cabinet as minister of the environment. As she remembers, “Well, you know when I was thirty-five . . . the prime minister of this country surprised me very much by calling me to his office without saying why. . . .

But then he said, ‘I ask you to enter the cabinet,’ and I was completely surprised. . . .”37 She sought the advice of her husband and father, both of whom encouraged her to accept the job. Gro had been raised for public service, but not in this role. “I never planned to become a politician, although I always had a political interest, always was engaged in political debates and thinking; I never saw myself as a politician before I was asked to become one.”38 Nevertheless, she accepted, and Norway—and the world—had its first female environmental minister.

Minister of the environment was not an easy job. The ministry was in its infancy, and it had churned through four leaders in its brief two-year existence. Without a track record that might have helped define the ministry’s mission, much of what she was asked to do would be new— and probably controversial. “Immediately, in 1974, the new minister of the environment began doing things that angered industrialists.”39 She addressed acid rain, fishing rights, nature preservation, and fees for pollution. Brundtland found all of this exhilarating. “It was an incredible time of challenge and inspiration, one which I spent in the company of talented and committed people. Together we formed an unstoppable team, which succeeded in bringing our field right into the center of the political debate.”40

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Business-as-usual was not her style, especially not political businessas-usual. She was analytic rather than intuitive, objective rather than emotional, practical rather than dogmatic. “From the time I started in politics my instinct has always been to stick to the facts and avoid being too emotional. The arguments for environmental protection, to give one example, are strong enough to stand by themselves.”41 As a social democrat, she sought consensus and solidarity, empowering her staff and advisors to speak their minds. Once the facts were clear, however, she stood by them. “Decisive was an adjective that well fitted Brundtland. . . .”42 She was famous for her work ethic, her days often stretching into the early morning hours. She traveled often, both around Norway and throughout the world. “Nature,” she says, “could not afford any indifference.”43 Her passion, however, came with drawbacks. She was direct, a trait that some observers saw as willful and arrogant. She had a temper that she usually controlled, but occasionally it flared. “Her detractors . . . pointed to an easily aroused temper, self-important air, and often aggressive style.”44 One journalist called her the “minister from the sunny side of the street,” referring to her easy rise to high office, helped by being a member of a prominent Norwegian family.45 Brundtland answered the criticism with the conviction she had learned as a child, stating, “If you are born strong, with parents who give you the best, you have an even stronger responsibility for the people who didn’t get the same start.”46 Her tenure as environmental minister lasted five years, and was punctuated by two significant events. First was the Ekofisk oil platform disaster in April 1977, as described earlier.

Second was her effort to protect the Hardangervidda wilderness. The Hardangervidda is a high mountain plain in southern Norway, bisecting the country and drained by two unspoiled rivers. Divergent plans for the area arose in the early 1970s—one called for protecting it as a national park; the other called for damming the two rivers to create hydroelectric power. Brundtland was warned not to come out too strongly for protection, but rather promote a compromise of damming one river and protecting the other. Compromise, she believed, was not the right decision in this case. “I don’t have a choice,” she said. “The issue is too important. . . . I cannot in all conscience do anything but go all the way with this.”47 Through repeated rounds of government, Labour Party,

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parliamentary, and public debates, she held her ground, once stating publicly, “I have no doubt that there is no other area in southern Norway which is in greater need of our protection than the Hardangervidda wilderness.”48 Her viewpoint prevailed, and eventually, in 1981, the area was designated a national park.

She understood that the love of a healthy environment was at the core of being Norwegian. The day after the Ekofisk rupture was resolved, she traveled to Bergen for the annual May Day celebration. Norwegian flags flew everywhere, the bright blue cross on a vivid red background complemented by a clear blue sky. She remembers: “There was applause for the procession, something I had never experienced before. The town square was jam-packed. The public listened attentively. I spoke about quality of life, about our environment and our children, about the Hardangervidda wilderness, to thunderous applause. This was about more than our own oil crisis.”49 Brundtland was maturing as a politician at the same time she was becoming the nation’s environmental leader. In 1975, just a year after her appointment as minister, the Labour Party asked her to accept the position of deputy leader. At first she declined, believing she was too junior to hold such a post, but she finally accepted with the encouragement of other women politicians. Two years later, she ran successfully for Parliament. (In Norway, cabinet officials can hold a seat in Parliament, but must be represented by a surrogate while still in office.50) In 1979, the Labour Party was suffering from internal disagreements and declining popularity; municipal elections (Americans call these “midterm elections”) were disastrous. Changes were needed, in the form of shuffling the deck of cabinet and parliamentary roles. At the party’s direction, Brundtland left her ministerial position; she recalls that “it seems to me now that [the party leader] found the political struggle between development and conservation burdensome.”51 In positioning the party on these topics, the leadership “thought of me as tough, someone who knew her stuff a little too well for comfort. I had become a heavyweight opponent.”52 Now able to take her seat in Parliament, she used her time to gain experience and contacts in the political trenches. She made friends in other political parties, learning their personalities and motivations. “You

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Figure 8.3 Early in her term as minister of the environment, Brundtland confronted the largest oil spill in Norwegian history when an offshore oil platform ruptured in April 1977. (Reproduced courtesy of the Labour Movement Archives and Library in Norway.)

get to know the way they think and the way they like to present themselves—two things that are sometimes quite contradictory!”53 Her party was grooming her for higher office; as one newspaper reported, “Gro goes to Prime Minister’s School.”54 Her schooling came just in time. In early 1981, the prime minister resigned for health reasons. Out of a frenzy of internal Labour Party squabbles, Brundtland emerged as the leading candidate, and the king of Norway formally appointed her prime minister on February 1, 1981.

“Certainly we made Norwegian political history that evening. I would be the first woman prime minister, and the youngest.”55 Putting a woman in the prime minister’s chair was revolutionary. She immediately expanded the number of women in the cabinet from two to four; throughout her political career, she continued to strive for parity in her appointments. She was committed to teamwork, communication,

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and openness. Her secretary described the new working environment: “Gro was something completely new at the prime minister’s office. It was not only that she is a woman. She was glowing with a fighting spirit and willingness to work. . . . The heavy atmosphere had been lifted.

Behind the desk sat Gro, smiling with her whole body. She put out her arms and exclaimed, ‘This will all be fun.’”56 It might have been fun, but it was certainly short-lived. The Labour Party lost national elections that fall, and Brundtland was out as prime minister after a short eight months. Once again, she returned to Parliament, this time also as the unchallenged leader of her party. Her place as a world leader had been won, however, and her influence gradually spread beyond Norway’s borders.

A keystone experience for her was serving on a new kind of international commission. In 1980, the United Nations asked Olof Palme, former prime minister of Sweden, to form and lead the Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, in order to address the threat of nuclear weapons. Composed of respected world leaders, the commission had freedom to operate outside the constraints of representing specific nations or organizations like the United Nations or World Bank. Brundtland served on this commission, and her respect for Olof Palme was unbounded. They became close colleagues, united by their common experience of the ups and downs of high political office. Palme was assassinated in 1986, a crime that remains unsolved. Brundtland was devastated at the loss of her close friend and an exceptional world leader.

She recalls his legacy: “What was it that made him so extraordinary? It was his personal qualities. But it was also his ability to inspire trust in the ideals of Northern Europe and the United Nations, trust that fueled his restless drive toward bettering the lot of the underprivileged. He was genuinely the world’s symbol of hope for a better and more just future.”57 Brundtland looked to Palme for her inspiration. Soon people across the world looked to her for theirs.

World Commission on Environment and Development This time the invitation came not from Norway, but from the United Nations, and it was less of a surprise. In December 1983, UN Secretary-

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General Perez de Cuellar approached Brundtland to chair an initiative to address the state of the world’s environment as the new century was approaching. Why me? she asked, but she knew the answer: “No other political leader had become prime minister with a background of several years of political struggle, nationally and internationally, as an environment minister.”58 The concept for an environmental commission had been brewing for some time. In 1972, the UN had created an environmental unit, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in response to the awakening of a worldwide environmental movement. Since then, a series of meetings had addressed individual environmental issues in isolation—air pollution, perhaps, or excessive fish harvests, or accelerating human population growth. Accompanying each of those problems, however, was the elephant in the room—the fundamental linkages among environment, the economy, and the condition of the human race.

Something more was needed—a comprehensive, global consideration of how those issues were connected and how they affected one another.

The UN General Assembly again chose an independent commission, one modeled after the Palme Commission. “This was a chance to choose an interdisciplinary approach to environment and development which did not fit into the mandate of any UN institution.”59 Brundtland said yes without much hesitation, encouraged by family and colleagues. “In the final analysis,” she writes, “I decided to accept the challenge. The challenge of facing the future, and of safeguarding the interests of coming generations. For it was abundantly clear: We needed a mandate for change.”60 Just before Christmas in 1983, de Cuellar announced the new World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) with Gro Harlem Brundtland as its chair.

She approached a respected Canadian environmental diplomat, Jim MacNeill, to take the full-time position as the commission’s secretary-general. At first he was skeptical, put off by a task he thought was doomed to fail; the mandate was not only too idealistic but was also riddled with back doors for waffling and compromise. Brundtland told him, “So we will write our own mandate.”61 Eventually he succumbed to Brundtland’s charm and persistence, “convinced that, with a bit of luck, a lot of hard work, a simple mandate, and about US$8 million in vol-

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untary contributions, the impossible was doable.”62 MacNeill matched Brundtland in conviction, independence, and backbone; they were going to drive this effort as they saw fit, period. She reflects: “I had deliberately chosen a strong person. Jim MacNeill could be obstinate, and there were occasional conflicts with other colleagues, but he had an extremely tidy mind and an enormous capacity for work. . . .”63 They also agreed that writing a report was just step one; step two was promoting the report’s recommendations. An explicit commitment to blanketing the world with their conclusions was needed to motivate the reforms they sought. That commitment, MacNeill said, “enabled a huge initial outreach by the commission, which was crucial, in my view, to the ultimate impact of our report.”64 They next chose the twenty-three individuals who would comprise the commission. Brundtland received a great deal of advice regarding the membership ( Jane Fonda would be perfect, some believed), but “she made choices based primarily on her personal knowledge of people or of recommendations by people she trusted.”65 She avoided environmental zealots, instead favoring experienced, realistic proponents of environmental improvement. She was particularly conscious to balance the North-South, rich-poor dichotomy. “No previous international commission had reflected the international spectrum as we did. A clear majority of our members were from developing countries.”66 Assembling a diverse team had its problems. She hoped for gender balance, but few women were recommended or, finally, appointed.

But differing politics was the biggest threat to agreement. MacNeill remembered that “taken together, we represented almost every shade of ideology extant in the Cold War world of the ’80s. . . . Although we served in a personal capacity, national, cultural, and group loyalties were very strong, always below the surface and sometimes above.”67 And such group loyalties weren’t necessarily going to be overcome easily. “One of our commissioners was a distinguished scientist from the Soviet Union,” MacNeill recalled, “and he was accompanied to all of our meetings by a friendly KGB minder.”68 Corralling this team was an effort, but one that Brundtland managed with her usual diplomacy. Regarding just one issue—human population—she reflected in the commission’s report that “the differences of

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perspectives seemed at the outset to be unbridgeable, and they required a lot of thought and willingness to communicate across the divides of cultures, religions, and regions.”69 Her lifelong fearlessness in addressing a diversity of opinion served her well. “All commission members . . . agreed that her skills at moderating discussions, encouraging both debate and compromise, were essential to the success of the commission.

It was also, in the words of one commissioner, ‘really a joyful experience to work with her.’”70 The commission did not necessarily seek a joyful outcome to match the joyful experience, but it knew that a realistic, positive, forwardlooking outcome was essential. While the commission was at work, the world was shocked by a series of environmental calamities—long-term drought in Ethiopia, massive forest fires in Borneo, a chemical-plant explosion in Bhopal, an expanding ozone hole over the Antarctic, and nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl—that colored the anticipation of their conclusions. Observers worried that, against this backdrop, the commission’s report would either be another gloom-and-doom downer or else a rosy scenario based on impractical and politically unrealistic ideals. Brundtland and MacNeill understood the dilemma, and they had another solution. “We were quick to make our basic view known: It is possible to construct an economically sounder and fairer future based upon policies and behavior that can secure our ecological foundation.”71 People needed hope, and they needed a blueprint. “We cannot give up,” Brundtland demanded. “Passivity and pessimism have never helped the earth to advance.”72 But a positive future required changes in the way the world saw environment and development. One essential paradigm shift underscored the work of the commission. Whereas environmental concerns had been seen primarily as a task of cleaning up the mess left over after development, from that moment forward environment and development had to be seen as conjoined twins. The question wasn’t how to clean up the environment, it was how to sustain it. As MacNeill stated the problem: “The environmental protection agenda that nations adopted . . . only tackled the symptoms of environmental degradation; it completely ignored the sources. The sources were not to be found in the air, soils, and waters that were the focus of the environmental protection agenda; but

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rather, they were, and still are, to be found in a whole range of perverse public policies, especially our dominant fiscal and tax policies, our energy policies, and also our trade, agricultural, industrial, and other policies.”73 A commission to achieve this transformation needed to be different, and Brundtland made sure that it was. To compel the members beyond the usual “think-tank” activities—“commission expert papers, engage the best consultants, establish high-level panels, invite distinguished people”74—they needed a different set of experiences. So, first, rather than convening only in the elegant historic headquarters in Geneva, provided by the Swiss government, they traveled around the world. Over a three-year period, from 1984 through 1987, the commission met eight times—in Switzerland, Indonesia, Norway, Brazil, Canada, Zimbabwe and Kenya, the Soviet Union, and, finally, Tokyo. They went to where the problems were happening.

Second, they added a unique aspect to their meetings—public hearings. From the beginning, Brundtland and MacNeill insisted that they “hold public hearings on every continent and visit sites in the field that would demonstrate the issues and dilemmas we were addressing.”75 MacNeill believed that “the hearings went on to become our hallmark and, in my view, the primary source of the eventual consensus.”76 Brundtland recalls the crowds in Brazil: “The hearings in São Paulo turned into the most enthusiastic affair. The newly acquired freedom of expression and the Latin temperament brought things to a boil. When the hearings were officially over, some of the participants climbed up on the stage and proclaimed that proceedings must go on. . . . There were thousands of people there. . . . Things quieted down gradually, but it was a profound experience.”77 The hearings, and the field excursions that accompanied them, gave the commissioners a shared and vivid experience. “By providing commissioners with a common base of—sometimes demanding—experience they created trust and bonding, which would eventually be crucial for finding consensus on critical issues of the report.”78 They had come to the commission as individuals, but they left it as a unanimous body of forceful advocates for change.

Agreeing to principles was one thing; agreeing to the specific words that expressed those principles was another. The task of writing a report

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that commissioners from twenty-two countries could endorse was a long, arduous process. Of their final meeting in Tokyo—“the decisive meeting”—Brundtland has said, “We had to review every sentence in the report and create the feeling of joint responsibility necessary to position the report squarely on the international agenda.”79 The commission issued its report in a book called Our Common Future, published on March 20, 1987. As intended from the beginning, it was comprehensive. Sections of the report cover specific issues—human population growth, food security, ecosystem protection, energy, industrial production, and the urban environment—but the overall message is integrative. This essential perspective is reflected, for example, in the section on species and ecosystems: The link between conservation and development and the need to attack the problem at the sources can be seen clearly in the case of tropical forests. Sometimes it is government policy, not economic necessity, that drives the overexploitation and destruction of these resources. The direct economic and fiscal costs of this over-exploitation—in addition to those of species extinction— are huge. The result has been wasteful exploitation of the tropical forests, the sacrifice of most of their timber and non-timber values, enormous losses of potential revenue to the government, and the destruction of rich biological resources.80 Underlying these specific analyses was one foundational concept that sought to redefine the world’s priorities: sustainable development.

The commissioners developed “a compelling sense of the urgency of the issues and a recognition that the approaches to environmental management then in place were both seriously limited and deeply flawed, a recognition that grew into a strong conviction as our work progressed.”81 Eventually, “sustainable development” became the catchphrase for the report. Likewise, the commission’s definition of sustainable development has become the standard. Our Common Future declares: “Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable—to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”82

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The fate of an international commission’s work is uncertain. After the initial publicity dies down, a report is typically acknowledged, applauded, criticized, and then forgotten. Brundtland and MacNeill were not about to let that happen to Our Common Future, but the start was rocky. They originally planned to release the report officially in Washington, DC, for maximum press exposure. But President Reagan, who had never endorsed the commission, refused to meet Brundtland, and the release was canceled. The public launch shifted to London on April 27, 1987, and a formal presentation was made to the UN General Assembly in New York on October 19, 1987. Once again, they expected widespread press coverage. Once again, they were disappointed—the US stock market crashed that very morning, causing a mass migration of the press from UN headquarters to Wall Street, and the report got little coverage.

Undaunted, the pair kept on. In April 1988, they encouraged a colleague to start a new organization—the Centre for Our Common Future—specifically to promote the report and its recommendations. It worked. As Jim MacNeill reported, Within a year . . . , our recommendations were endorsed by the UN systems and by ASEAN, OECD, the Commonwealth and other regional bodies, as well as the World Bank and all of the regional banks. Within two years, they began to reshape curricula in universities and graduate schools and became a preoccupation of a growing number of leading companies worldwide.

Within three years, the G-7 summits were producing long declarations devoted to sustainable development. Within five years, our recommendation for an international conference for a global transition to more sustainable forms of development was realized, at least in part, through the ’92 Earth summit in Rio. . . .

Our Common Future went on to become the most widely read UN report in history, available in over twenty languages.83 The impact of Our Common Future was monumental in effecting change, the kind of change that Brundtland had envisioned. Robert Mugabe, then president of Zimbabwe, said the report was “a breath of

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Figure 8.4 Gro Harlem Brundtland, while serving as Norway’s prime minister, presents the findings of the World Commission on Environment and Development to the United Nations, October 19, 1987. (UN Photo/Milton Grant.)

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fresh air in a world polluted by poverty, hunger, disease, racism, industrial waste, and the threat of nuclear annihilation.”84 Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, “declared his intention to include environmental consideration into all policy decisions.”85 Today, although the report itself is rarely read, it lives on impressively through its offspring—a series of global environmental conferences starting from the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to the Millennium Development Goals of 2000, as well as the Rio+20 conference in 2012 and continuing, presumably, forever.

Our Common Future also lives on with a legacy closely associated with its chair. Universally, WCED is now known as the “Brundtland Commission,” and Our Common Future is known as the “Brundtland Report.”

And the world’s prevailing definition of sustainability is likewise known as the “Brundtland Definition.” So universal is the phrase “sustainable development” that a Google search can turn up tens of millions of hits.

Sustainable development has, as Jim MacNeill said, “become part of the common everyday lexicon of humankind.”86

Beyond the Commission Authoring the world’s predominant expression of environmental stewardship might be a big enough accomplishment for any one lifetime, but it hasn’t been enough for Gro Harlem Brundtland. Chairing the WCED was, after all, just a part-time job for Brundtland; her full-time job remained Norwegian politics. After her 1981 ouster as prime minister, she immediately reclaimed her seat in Parliament and her leadership of the Labour Party. Norway was reeling at this time, the economy faltering as the oil market collapsed and three minority parties swapped control of the government.

She heard from the Royal Palace again in the spring of 1986. Once again, the king asked her to form a new government and become the nation’s prime minister. “This time,” she reported, “we spoke only briefly.

My answer was yes.”87 Some skeptics questioned her ability to be both prime minister and chair of WCED at the same time, but she proved them wrong, becoming a masterful and forceful leader for Norway. Inheriting “a government that leaves the dirty dishes for others once the meal is over,”88

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she deftly eased the country out of its economic crisis. She publicly opposed Ronald Reagan’s positions on space and chemical weapons, and she chastened the Soviet Union on its response to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. She upheld the rights of commercial fishermen against the demands of the European Union for access to Norwegian fishing grounds. Norway is a fiercely independent country, and such positions resonated with her constituents. She installed eight women in her cabinet, earning it the sobriquet of “the government of women.”

Despite Brundtland’s popularity, Norwegian politics at the time remained decidedly unstable. Her Labour Party lost control of government in the 1989 elections, and she was out as prime minister after a three-year term. The chair barely had time to grow cold, however, before the government turned over again, and she returned as prime minister within a year, this time serving for six more years, until the fall of 1996.

The essence of Brundtland’s leadership is illustrated by her actions on an issue that spanned her career—regulation of fishing and whaling.

Norway and fishing are almost synonymous. “Norway’s fish industry has enormous emotional resonance for Norwegians and is a central component of Norwegians’ self-image.”89 Whaling, too, has always been a part of Norwegian life, so much so that the country was among the world’s leaders in whaling up to World War II. When large-scale industrial whaling expanded after the war, however, Norway’s prominence as a whaling nation declined. But rural fishing communities continued to hunt abundant Minke whales, despite growing concern—environmental and moral—over the treatment of whales. Norwegian harvest of whales came to a head in 1982, when the International Whaling Commission, of which Norway was a member, declared a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling. Norway, as allowed by the rules, objected to the moratorium and, therefore, continued whaling without violating the treaty.

This action, of course, incensed the environmental community worldwide. How could a nation—and a prime minister—so dedicated to the environment condone whaling? Brundtland stood her ground.

Whales, she reasoned, were renewable resources that could be managed sustainably—the exploitation rates just needed to be correct. She also believed that Norway managed its coastal whale resources better than other nations around the world that were criticizing her country.

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But, when scientists began to question the validity of Norwegian data in 1987, Brundtland responded as she always had—analytically, not politically. She has said, “My credo is this: Build on and strengthen the Evidence, share the Evidence, and act upon the Evidence.”90 So she temporarily suspended whaling and appointed a four-person scientific team to get the data right. Then, in 1993, when Norwegian research showed that Minke whales were both abundant and sustainably harvestable, she announced that Norway would resume commercial whaling. She believed that “after years of a moratorium and subsequently only small quotas for research purposes, this was great news for coastal Norway.

This was Norway’s attitude to the resources in the oceans—long-term management built on a scientific basis.”91 The environmental world fumed. Norway was accused of “piratewhaling”;92 the International Whaling Commission adopted “hateresolutions” against Norway;93 the United States threatened economic sanctions. Brundtland and her minister of foreign affairs personally made the decision, based on the data and on her belief that “it simply was not right for outsiders, considered to have no understanding of the issue, to decide the question.”94 The Norwegian people and their major environmental organizations agreed: Norway was right, the rest of the world was wrong. And when the question was put to the Parliament, “there was not one single vote against this move.”95 Brundtland began her retreat from Norwegian politics when personal tragedy struck in 1992. Her youngest son committed suicide, unable to cope with a bipolar condition that had spun out of control. That November, she resigned as leader of the Labour Party, too overcome by grief to continue such a demanding political role. She remained as prime minister, however, and some believe that the need to escape her loss spurred her on when her natural energy had begun to wane. She declined to stand for election again in 1996, believing it was just the right time to depart, even though the party and the country loved her. A Norwegian business newspaper editor stated, “Not for fifty years has Norway had a prime minister with such wide support from all sections of society,” and opinion polls showed approval ratings as high as 90 percent.96 As she left her office for the last time, Olav waited patiently at the curb, as he had always done. The car was packed for a weekend at their forest cabin: “He had filled it up with clothes, tools, and a case of light beer.”97

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Her respite was brief, however, as her leadership was still sought and needed. In 1998, Brundtland again assumed a major international role, this time as director-general of the World Health Organization. She was perfectly prepared to lead the WHO. She was a physician (a required qualification for the job), but equally important were her political and environmental experiences. “I have had to ask myself this question again and again,” she admits. “Am I a doctor or a politician?”98 Both were essential for the task before her. The WHO’s reputation had fallen in the eyes of the world—its programs were seen as ineffective, its staff lazy, perhaps even corrupt; it needed aggressive leadership, focused on results and comfortable with change. Brundtland saw and accepted the challenge: In my opening address, I said it was my prime responsibility to maintain and further develop the technical excellence of the WHO. But I was also convinced that I needed to bring a political dimension to the WHO’s leadership, a greater awareness of a changing world, a better sense of interaction with the countries and populations we were there to serve, a better grasp of the key economic and technological issues that shape the global development agenda of which health is a critical component.99 Her fundamental view of the world did not need to change to lead the WHO. Health, environment, and the alleviation of poverty all were part of a greater whole in her mind. “WHO’s focus on sustainable development,” she contends, “is within the context of healthy environments and the impact of development on human health. It is also on human health as a prerequisite for and generator of sustainable development.”100 Everything was connected, she understood, and solutions depended just as much on human health as they did on a clean environment. “As a doctor and public health specialist, I learnt to always look for the close and near as well as the far away, the small as well as the large—through a multifaceted, holistic lens.”101 Brundtland identified a small number of critical human-health challenges for the coming century. Communicable diseases needed to be controlled, and she established that “the WHO’s goal is the vaccination of every child.”102 She believed that tobacco use was a pressing

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public health issue, and she campaigned vigorously for its suppression: “Tobacco should not be advertised, subsidized, or glamorized.”103 At the heart of the matter, however, was poverty, and the solution to poverty was the education and empowerment of women. Progress meant “investing in women. I believe the next increment of global growth could come from the full economic empowerment of women. Half of humankind’s collective intelligence and capacity is a resource we can no longer afford to lose out on!”104 She chose not to seek a second term at the WHO in 2003, but she has continued to act on behalf of the world’s people. For three years she served as the UN secretary-general’s special envoy on climate change, a topic that has figured largely in her career, even before others were paying close attention. The Brundtland Commission called for control of greenhouse gases in their final report, and their recommendations led to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, which in turn produced the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent efforts to control greenhouse gases. Along with the prime minister of Canada, she called for a “global ‘law of the air’” as early as 1988, stating that “the impact of world climate change may be greater than any challenge mankind has faced, with the exception of preventing nuclear war.”105 Under Brundtland’s leadership, Norway was among the first countries to recognize the need to control carbon emissions. She remembers, “In 1990, my government instituted a carbon dioxide tax. I had all the oil-producing countries of the world lining up against me. I explained there is no other way to deal with climate change than to do something about the price of carbon.”106 Brundtland’s agenda seems hardly changed since the formative years when she first linked health, ecology, and economics in a student apartment in Boston. The constancy isn’t surprising, because the problems she has always sought to tackle are the most difficult, persistent, and intertwined of our civilization. But we have made great advances toward a better world because of her efforts. And, thus, we should let her have the final word: George Bernard Shaw said that “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them but to be indifferent to them.”

Let us fight the indifference which has prevailed in the past and move towards that equilibrium between people, consumption,

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and the carrying capacity of our earth which we call sustainable development. Let us listen to the voice of unborn generations and make the earth the hospitable place that any human being deserves.107

 Notes

23

Chapter 8 1. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister: A Life in Power and Politics (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 92.

2. Ibid., 93.

3. Robin J. Law, “The Ekofisk Bravo Blowout, 1977,” pp. 1107–8 in Mervin F. Fingas, ed., Oil Spill Science and Technology: Prevention, Response, and Cleanup (Burlington, MA: Elsevier, 2011).

4. Ibid., 100.

5. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 101.

6. Sarah L. Henderson, “Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway,” pp. 43–79 in M. A. Genovese and J. S. Steckenrider, eds., Women as Political Leaders: Studies in Gender and Governing (New York: Routledge, 2013), 43.

7. References to Brundtland’s nicknames have been widely reported, in many sources.

8. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 3.

9. Ibid., 7.

10. Ibid., 26.

11. Ibid., 14.

12. Joan Axelrod-Contrada, Women Who Led Nations (Minneapolis, MN: Oliver Press, 1999), 122.

13. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 26.

Notes  14. Gro Harlem Brundtland, acceptance speech for Catalonia Award, United Nations Foundation, June 22, 2014; available at: http://www.unfounda tion.org/news-and-media/publications-and-speeches/catalonia-award -ceremony.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/.

15. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 26.

16. Ibid., 23.

17. Ibid., 18.

18. Ibid., 19.

19. Ibid., 14.

20. Ibid., 20.

21. Ibid., 28.

22. Ibid., 32.

23. Ibid., 32.

24. Ibid., 32.

25. Ibid., 32–33.

26. Ibid., 37.

27. Ibid., 39.

28. Axelrod-Contrada, 123.

29. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 40.

30. Ibid., 45.

31. Ibid., 47.

32. Ibid., 47–48.

33. Ibid., 40.

34. Ibid., 59.

35. Olga S. Opfell, Women Prime Ministers and Presidents ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1993), 104.

36. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 60.

37. Brundtland, quoted in: Laura Liswood, Women World Leaders: Fifteen Great Politicians Tell Their Stories (London: Pandora, 1995), 51.

38. Ibid., 51.

39. Opfell, 105.

40. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 69.

41. Ibid., 100.

42. Opfell, 105.

43. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 90.

44. Opfell, 106.

45. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 84.

46. Nancy Gibbs, “Norway’s Radical Daughter,” Time magazine, June 24, 2001, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,152609,00.html.

47. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 105.

 Notes 48. Ibid., 104.

49. Ibid., 102.

50. A concise description of how parliamentary seats are won in Norway is available in Liswood, 113.

51. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 115.

52. Ibid., 115.

53. Ibid., 116.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid., 133–34.

56. Ibid., 138–39.

57. Ibid., 190.

58. Brundtland, quoted in: Mary Joy Breton, Women Pioneers for the Environment (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 188.

59. Iris Borowy, Defining Sustainable Development for Our Common Future: A History of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) (Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2014), 55.

60. Brundtland, in “Chairman’s Foreword” to: World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), x. (Our Common Future is also known as “The Brundtland Report.”)

61. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 195.

62. Jim MacNeill, “From Controversy to Consensus—Building Global Agreement for Change,” Environmental Policy and Law 37, no. 2 (2007): 243.

63. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 195.

64. MacNeill, “From Controversy to Consensus,” 245.

65. Borowy, 57.

66. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 197.

67. MacNeill, “From Controversy to Consensus,” 245.

68. Jim MacNeill, “Brundtland+25; Rio+20,” Environmental Policy and Law 44, nos. 1–2 (2014): 28.

69. Brundtland, quoted in Borowy, 58.

70. Ibid.

71. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 197.

72. Ibid., 199.

73. MacNeill, “Brundtland+25; Rio+20,” 28.

74. MacNeill, “From Controversy to Consensus,” 244.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid.

77. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 202.

Notes  78. Borowy, 69.

79. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 213.

80. Our Common Future, 157.

81. MacNeill, “From Controversy to Consensus,” 245.

82. Our Common Future, 8.

83. MacNeill, “From Controversy to Consensus,” 246.

84. Robert Mugabe, quoted in Borowy, 159.

85. Borowy, 169.

86. MacNeill, “Brundtland+25; Rio+20,” 29. Other estimates of the number of Google hits for sustainable development range widely; suffice it to say that the phrase gets a lot of hits.

87. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 237.

88. Ibid., 241.

89. Henderson, 52.

90. Brundtland, acceptance speech for Catalonia Award.

91. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 308.

92. Axelrod-Contrada, 134.

93. Steiner Andresen, “Whaling: Peace at Home, War Abroad,” pp. 41–63 in J. B. Skjaerseth, ed., International Regimes and Norway’s Environmental Policy: Crossfire and Coherence (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 50.

94. Ibid.

95. Ibid., 51.

96. Roy Hattersley, “The Observer Profile: Earth Mother Gro Harlem Brundtland, the UN’s New Hope,” The Observer, January 1, 2011. Reference for approval rating is Henderson, 63–64.

97. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 427.

98. Ibid., 471.

99. Ibid., 457.

100. H. C. Bugge and L. Watters, “A Perspective on Sustainable Development after Johannesburg on the Fifteenth Anniversary of Our Common Future: An Interview with Gro Harlem Brundtland,” Georgetown International Law Review 15 (2003): 364.

101. Brundtland, acceptance speech for Catalonia Award.

102. Brundtland, Madam Prime Minister, 464.

103. Ibid., 462–63.

104. Gro Harlem Brundtland, “Rio+20 Report Card and Our Common Future” (acceptance speech for Huntington Environmental Prize, Woods Hole Research Center, MA, February 7, 2013; available at: http://whrc.org/wp -content/uploads/2015/05/Bruntland_HuntingtonPrize_Speech.pdf ).

 Notes 105. Philip Shabecoff, “Norway and Canada Call for Pact to Protect Atmosphere,” New York Times, June 28, 1988.

106. Andrew C. Revkin, “20 Years Later, Again Assigned to Fight Climate Change,” New York Times, May 8, 2007.

107. Gro Harlem Brundtland, “On Population, Environment, and Development,” Population and Development Review 19, no. 4 (1993): 899.

About the Author

Larry A. Nielsen is Professor of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University. He has worked in land grant universities— including earlier tenures at Virginia Tech and Penn State—for forty years, as a faculty member and administrator, eventually becoming provost of North Carolina State University before returning to teaching and writing in 2009. He is a Fellow and Past President of the American Fisheries Society. He is author, coauthor, or coeditor of six books, including Ecosystem Management, published by Island Press, and Provost, a memoir and an analysis of university administration.

Among many professional service roles, he served on the board of directors of the National Council for Science and the Environment for more than a decade. With Sharon, his wife of forty-six years, he lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

NATURE’S ALLIES

Eight Conservationists Who Changed Our World

By Larry A. Nielsen

Available wherever books are sold Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Island Press Your Local Independent Bookstore “Nielsen...celebrates the work of eight conservationists in the U.S. and abroad in this engaging series of biographical sketches...Paying tribute to their battles and accomplishments, Nielsen effectively showcases the passion and persistence of a remarkable group of individuals.” ­—Publisher’s Weekly “The ethnic and gender diversity of the subjects is a major factor in the book’s favor...this work represents a step in the direction of correcting the erasure of non-white, non-American environmentalism from mainstream American dialogue.”

—Foreword Paperback | 9781610914314 | $28.00 E-book | 9781610914321 | $3.99

“This book exudes inspiration. It shows how anyone with a love of the natural environment—and how it is used to support human endeavor—can make a contribution to conservation.

Easy to read, hard to put down, and deeply motivating.”

—Simon Brockington, Executive Secretary, International Whaling Commission

Larry A. Nielsen is Professor of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University.

He has worked in land grant universities—including earlier tenures Virginia Tech and Penn State—for forty years, as a faculty member and administrator, eventually becoming provost of North Carolina State University before returning to teaching and writing in 2009. With Sharon, his wife of forty-seven years, he lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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A Community Approach to Climate Resilience Rebecca Wodder

Originally published July 2016 in Water Innovations

I

n New Orleans, a devastated neighborhood seeks to revive their community after Hurricane Katrina. They begin by regaining access to a bayou where earlier generations hunted and fished.

In Toledo, Ohio, 400,000 people go without drinking water for two days, due to a toxic algal bloom brought on by water pollution and high temperatures. In response, low-income residents work together on green infrastructure projects that can reduce polluted runoff while improving property values.

In Fredericksburg, Virginia, an historic community comes together to protect their river from development and pollution. Working collaboratively with builders, a low-impact development ordinance is unanimously adopted and a new riverside trail becomes a place where residents connect with each other and with nature.

In Portland, Oregon, a watershed association unites urban, suburban and rural neighbors in support of creek restoration projects that reduce frequent episodes of flooding and restore salmon habitat.

As these examples show, water is a ready source of common cause.

Neighbors come together to defend against floods, droughts and water pollution, and to obtain the quality-of-life benefits of being near, on, or in clean, sparkling water. There is a vital lesson here for freshwater organizations and agencies. Projects to build natural capital in the form of protected or restored rivers, wetlands, watersheds and green infrastructure that mimics the natural water cycle can also build social capital, in the form of trust, collaborative skills and shared values. In return, social capital can strengthen and sustain freshwater natural capital.

24

a community approach to climate resilience • 25

The synergistic role of freshwater in building natural and social capital becomes increasingly important in a changing climate. Since most of the ways in which Americans experience climate change are connected to the hydrological cycle, freshwater organizations and agencies can make important contributions to help communities and regions become more resilient to extreme weather events.

Yet too often, freshwater conservation strategies focus solely on protecting, restoring and replicating natural hydrological functions. But, social capital is also extremely important to community resilience. A recent report finds that “promoting social cohesion—in which a society’s members cooperate to achieve shared well-being—in communities is an additional and overlooked tool for strengthening climate resilience, with particularly good outcomes in low-income communities.”1 Restorative Power Social capital improves freshwater plans and projects, thanks to the knowledge and support provided by engaged local residents. The resulting freshwater assets can then be monitored and maintained by involved neighbors whose collective efforts to rescue a local stream or protect a watershed reinforce social capital by delivering results that people can see, touch and feel. Shared success builds community pride and reinforces the value of learning to work together.

In his classic book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam details four features of social capital that enable people to work together on a common cause. First, “social capital allows citizens to resolve collective problems more easily.” Second, it “greases the wheels that allow communities to advance smoothly.” Third, it “widen[s] our awareness of many ways in which our fates are linked.”

And, fourth, social networks act “as conduits for the flow of helpful information to achieve common goals.”2 Experts distinguish between two types of social capital, bonding and bridging. Bonding social capital exists within a homogeneous community, while bridging develops between dissimilar communities. Putnam puts it memorably, “Bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40.”3 Communities that invest in both bonding and bridging social capital are better at solving large, complex problems like climate change.4

26 • Section i: climate change and adaptation

Successful collective efforts require trust, shared values and norms and social networks. Trust is most important and depends on equity and fairness.5 But, social capital is undermined by poverty, inequality and environmental injustice.

Freshwater initiatives to benefit the most vulnerable communities should be especially careful to prioritize both natural and social capital in their design and execution. Freshwater non-profit and government agencies are well-equipped to do so. These organizations are trusted because of their public service mission to protect and restore the shared water resources of their community. They are also respected, thanks to technical knowledge they possess about how to sustain the hydrological commons in the face of climate change and other challenges.

Furthermore, their freshwater protection and restoration plans and projects can create engagement opportunities to bring people together across cultural divides. And these projects often deliver rapid, tangible and comprehensible results that reinforce the good feelings that come from accomplishing something together.

Shelter From The Storm Freshwater groups also have much to gain from engaging their community in efforts to enhance climate resilience. As community members begin to see the many economic, ecological and social advantages of protecting and restoring their freshwater, they will be more likely to turn out for volunteer work days, support local ordinances for low impact development, and be less likely to waste or intentionally pollute water. Small-scale, distributed green infrastructure alternatives to large, single-purpose storm water or wastewater treatment plants are easier to build and maintain with the support of engaged neighborhoods and informed residents.

The positive feedback loop between freshwater-related natural and social capital can produce economic, technological, and social benefits for communities and regions.

Economically, ecosystem services provided by healthy hydrologic features and green infrastructure can reduce energy consumption, diminish flood damage, improve public health and save money on treating waterborne illnesses and lost productivity, as well as reduce the construction and

a community approach to climate resilience • 27

operating costs of water-related infrastructure.6 This leaves more money for other community priorities—and in people’s pockets.

Technologically, green infrastructure depends upon and supports social capital. These nature-mimicking infrastructure projects are generally smaller and more localized than traditional water infrastructure projects.

They offer multiple benefits to their community versus serving a single, and often unseen, purpose. As Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett testified to Congress regarding the social benefits of natural storm water infrastructure, “You can’t hold picnic or a tailgate party on a Deep Tunnel.”7 Green infrastructure is flexible and adaptive versus fixed and prescriptive, enabling projects to be adapted to a community’s particular needs. And, these small scale, widely distributed projects offer ongoing opportunities for involvement in establishment, maintenance and monitoring.

Socially, time spent in nature makes us feel happier and more connected.

Neurological research reveals a linkage between human well-being and natural environments, especially those with water elements. “In study after study, those who choose to spend time in nature speak about its ability to make us feel more connected to something outside of ourselves—something bigger, more transcendent, and universal… In another study, people who viewed nature scenes and imagined themselves fully immersed in nature were more concerned with prosocial goals and more willing to give to others.”8 Rivers and lakes provide attractive, close-to-home spaces where people can gather and relax. And freshwater restoration projects are especially valuable for building a community’s social cohesion. “Designing experiences where people come to know each other, where they can expect to encounter one another repeatedly, and where the quality of life is increased for all if each individual thinks of himself as a steward” increases trust and collaborative skills.9 That is why environmental justice activists are turning to their freshwater assets as a means of creating positive changes in their communities.10 For example, in Toledo, Ohio, a task force “is exploring ways to bring green infrastructure to disadvantaged areas…to help reduce threats and damage from flooding and water pollution and build home equity. These projects help address other community priorities, including reducing crime by

28 • section i: Climate Change and adaptation

turning vacant lots into community gardens, beautifying neighborhoods, and improving access to waterways. Community members work together to maintain green infrastructure, which supports local project ownership and community.”11 The city of Philadelphia’s response to a problem plaguing cities across America—combined sewer overflows—illustrates the economic, technological and social benefits of tapping natural capital. Rainstorms regularly overwhelmed the capacity of combined storm and sanitary sewers and resulted in raw sewage being discharged to the Schuylkill River. A study done for the city detailed the “triple bottom line benefits”—ecological, economic, and social—of green versus traditional infrastructure solutions to the problem. Ecological benefits included water quality improvements and wetland creation. Economically, green infrastructure was cheaper to build and maintain and contributed to poverty reduction by providing local green jobs and energy savings. And, Philadelphians benefited from improvements in recreation opportunities, livability, heat stress reduction, and air quality.12 A key challenge for freshwater organizing efforts is that “smaller is better” for tapping and building social capital, while freshwater problems generally require larger-scope solutions. A watershed approach can resolve this “dilemma of size and scope.”13 Because every piece of land—whether urban, suburban or rural—resides in a particular watershed and because a watershed is made up of nested drainage basins of smaller rivers and streams, the connectivity and scalability of freshwater hydrology can be used to link the concerns of communities up and downstream.

Another dilemma facing freshwater stewards is how to achieve social cohesion while prioritizing diversity and inclusivity. Ties that link dissimilar groups are harder to build, but ultimately more valuable. “Crafting cross-cutting identities is a powerful way to enable connection across perceived diversity.”14 The common identity of living in the same watershed and depending on the same water resources and hydrological functions offers important opportunities for building bridges between different groups.

Freshwater organizations are well aware of upstream-downstream conflicts and the value of creating common cause to resolve them. As some have observed, “What they call an ‘unfunded mandate’ upstream looks

a community approach to climate resilience • 29

like raw sewage downstream.”15 Similar upstream-downstream conflicts can arise when there is too much or too little water. Increased awareness of impacts on trusted and valued neighbors downstream is an important benefit of strengthened social capital.

Five Takeaways Whether the challenge is pollution, flooding or drought, engaging and working effectively with diverse populations within a watershed requires the ability to recognize, tap, build and sustain the social capital that binds people together in a common cause. Five basic principles can guide collective efforts to protect and restore freshwater resources and build a community’s climate resilience: •

Work with the most trusted members of a community.

Learn and honor their history and knowledge. Identify mutual concerns and shared values. Ensure equitable opportunities for community engagement and shared decision-making. Share resources and credit.

•

Prioritize diversity and inclusiveness. An inclusive approach can increase the depth and range of knowledge available for problem-solving. To be successful in engaging diverse participants requires attention to chronic environmental justice concerns and other community problems that compete for time and attention.

•

Identify existing strengths and adaptive mechanisms for climate resilience, in both natural and social capital. Especially for the most vulnerable neighborhoods in a community, these resources have been tested and refined over years of serving as their own “first responders” to natural and man-made disasters.16

•

Build cohesion among the social networks that make up your community. Focus on bridging diverse interests and finding common cause. Take small, tangible steps framed in terms of a larger vision, so that success will breed success. Ensure that participants are empowered to make choices and see them enacted in their communities.

30 • section i: Climate Change and adaptation

•

Support visionary leaders. Collective efforts require a special type of leader—one who has the ability to see the larger system and build a shared understanding of complex problems, to encourage reflective group dynamics that lead to appreciating each other’s reality, and to shift the group’s focus from reactive problem-solving to jointly creating a common future.17

Finally, recognize that building climate resilience requires an integrated approach for both people and nature. Avoid focusing on a single scale or single outcome. Instead, think and act at multiple scales and aim for win-win-win outcomes. Watersheds are well-suited to nested, connected solutions. Healthy freshwater ecosystems and green infrastructure are good at improving economic, ecological, social and political outcomes.

And, freshwater organizations are most successful when they tap the synergy that flows between water-related natural and social capital to help communities become more resilient to climate shocks and stresses.

References 1. Danielle Baussan, Social Cohesion: The Secret Weapon in the Fight for Equitable Climate Resilience, (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, May 2015), 2. At: https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/SocialCohesion-report2.pdf 2. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 288-289.

3. Putnam, Op Cit., 23.

4. Elinor Ostrom and T.K. Ahn, The Meaning of Social Capital and its Link to Collective Action (October 1, 2007). HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL CAPITAL, Gert T. Svendsen and Gunnar L. Svendsen, ed., Edward Elgar, 2008; Indiana University, Bloomington: School of Public & Environmental Affairs Research Paper No. 2008-11-04. At: http:// ssrn.com/abstract=1936058 5. Ibid.

6. American Rivers , American Society of Landscape Architects, ECONorthwest, Water Environment Federation, Banking on Green: A Look at How Green Infrastructure Can Save Municipalities Money and Provide Economic Benefits Community-wide, (Washington, DC: April 2012). At: http://www.americanrivers.org/assets/pdfs/ reports-and-publications/banking-on-green-report.pdf

A community approach to climate resilience • 31

7. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Testimony to U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, (Washington, DC: March 23, 2009).

8. Wallace J. Nichols, Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do, (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2014), 230.

9. Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer, The Gardens of Democracy, (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2011), 66.

10. Amy Vanderwarker, Water and Environmental Justice. A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY U.S. WATER POLICY, Juliet Christian Smith and Peter H. Gleick, et.al., (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 67.

11. Cathleen Kelly, et. al., Resilient Midwestern Cities: Improving Equity in a Changing Climate, (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, April 2016), 16. At https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/18135245/ResilientMidwest-report1.pdf 12. Stratus Consulting, A Triple Bottom Line Assessment of Traditional and Green Infrastructure for Controlling CSO Events in Philadelphia’s Watersheds, (Boulder, Colorado: August 2009).

13. Robert J. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 275-279.

14. Ibid., 279-282.

15. David Hess and Heather Dewar, Senate Approves Curbs on Mandates, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 1995. At: http://articles.philly.com/1995-01-28/ news/25715259_1_mandates-health-and-safety-conferees 16. Island Press, Bounce Forward: Urban Resilience in the Era Of Climate Change 25 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2015). At: https://www.islandpress.org/resources/ KresgeBrochure-framing-doc.pdf 17. Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, and John Kania, The Dawn of System Leadership, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2015. At: http://ssir.org/articles/entry/ the_dawn_of_system_leadership

Protecting Communities from Climate Change (Hint: It’s Not Just About Seawalls) Jeni Miller

Originally published April 25, 2016 in CoLab Radio

C

limate change is here, and it is already affecting our health and wellbeing. That’s the conclusion of the National Climate and Health Assessment, released last week by the prestigious U.S. Global Change Research Program. Fortunately, it is possible to make even our most vulnerable communities more climate-resilient. In fact, it’s already happening—but not in the way you might expect.

To make our communities more resilient, we first have to understand the threats we face, and the factors that make us vulnerable. The National Climate and Health Assessment details a litany of threats: heat waves; poorer air quality; food and water shortages; and mental stress. The Assessment also shows that, while climate change affects us all, some are more vulnerable than others.

Of course, geography and weather patterns determine our communities’ exposure to risk. But social factors shape our vulnerability, and our ability to bounce back after disaster.

Children and the elderly are among the most vulnerable to climate-change impacts, as are the one in four Americans who live in high-poverty areas. As we saw during Katrina, communities of color are often hit hard, as are immigrants, Indigenous peoples, and those with limited English. And anyone with an existing health condition—heart disease, asthma, diabetes—is especially at risk.

Climate change takes its greatest toll in low-income neighborhoods that concentrate many kinds of vulnerability. These neighborhoods are 38

protecting communities from climate change • 39

dealing with multiple challenges: poverty, unemployment, failing schools, crime, crumbling infrastructure and poor quality housing. Many also face environmental problems like lead-tainted water, polluted air, and contaminated soil. And too often, these neighborhoods lack clinics and grocery stores, much less trees and parks.

Not surprisingly, many residents in these neighborhoods already suffer from poor physical and mental health. In some cities, the difference in life expectancy between neighborhoods just a few miles apart is as much as 25-30 years. As the health impacts of climate change increase, those disparities will only widen—unless we can build resilience in our most troubled neighborhoods.

Those efforts are already under way. And the most innovative resilience-building strategies are not just about building seawalls and levees; they seek to address the factors that make some people more vulnerable than others. That means thinking holistically about what makes a healthy community, and working to create high quality housing, access to healthy foods, good education, cleaner environments, and economic development.

Case in point: the Villages of East Lake in Atlanta, Georgia—a whole-neighborhood revitalization of what had been the most troubled and violent public housing project in the Atlanta area.

Working closely with residents of public housing, the East Lake Foundation corralled public and private investments to build a neighborhood with opportunity for all. In addition to new, mixed-income townhouses, East Lake now boasts a top-notch charter school; a grocery store; a YMCA; and a public golf course that anchors both youth development and community events—all in a leafy, appealing, walkable neighborhood.

The benefits for the residents of East Lake are stunning. Since the revitalization began in 1995, educational outcomes have risen to among the best in the Atlanta school system, and violent crime is down by 95 percent. In East Lake’s subsidized housing, only five percent of healthy working-age adults receive welfare. More than three fourths of the teens involved in the local afterschool academic support program in 2012 went on to college.

40 • section i: climate change and adaptation

Other neighborhoods are building resilience by tackling threats to public health. For example, Little Village, a Mexican-American neighborhood in southwest Chicago, was just a mile from two of the oldest and dirtiest coal power plants in the U.S. As a result, residents faced high rates of asthma and respiratory diseases. A Harvard study found that pollution from these two plants was causing 40 premature deaths, 550 ER visits, and 2,800 asthma attacks per year. So the community organized, and in 2012, pushed the plants to shut down.

The people of East Lake and Little Village may not know it, but they are reducing vulnerability and building resilience to a changing climate.

Their efforts are not focused on climate change, per se, though they do include “green” elements. Perhaps that’s the point: much of what we must do to adapt to climate change are things we should be doing anyway, to make our communities healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable.

East Lake and Little Village show us that it can be done.

Doubling Down on Community Resilience Denise Fairchild

Originally published November 19, 2015 on Rooflines.org

L

ast month here in Rooflines, I argued that place-based community development can make low-income neighborhoods more resilient to climate crises. A commenter countered that my article undermined “income mobility” strategies—which essentially seek to move poor families out of struggling low-income neighborhoods.

This is not a contest: Both community development and income mobility strategies have merit. But, as climate change becomes an increasingly grim reality, we need to double down on community resilience. That means new attention to—and investments in—low-income communities of color.

Doubling down on community resilience is not an affront to fair housing. Rather, it is offered as an antidote to climate crises, which present a new and real challenge to the long-standing vulnerabilities of low-income communities. It recognizes the historic significance of resilience as an essential survival mechanism, especially for communities of color. It warns against its further erosion by both public and market forces. And it offers an important measure of the success—or failure—of fair housing efforts.

Clearly, fair housing is a key building block in a social and economic justice agenda. The historic battles against restrictive covenants, exclusionary zoning and mortgage redlining are matched by contemporary struggles against “poor doors” and other non-discriminatory affordable housing and mixed-income housing schemes.

In addition to tearing down these institutional barriers, it is critical to upend the personal prejudices and discriminatory practices of landlords who deny housing opportunities on the basis of race, gender, religion, 65

66 • section II: Resilient communities

family status or other defining characteristics. This is part of the fight for American democracy.

Nothing drives this home for me more than my own personal experience. In the early 1970s, I moved to a largely all-white city in the Northwest to take advantage of an educational opportunity. Suffering the indignity and rage from being called a racial epithet and then being denied an apartment on the basis of my race was bad enough. What was worse was how alone I felt. The people around me, who did not share my lived experience, told me to “just forget it.”

After one week I left. I moved back East to live among people who shared my sensibilities, in a community I could count on when things got bad. This is my backstory to community resilience. I submit it is a story shared by many others from communities of color.

Rather than negate the pursuit of the perfect union, it exposes the reality of living both the ideals and contradictions of American democracy. For African Americans, integration vs. segregation or self-determination as the pathway to economic and social mobility is a legacy battle. It defined the central philosophical differences between W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington, as well as between Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And, for most African-American families, this same unresolved ideological debate surfaces every Thanksgiving holiday season and at other large family gatherings.

The fact is, contrary to the commentary, community resilience is not a fad nor is it a rejection of the ideals of integration. It is a lifestyle for many low-income families and/or people of color who are living in hostile environments. In addition, and especially for African Americans, it is a badge of honor; enduring—and often thriving—despite 350 years of oppression and discrimination.

Gentrification is a threat to community resilience that can lead to social, economic and political isolation of vulnerable groups. America’s unfinished business includes the effect of dislocation and the destruction of resilient urban communities by racially motivated burnings, “urban renewal” policies, and divestment. Historically black communities including Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore; Saints Street in Frederick, Maryland; Beale Street Community in Memphis; Greenwood, Oklahoma;

doubling down on community resilience • 67

or the Central Avenue community in Los Angeles were segregated. But they offered important cultural, economic and social capital and safety nets—providing jobs, credit, housing, mutual aid, and basic services for families at all income levels in the face of harsh deprivations.

Given that the climate crisis is real, we have a new imperative and opportunity to rebuild the resilience of communities across America. How do we survive hardships of extreme weather, power outages, or food and water shortages? Resilience requires an investment in place-making to facilitate the social cohesion and material supports—housing, economic opportunities, distributed power, transportation and health services— when there is nowhere else to turn. These challenges are universal. So are the opportunities to transform America with renewed values of sustainability, equity, and community.

Well, I guess I’m ready for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner discourse.

I can’t wait.

What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump? | Grist

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Miya Yoshitani.

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

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What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump?

By Laurie Mazur on Jan 18, 2017

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Environmental justice work will need to change in critical ways as Donald Trump ascends to the White House, but not in all ways, says Miya Yoshitani, executive director of the Asian Pacifc Environmental Network (APEN). On-the-ground organizing around community members’ local concerns will still be the core.

APEN brings the voices of Asian and Pacifc Islander communities to the forefront of environmental health and social justice fghts in the Bay Area. The group has successfully challenged multinational corporations and swayed local political authorities, notching important wins on occupational safety, affordable housing, transportation, renewable energy, climate change, and more. http://grist.org/justice/what-does-environmental-justice-organizing-look-like-in-the-time-of-trump/[4/13/2017 5:35:45 PM]

What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump? | Grist

Here, Yoshitani chats about APEN’s work and what inspires her as she looks to the future.

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Q.

You started out as a youth organizer for APEN in the 1990s, working with

Laotian refugees in Richmond, California. And in the years since, you’ve had some amazing victories — stopping the expansion of a Chevron oil refnery, for example.

A.

APEN is on the map for some of our big wins, like the Chevron campaign. But those

wins rest on the shoulders of a couple of decades of organizing and trust-building and fghting for the needs of the community on a day-to-day basis.

Our frst campaign was for a multilingual emergency warning system, not just for the Laotian community but for all the immigrant and refugee groups in the county who were only getting their warning calls in English. That was a huge problem, because of the explosions and fres and accidents that happen on a regular basis around the refnery. It could be the difference between life and death.

We also did education work to inform the immigrant community about the health impacts of subsistence fshing in the Bay, and about lead in dishware. We had a community garden, where seniors would come and garden and interact with the young people in our youth program, teaching them about the herbs and vegetables they had brought over from their home countries.

Environmental justice is really all about listening to the community, making sure that they have a voice on the things that are most important to them. Doing that sometimes helps you http://grist.org/justice/what-does-environmental-justice-organizing-look-like-in-the-time-of-trump/[4/13/2017 5:35:45 PM]

What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump? | Grist

build power and improve quality of life. It can take time. But there are just no shortcuts to building power.

Q.

Given that your work is deeply rooted in that community, what difference

does it make — if any — that we’re having this regime change in Washington?

A.

In many ways, our work doesn’t change that much. We will continue to do the base-

building, relationship-building, trust-building organizing work that’s connected to the solutions communities really need and hope for. And we will continue to connect that organizing work to real policy change at local and regional and state and national levels, too.

But absolutely there are impacts and changes given the new administration. The trajectory that we started — building power on the progressive left with people of color and low-income communities in leadership — has to accelerate.

California is a leader in demonstrating an equitable approach to climate policy. We’ve been able to win policies that get people jobs and bring wealth into the community and clean the air for our kids and offer economic and political and social opportunities. Being able to move that agenda faster and to model it for other states is really critical. California can point the country toward the future — not just in policy but in politics and power. That’s exactly where our state needs to be, and organizations like APEN and our communities have to help guide that and lead that.

On a practical level, too, our state has some of the highest populations of people who would be impacted by what the Trump administration promises to do — immigrant and refugee communities, Muslim communities, communities of color. California has to stand up really strongly and powerfully to defend the interests of our residents.

Q.

And you’re gearing up to do so?

A.

Yes. It’s a shift for APEN, preparing for this defensive action. In the last few years,

we’ve been in a leadership role; our members have crafted some of the state’s most important policy initiatives, especially around climate. But our communities are also among the most vulnerable to the attacks of the next administration.

Our communities hear the messaging coming from Trump and his new Cabinet — that they don’t belong, they are the “other” and not part of the project of building the American Dream.

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What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump? | Grist

Taking a stand is how our communities assert their belonging, their willingness to fght for their rightful role in shaping the future that their kids are going to live in.

Q.

I know that APEN and its sister organization, APEN Action, have been

working to cultivate electoral power in Richmond — supporting progressive candidates and changing the makeup of the city council. Does that work seem more important now?

A.

Yes, that work has greater signifcance not just for APEN but for other communities

that are at this intersection of poverty and pollution. Exerting electoral power in combination with organizing work is the formula we need to invest in.

A priority right now is to make sure that we’re balancing out the growth in electoral work with a growth in the organizing work because those two have to grow together. They’re two sides of the same coin; we need both to get out of the triple crisis facing our economy, our democracy, and our environment.

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Q.

You’re not just siding against stuff — like the Chevron expansion — but

also fghting for a positive vision of the Just Transition away from a fossil fuel­ –based economy.

http://grist.org/justice/what-does-environmental-justice-organizing-look-like-in-the-time-of-trump/[4/13/2017 5:35:45 PM]

What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump? | Grist

A.

Yeah. APEN and its allies have been innovating and experimenting with new models —

like Cooperation Richmond, which builds local wealth by incubating worker- and community-owned co-ops; and locally owned community-run renewable energy systems; and new food systems that are democratically run and serve the interests of local communities.

Building these models is part of how we turn the tables and win. It becomes a tool for getting rid of the worst parts of the dirty-energy economy, and replacing them as we go.

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What our communities need so intensely right now are real examples of a vision for a new culture and society, right in their own neighborhoods. They need to be able to touch and feel and experience them and also experience building them as participants in our democracy.

Building new models is part of staying hopeful about our ability to control our own destiny and fght for alternatives to the things that are making people feel so vulnerable and undervalued and unable to meet their family’s basic needs.

Q.

So, how are you doing post-election? What gets you out of bed in the

morning?

A.

It’s a hard question because it makes me a little emotional. Of course, I’m worried. I

think everyone has this moment where they wake up in the morning and for just a split second you don’t actually remember what’s happening, and then you remember all over again.

Every morning, there’s this assault from the news, and another very specifc reason to be afraid. Is it our schools? Our homes? Our jobs? Our families being torn apart? Will our family http://grist.org/justice/what-does-environmental-justice-organizing-look-like-in-the-time-of-trump/[4/13/2017 5:35:45 PM]

What does environmental justice organizing look like in the time of Trump? | Grist

members or our community members be picked up off the street, rounded up? Nuclear war?

Climate chaos? Every day, there’s a new aspect of that, and it feels so complete that it can be a little overwhelming.

But the thing that makes me emotional is how much people are already demonstrating their ability to be resolute and strong and creative and brilliant in these moments.

For groups like APEN and our community members, we draw on the fact that we have been through hard times before and those are the foundations of why we do the organizing work that we do. We’re not alone: Our staff, our members, our leaders, our neighbors take care of each other and look out for one another, and there’s been an outward expression and articulation of that commitment.

There’s just a very strong chorus, a beautiful song, and people are taking it up in a renewed and powerful way. I have hope that we’re going to be able to get through to the heart of what’s causing the climate crisis because we’re now going to be willing to address inequality in a more systematic and deep way, and that’s because of the moment that we’re in.

There is a deeper desire than I’ve ever seen to address the problem at its source and to get to the roots of why we’re here in this moment. People are able to get out of their silos now and say, “Okay, I thought that I was going to be able to just go to D.C. and lobby my way out of this, but now I realize that we depend on each other and there’s no way that we get a holistic solution to this crisis without a holistic approach.” And that includes putting people back at the center. That’s our pathway, our only pathway.

This article was produced by the Island Press Urban Resilience Project, with support from the Kresge Foundation and the JPB Foundation.  Share

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Getting Real About Resilience in South Brooklyn Sabine Aronowsky and Laurie Mazur

Originally published April 21, 2016 on CityLimits

B

everly Corbin is disabled; she navigates the courtyard at Wyckoff Gardens—the South Brooklyn public housing complex where she lives—on a scooter. But that didn’t stop her from mobilizing to help her neighbors when Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012. “I took hot meals to the building on my scooter,” she said in an interview. “People would grab the meals and run up the stairs with them. I carried water on the front of my scooter.”

Corbin’s response to Sandy says a lot about the prospects for resilience in a changing climate. The challenges, of course, are huge. Corbin’s neighborhood, like many low-income urban areas, is dealing with climate impacts layered on top of other, long-standing problems—poverty, industrial pollution, the legacy of racist housing policies. A map that charts geographic and social vulnerability shows that much of South Brooklyn is at serious risk for a Katrina-like disaster.

But Corbin shows us what the maps can’t capture.

For one, her neighborhood has a tradition of community self-help, which was a lifeline after Sandy. When a 14-foot storm surge inundated South Brooklyn, some public housing residents went without water, heat, and electricity for more than two weeks. Corbin and her neighbors rallied to provide food, clothing and shelter to those in greatest need.

“It was an amazing community effort,” says Karen Blondel, who lives in a Red Hook public housing complex. Blondel could have evacuated before the storm, but chose to tough it out so she could look after her elderly neighbors. “I just couldn’t leave them,” she said.

21

22 • section 1: climate change and adaptation

Nor do the maps show that South Brooklyn is home to some powerful organizers, like Corbin and Blondel, who are using the post-Sandy rebuilding process to make transformative changes in their neighborhoods. As public and private money flowed in after the storm, organizers launched an initiative called “Turning the Tide” to make sure that low-income public housing residents have a say in how that money is spent.

“People try to come in and tell us what we need, and what we think,” said Blondel, “but we’re the experts.”

Led by the Fifth Avenue Committee, Turning the Tide is a collaboration of the Red Hook Initiative, Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, and the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation, in partnership with New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) . Its goal is to amplify the voices of low-income South Brooklyn public housing residents in implementation and policy decisions about environmental cleanup and climate adaptation.

Turning the Tide is working, first, to make sure that South Brooklyn’s public housing residents weather the next storm. That means making needed changes to buildings—like moving mechanical equipment out of flood-prone basements and fixing leaky roofs. Importantly, it means ensuring that NYCHA’s resilience and sustainability plans squarely address public housing residents’ needs.

And the collaborative has taken on neighborhood-wide measures like an integrated flood-prevention plan that includes greenways and parks, deployable flood walls, elevated streets, improved drainage and more.

It’s also working to deal with the combined sewer overflows and former industrial sites that have long spilled raw sewage and coal tar waste into the Gowanus Canal during heavy rains.

But Turning the Tide recognizes that real resilience is not just about infrastructure and buildings; it’s about people.

While the people of South Brooklyn drew on deep reserves of strength during Sandy, it’s also true that poverty increases vulnerability to climate disaster. To reduce that vulnerability, Turning the Tide is working to lift South Brooklyn’s public housing residents from poverty—by leveraging some $500 million in rebuilding for local workforce development and job creation.

getting real about resilience in south brooklyn • 23

For Karen Blondel, that means focusing on HUD Section 3, which requires that recipients of federal housing dollars (including NYCHA) draw 30 percent of new hires from the low-income communities they serve.

Today, it’s a rule that’s mostly honored in the breach; contractors working on public housing projects get around the rule by simply not making any new hires. “Thirty percent of zero is zero,” Blondel observes drily.

So Blondel and other activists pushed for a rule change that requires thirty percent of wages paid to go to local folks—and other measures to make sure public housing residents benefit from recovery spending. They found a champion in Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY), who took their concerns to Congress—and continues to press for change.

While they are doing everything they can to fight poverty and build resilience, Corbin, Blondel and their neighbors know that adaptation has its limits. If greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, and sea levels rise by more than six feet, much of South Brooklyn will be under water. So, Turning the Tide is also working to hold NYCHA—New York City’s single largest landlord—accountable to mitigate climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of New York City’s public housing, as part of a larger effort to reduce the City’s emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

This includes plans to generate power with a “microgrid” that offers mitigation and adaptation benefits. Because it is powered by solar and other renewable energy sources, the microgrid will substantially reduce carbon emissions. And the microgrid can detach from the larger grid in a crisis: that’s how Co-op City, a housing complex in the Bronx, kept the lights on during Superstorm Sandy.

Turning the Tide is helping public housing residents prepare for the next storm—while also making climate disaster less likely. “Sandy laid bare the vulnerabilities that we all knew were present in our communities,” says Michelle de la Uz, Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee. But it also offers opportunities to transform those communities for the better. “By addressing our vulnerabilities collectively,” says de la Uz, “we can ‘turn the tide and create a more just, equitable, sustainable and resilient future for all.”

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RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

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Building Climate Resilience at the Water’s Edge Rebecca Wodder

Originally published March 7, 2016 in Climate Access

W

e live in challenging times. The shocks and stresses of global warming affect every community in one form or another. Rising seas and storm surges swamp coastal communities. Floods and droughts of biblical proportions are visited on city dwellers and farmers alike. Forest fires and landslides follow in the wake of dying trees and barren hillsides.

Unfamiliar viruses travel northward with pests whose ranges expand with warmer temperatures.

To survive and thrive in the face of these complex and multiplying challenges, we need to build the capacity to work together within our communities and across watersheds. And we need to work with nature and natural processes, rather than fruitlessly trying to control nature and bend it to our will.

These two elements, the capacity to work together and the capacity to work with nature, are key to climate resilience. Trust, collaboration, and developing shared values and norms create social capital that can be invested in strategies and solutions to climate challenges. Natural capital, in the form of ecosystem services and blue-green infrastructure, is more flexible, adaptable and cost-effective than inflexible, single-purpose engineering solutions.

Natural and social capital are in short supply because they have been undervalued, especially when compared to other forms of capital, and eroded by unsustainable and inequitable choices and behaviors. A community’s ability to avoid or recover from climate disasters depends on having adequate supplies of both. The story of Johnson Creek, in Portland, Oregon, is a case in point.

55

56 • section ii: health, food, and water

In his classic book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,1 Robert Putnam documents the decline of social capital in America over the past fifty years. In a subsequent search for places where trust and a spirit of cooperation were increasing community resilience and wellbeing, Putnam pointed to Portland, Oregon, and specifically, a place called Johnson Creek.2 Decades of devastating flooding had made the creek a recurring nightmare for residents. Nevertheless, nearly fifty government-generated flood control plans over a fifty year period were rejected by those living along the creek.

In the 1990s, the top-down approach was finally replaced with a process that engaged people from throughout the 54-square mile watershed, bringing together the interests of farmers, suburban communities, and high, medium and low-come urban neighborhoods. The result was an action plan, thousands of engaged volunteers and, most importantly, a supporting organization to sustain community cooperation over time, the Johnson Creek Watershed Council. Twenty years later, the creek has been transformed from a problem to an asset, natural approaches to flood protection are being implemented successfully, water quality is improving and salmon habitat is being restored in Johnson Creek and its tributaries. By working together, the people of the Johnson Creek watershed have added substantially to the social and natural capital that they will need to face greater climate extremes and resource limitations in the coming years.

Climate resilience is a vitally important issue for all of us. Every community in America has water resources such as rivers, wetlands, watersheds and aquifers that can deliver harm or offer protection from climate events such as floods and droughts. The economic cost of climate disasters is quickly becoming a major public and private expense. Growing demands on finite resources are outstripping the planet’s ability to provide for the needs of people and nature. Even in wealthy countries like the United States, aging infrastructure, inequitable economic opportunities and environmental injustices undermine progress at every turn, as we have seen most recently and tragically in Flint, Michigan.

According to River Network, one of the fastest growing conservation movements in the United States, with more than 2,000 non-profit organizations nationwide, has freshwater protection as its primary mission.

I believe that local, state and regional river and watershed groups, like

building resilience at the water’s edge • 57

the Johnson Creek Watershed Council, can play a key role in helping the communities they serve build resilience against future climate catastrophes.

These organizations are well-versed in how the current condition of America’s water resources, ravaged by pollution, overuse, and ill-considered efforts to control waterways through dams, levees and channelization, undermines community well-being. They understand that healthy water resources are priceless natural capital. And, they know a lot about how to protect, restore, and even replicate the role of naturally functioning water resources to build climate resilience. They have been restoring and protecting rivers and watersheds and conserving freshwater resources for decades, long before public awareness of climate impacts raised the stakes of having reliable water supplies, valuable ecological services and blue-green infrastructure.

Local and regional freshwater conservation efforts are also a widespread and effective means of building social capital. America’s rivers and watersheds provide benefits that are broadly valued by people from all walks of life, including water supply and outdoor recreation. And, rivers can be restored by local citizens working together, creating a tangible measure of collective accomplishment and, in the process, building trust, collaboration, and shared values.

Especially, when river groups work hand-in-hand with the leaders of disadvantaged communities to protect and restore water resources, they can make a big difference. These communities may not have the same access to financial or physical capital that wealthier places do, but they often have equal (and perhaps more) capacity for increasing stocks of social and natural capital. And, these communities are in greatest need of climate resilience. They are least able to prepare for or avoid climate impacts. They are least able to get out of the way of a climate catastrophe.

And, they walk the hardest and longest path to recovery.

Why should conservation organizations and agencies prioritize the cultivation of social capital in the process of restoring freshwater assets?

Arguably, forging ahead with water-related projects that are planned, designed, and implemented by government agencies allied with narrowly focused environmental organizations can be faster and easier.

58 • section ii: health, food, and water

But, not necessarily more effective at increasing resilience, equity or sustainability. Instead, by emphasizing social capital creation across and among diverse communities, the local knowledge and support that are gained will lead to better and more lasting solutions to pressing freshwater challenges.

Further, communities that are more resilient to climate challenges will make better long-term stewards of their freshwater resources. And ultimately, the transformational path to embracing a new way of living with water, rather than damming, draining, diverting, or piping water— begins with experiencing the human and natural benefits that arise from collaboratively restoring a river.

The river and watershed conservation movement is in a strong position to lead or support local efforts to build natural and social capital so that American communities can survive climate impacts, get on the path to a sustainable future, and create a water ethic for 21st century. Just as Aldo Leopold’s land ethic transformed society’s view of what is right or wrong in our treatment of non-human members of the community of life, we are now challenged to consider what is right (or wrong) in our relationship with water, the source of all life.

References 1. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

2. Robert D. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein, Better Together: Restoring the American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2003), p. 257-260

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Designing a Renewable Food System | Stanford Social Innovation Review

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Designing a Renewable Food System Borrowing from the renewable energy sector, we can create a better food system by organizing regional governments to create markets for smaller producers and establishing coordinated networks that can amplify best practices.

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By Paula Daniels Jan. 10, 2017

T

housands of organizations seeking food system change have pointed out the negative

environmental and societal consequences of our current system, which many say is propped

up on “too big to fail,” hyper-efficient production. The often quoted, Nixon-era agricultural

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mandate of “get big or get out”—a widely attributed pivot point in American agriculture from

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business zeitgeist of the time, building on the mid-20th-century ideal of industrialization and

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a diverse family farming system to the current corporate business form—mirrored the globalization.

Other systems, including our energy, water, and transportation systems, also fell in line with that ethos; but unlike the food system, these sectors are undertaking 21st-century upgrades that comport better with our modern norms and realities by creating more decentralized

systems that are better adapted to local geography and sociology. Food system change agents stand to learn from the public policy trajectory of renewable energy in particular. The

renewable energy industry currently employs 6.5 million worldwide with $329 billion in

investments in 2015, and a number of its effective strategies would adapt well to food system reform.

1. Using public contracts to express public values and create markets for smaller producers.

The starting point for renewable energy was the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/designing_a_renewable_food_system[4/13/2017 5:39:39 PM]

SSIR on Social Media @SSIReview

"How do you expect the Trump presidency will impact your organization’s human rights advocacy?", Kate Barth answers ow.ly/XA9M30aQs3q Stanford Social Innovation Review

Effective advocates may need to shift focus from political persuasion to public relations power. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/huma n_rights_advocacy_under_the_tru mp_administration

Designing a Renewable Food System | Stanford Social Innovation Review

(PURPA), enacted during the oil crisis of 1978. It opened the door to a new energy system structure by requiring that utilities source a percentage of their energy from independent

producers. Building on that, many states later required metric-based targets (Nevada set an

early example with its goal of 25 percent renewable energy by 2025) as part of a suite of policy

Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Contributor Development Partnership is revitalizing public broadcasting with a fundraising model that can help other large

tools supporting the development of renewable energy, called renewable portfolio standards (RPS).

This metric-based approach finds parallel in the food procurement power of public

institutions. A national example is Brazil, which passed a law requiring that schools spend 30 percent of their meal budgets on food produced by the country’s millions of smallholder farmers. The program is credited with providing economic viability to that farm sector, through access to a guaranteed market in a direct relationship with government.

School food is also a large public food sector in the United States. The National School

Lunch Program spends more than $11 billion annually to feed the 30 million children who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. The USDA Commodity program provides an

additional $200 million or so per year in supplemental food to schools. Given this, federal

targets to support local farms in school food purchases would undoubtedly make a meaningful shift in supporting the local farm economy, bolstering its existing Farm to School technical support and grant program.

But such targets would address only part of the food system picture. Community and

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environmental health are also important parts of a modern food system. Metrics based on

By Mark Esposito, Terence Tse, & Khaled Soufani 2

and purchases of food from fair labor producers and suppliers) would drive healthy food

Choosing the Right Partners for School Food Reform

these values (such as targets for healthy corner stores, sustainably produced food purchases, access, economic viability for the range of participants in the food chain, and a system of

By Kathleen O'Hare de Chadenèdes

agriculture that supports regenerative farming practices.

SSIR is published by the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, at Stanford University.

Farmworkers harvest melons at an organic farm in Firebaugh, California (Photo by Paula Daniels)

A number of food procurement programs already incorporate environmental sustainability values into their goals, including Real Food Challenge for universities and Health Care

Without Harm for hospitals. The Good Food Purchasing Program is even more analogous to

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/designing_a_renewable_food_system[4/13/2017 5:39:39 PM]

Designing a Renewable Food System | Stanford Social Innovation Review

the RPS system, in that it targets the public procurement dollars of school districts and is

metric driven, emphasizing in equal measure five core values: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition. It is designed to work for the food system in the way that LEED certification works for energy efficiency in buildings; it has a flexible, performance-based set of guidelines within a metric framework, as well as a ratings incentive.

A region could leverage these program tools and others toward achieving food system goals.

Such regional goals for school food, hospitals, military bases, and other publicly funded food programs in each area would create more than enough aggregate dollars to make a notable

difference in the food chain. Nationally networked, regional procurement goals would also have a powerful influence on the federal role in the food system.

2. Recognizing that regional governments are nimble leaders.

The generation of renewable energy accelerated when many states developed RPSs alongside federal and state tax incentives. The progress of these states toward their various mandated goals contributed to the current success of renewable energy worldwide. Target levels and

motivations of each state vary according to their resources and attributes. For example, waterlocked Hawaii is nearly halfway to the most ambitious goal in the United States: It plans to

reach “100 percent renewable” by 2045. California recently upped its renewable energy goals

to 50 percent by 2030, building on the success of its prodigious entrepreneurial ecosystem and diverse landscape in creating more than 21,000 megawatts of clean energy and 400,000 clean energy jobs.

Similarly, cities or states can become regional leaders of value-based food procurement goals

designed for the characteristics of their area, and advance a suite of policies that would create a community of personal, environmental, and economic health in food. Cities are especially well-poised to do so: Most of the world’s population now lives in cities, and because city governments are closer to the ground than federal governments, they have a working understanding of the needs of their residents, and a better sense of the programs and processes that can work for them.

Of course, implementing value-based food system goals will require more than procurement

metrics. We need policies and incentives to back them up. California is a good example. The state has consistently ranked first on the US Clean Tech Leadership Index, credited to the

fact that it has the largest collection of clean energy policies and incentives (over 270, by some counts) backing its metrics. These include: rebates, low or no interest loans, loan guarantees, financing programs, tax exemptions, bonds, grants, favorable permit standards, access easements, building standards, zoning codes, and small business assistance.

An impressive number of food policies and incentives are already in place around the country.

Pennsylvania’s well-known Fresh Food Financing Initiative, for example, became the basis

for the small-market conversion programs in Philadelphia and the creation of Philadelphia’s

Common Market food hub, a mission-driven, nonprofit aggregator of locally produced food distributed to schools, hospitals, and communities. And New York State recently gave a $15 million grant toward a $20 million food hub in New York City to implement its goals of supporting local farmers.

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/designing_a_renewable_food_system[4/13/2017 5:39:39 PM]

Designing a Renewable Food System | Stanford Social Innovation Review

Another opportunity is to update tax incentives for food donations to extend to programs like Boston’s Daily Table, which addresses food waste and food insecurity by using otherwise unused, “imperfect” produce to prepare healthy food on a food stamp budget. California

recently updated its agriculture tax incentives to include urban agriculture. Philanthropy, and local governments could also set up matching funds—modeled after the Veggie Voucher

farmer’s market programs—for schools and small neighborhood markets that participate in values-based regional procurement programs.

The Daily Table in Boston, Massachusetts, sells reclaimed produce at affordable prices. (Photo by Samantha Vise)

With regional metrics as an organizing framework, these programs and tools could become even more powerful drivers of food system design.

3. Creating coordinated networks to amplify best practices.

Affinity groups of cities can share best practices, operating as networked nodes of change. In 2005, Mayor Ken Livingston of London launched the C40, a network of the top 40 world

cities that meet regularly to address climate change and energy efficiency. The group works to develop and implement policies and programs that generate measurable reductions in both

greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks. When the C40 cities decide on a best practice— such as replacing incandescent bulbs in street lights with LEDs—they pool their combined

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/designing_a_renewable_food_system[4/13/2017 5:39:39 PM]

Designing a Renewable Food System | Stanford Social Innovation Review

buying power to create a bargaining block to obtain fair prices for both themselves and, because of the large size of the order, the manufacturer.

The Urban School Food Alliance, which includes the six biggest school districts in the

United States, uses the same approach. In 2013, it asked tray manufacturers to develop a

Styrofoam-free lunch tray. The manufacturers complied, motivated by the size of the order.

This “alliance of alliances” between six cities represents 4,536 schools, more than 2.5 million

students and 46 billion school meals, and a combined $552 million in food service. It has now turned its attention to the poultry supply chain with the aim of getting antibiotic-free chicken into schools.

In one year after adopting the Good Food Purchasing Program, LA Unified School District went from less than 10 percent to an average of 60 percent local produce, creating 150 new jobs in food processing. (Photo by Jorge Gil)

As with renewable energy, regional metrics for food that support community, economic, and environmental health would strategically align policies, programs, and organizations toward those goals, as well as accelerate progress and encourage entrepreneurship. By turning the wheel of the existing system toward proportionally designed and well-supported regional

targets, cities can lead a flexible, village-within-a-global-world framework that provides the responsiveness and resilience our communities deserve.

Paula Daniels (@PaulaADaniels) is co-founder of the Center for Good Food Purchasing. She wrote this article while a resident fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation at its Bellagio Center.

Tags Climate Change, Community, Employment, Food Access, Organizational Networks, Partnerships, Public Health, Supply Chains, United States

COMMENTS BY Kelly Meyer ON January 10, 2017 06:30 PM

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/designing_a_renewable_food_system[4/13/2017 5:39:39 PM]

Water Fighting Over is for

and Other Myths about Water in the West

Water is for Fighting Over AND OTHER MYTHS ABOUT WATER IN THE WEST

John Fleck

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright Š 2016 John Fleck All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036.

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938029 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: Colorado River Basin, Lake Mead, Morelos Dam, Minute 319, San Luis RĂ­o Colorado, cienega, agriculture-to-urban transfers, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Imperial Irrigation District, All-American Canal

To Lissa, from the headwaters to the sea

Whiskey’s for drinkin’, water’s for fightin’ over.

— apparently not Mark Twain

Acknowledgments

From the day Karl Flessa sat down with me in an Albuquerque bakery named Isabella’s in the summer of 2009 and explained what happens when the Colorado River fails to reach the sea, the members of the river community have been unfailingly smart and generous. That day Karl embodied what I came to see as the two essential traits of this group I have come to know and love: a clear-eyed view of the difficulty of the Colorado’s problems, and persistent optimism that they can be solved.

On the farmlands of the greater Colorado River Basin, Corky Herkenhoff, Tom Davis, Mark Smith, Bart Fisher, the Sharp brothers (Clyde and David), Pat Morgan, Jose Ramirez, and Ron Derma showed me how you move water through a desert to grow food. Tina Shields showed endless patience explaining water in the Imperial Valley and the importance of the Salton Sea. In Las Vegas, Kurtis Hyde taught me how to garden in a desert. In Phoenix, Kathryn Sorensen showed what it takes to keep the taps running for 1.5 million people who chose to build an improbable city in the desert. Bill Hasencamp helped me understand how Southern California has learned to live with less. John xiii

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Stomp showed me early on why water managers have to take a longer view into the future than most of us.

Tanya Trujillo first explained the strangeness of the Law of the River during a memorable meeting on the Albuquerque Journal’s patio, and then kept explaining it, again, and again, and again. Tom McCann’s deep understanding of the history of the river’s problems and his tenacious pursuit of solutions are a model. Jennifer Pitt and Mike Cohen demonstrated that there is no substitute for putting in the effort to understand how the system works, then spent countless hours helping me up the learning curve.

Mike Connor and the river’s federal management community, past and present, were generous beyond measure with their time, insights, and data—Terry Fulp, Jennifer McCloskey, Bob Snow, Anne Castle, Carly Jerla, Dan Bunk, Rose Davis, Paul Miller, Joe Donnelly, and many more.

Doug Kenney’s and Larry MacDonnell’s scholarship have been central to my understanding of the river’s law, politics, and history. Brad Udall’s insights, friendship, and counsel have been crucial.

More than anyone, John Entsminger helped me understand the importance of “the network”—how a community of trust and reciprocity across difficult geographic and institutional boundaries is the only way to solve these problems.

Stanford University’s Bill Lane Center for the American West and its then-director Jon Christensen gave important early support and encouragement for the project that became this book, and Jon egged me on when I needed it. The Water Education Foundation opened a key door.

My former employer, the Albuquerque Journal, especially Charlie Moore and Isabel Sanchez, long encouraged my journalistic obsession with water. When I needed to devote my full energy to this project, Bob Berrens of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program

acknowledgments

gave me a new home to think and write, and more importantly shared countless afternoon hours, in my office and his, hashing out the ideas that you see here. Bruce Thomson taught me about water and then literally gave me his old UNM office to write the book in. Melinda Harm Benson in UNM’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies helped me think through the crucial theoretical issues. And the students in UNM’s Water Resources 571 class proved a patient and inquisitive audience as I pummeled them with lectures about Yuma and lettuce and my strange fascination with the fountains of Las Vegas.

Nora Reed insisted that I think carefully about who is marginalized in the decision-making processes. It was an important moral compass.

William S. Reed isn’t here to see the results, but without his loving support this book would not have been possible.

Emily Turner Davis at Island Press has been the best editor a writer could hope for, able to see through my mush to what I was trying to say, then helping me say it.

Most importantly, Lissa Heineman helped me realize this was a thing worth doing, and then listened to every thought and read every word.

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CHAPTER 6

Averting Tragedy

The lawn at Redondo Beach High School, on the coastal edge of Los Angeles County’s West Basin, began dying in the early 1940s.1 In an arid climate like Southern California’s it would be easy to blame drought, but Redondo Beach’s problem was deeper. The school’s gardeners, drawing on the aquifer beneath the coastal city, had enough water for the grass. The hitch was its quality. As water tables beneath the valley dropped under the stress of groundwater pumping, saltwater from the Pacific Ocean had begun to infiltrate the once-pure aquifer.2 A few miles inland, the communities of Inglewood and Hawthorne were either oblivious to the problem or, more likely, they willfully ignored it. Farther from the coast, they figured they had plenty of groundwater to meet their needs and (rightly or wrongly) had little fear of saltwater intrusion. They seemed not to care that their pumping might affect their Redondo Beach neighbors or even the entire region. Instead, they continued to pump, lowering the regional water table, depleting the long-term supply, and pulling the saltwater inexorably inland at the risk of contaminating the entire basin’s supply.

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West Basin.

Like competing families sharing a fishing ground, the communities were trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma: if Redondo Beach backed off on its own groundwater pumping in order to preserve the resource, that would just leave more water for the others.

Los Angeles has always been a water-challenged place. Like most cities, it grew up astride a river. The Los Angeles River (as well as the San Gabriel and the Santa Ana Rivers, also threading their way through what is now the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area) would never be mistaken for the Thames or the Hudson. But you build a city with the rivers you have, and Southern California has never lacked for ambition, water or not. At 12 inches (30 cm) of rain per year in its valleys,3 the region falls just short of qualifying as a “desert,” yet by the mid-1800s, irrigated vineyards flanked the arid region’s rivers. The arrival of railroads and the evolution of refrigerated train cars made irrigated agriculture one of the region’s early economic engines, and by the 1880s

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farmers in the West Basin were pumping groundwater to make up for shortfalls in surface-water irrigation.4 “The story of the growth in this region,” US Geological Survey scientist Walter C. Mendenhall wrote in 1905, “becomes a story of the utilization and application of its available waters.”5 Thus it was that the LA basin, one of the first regions in the western United States to make widespread use of groundwater, also became one of the first regions forced to cope with what occurs when groundwater begins to run out.

By the 1940s, most of the West Basin water pumpers suspected there was a problem. They could see it when the depth to the water table in their wells dropped, and when the water grew salty like Redondo Beach’s as the Pacific Ocean crept silently in to fill the hole left by their overuse. But while each pumper knew about their own particular situation, collectively there was an information vacuum about the condition of the basin as a whole, and how the individual pumpers’ problems might be connected.

Pumping records were all private, and jealously guarded. “Individuals in one agency viewed individuals in other agencies as competitors,” wrote political scientist Elinor Ostrom, whose pioneering study of the West Basin changed our understanding of the “tragedy of the commons.”6 “Water producers engaged in a quiet, competitive race with each other,” Ostrom wrote in her 1964 doctoral dissertation.

Few recognized at the time what is clear today: if West Basin pumpers had continued down that path, depleted aquifers and saltwater intrusion would soon have rendered the groundwater basin useless. But even those who saw the problem also knew that if any one of them voluntarily reduced their withdrawals while the others kept on pumping, all would be for naught.

The West Basin’s water dilemma was really two separate, if closely related, problems, each of which required its own institutional solution.

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The first was the need to rein in groundwater pumping. If everyone kept on sucking up water as they had been, the region’s water supply would fail. The second was a need for some sort of imported water supply to replace the groundwater.

Each proposed solution depended on the other to work. Without imported water, any effort to drastically reduce groundwater pumping would leave the region without a water supply. But imported water— tapping into the region’s newly arrived supply of water from the Colorado River Aqueduct—was expensive. Without an effective groundwater-management scheme, communities had an enormous incentive to just keep pumping cheaper groundwater while their neighbors shouldered the costs of the imported-water fix.

In hindsight, the need for these paired solutions seems obvious; at the time, it was anything but. Redondo Beach and its coastal neighbors pleaded that collective action was needed, but Inglewood and Hawthorne wouldn’t budge. It looked like the start of a western water war that could leave the West Basin an early casualty.

The Tragedy of the Commons Ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968 famously described the collective-­ action dilemma posed by situations like the West Basin pumping race, dubbing it the “tragedy of the commons.” The commons is a resource to which many different users have access and cannot be excluded. A pasture on which anyone can graze their stock is the classic example, and groundwater basins from which lots of people can pump water share many of the same characteristics. By “tragedy,” Hardin meant not simply a bad outcome but, quoting the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.” His formulation suggested a sort of inevitability as self-interested consumers trashed their world. A sheepherder grazing on common land has a personal incentive to add one more sheep, Hardin argued, because the

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benefit of that one sheep accrues to the herder. The overall harm to an increasingly damaged commons, meanwhile, is borne by all.

Such a situation need not be hopeless. Hardin suggested two possible solutions. The first is to declare the commons to be private property, and let the land’s owner sort out, for a price, who is entitled to graze how many sheep. That provides an incentive to maximize the number of sheep while also minimizing damage so the pasture can support animals in the following year. The second option, Hardin argued, is an overarching government intervention to limit the number of sheep.7 The idea that humans would inevitably overuse a “common-pool resource” if no one owned or regulated it had been kicking around for years. But Hardin’s argument and the power of his rhetoric elevated “the tragedy of the commons” into a touchstone of late twentieth-century political and policy discourse. At a time of increasing public concern about the devastation of our environment, it resonated.

With little evident opportunity or desire to turn the groundwater commons into private property, intervention by some state or federal authority to prevent over-pumping was generally seen as the only option. But starting in the 1960s with her study of the problems of the West Basin, Ostrom (who in 2009 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for the answers she found) suggested a third path. She wasn’t working backward from theory, telling people what they ought to do.

Her starting point was empirical: What do people actually do when confronted by the sort of problem Hardin described?

The arc of Ostrom’s life and work is unique. When as a political scientist she won the 2009 economics Nobel, Paul Krugman and Steven Levitt—two of the United States’ best-known economists— admitted they had never heard of her.8 This is in part because of the way her work, while nominally found in academia’s political science silo, spanned disciplines. Political science rightly claimed her, economists honored her with a Nobel, and much of her research was

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grounded in the labor of a generation of anthropologists working around the world.

Traditional histories of California water generally treat what happened in the West Basin and the adjoining groundwater basins with a wave of the hand, as if what the communities did was straightforward—they were over-pumping, so they all got together and came up with a plan to pump less groundwater and bring in Colorado River water to replace it.9 Ostrom’s genius was in not taking that for granted, in realizing that the central question was how they came together to do that. Questions that to others seemed trivial to Ostrom were not. What she showed is that creating institutions capable of collectively managing the West Basin’s groundwater was not as simple as slapping down a new government agency and then flipping a switch to turn it on.

Ostrom’s research began as a seminar assignment while she was a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Each student was told to pick a groundwater basin and figure out how its community dealt with rising population and dwindling groundwater. It was a thorny problem, given that the boundaries of the basins and the government agencies charged with managing them did not match up.10 For the fledgling political scientist, the West Basin was the perfect laboratory. “It was great,” Ostrom wrote years later, “that I could drive half an hour and be in ‘my research site.’” Young and, by her own admission, naive about the problem she was trying to solve, Ostrom later acknowledged that “tragedy of the commons” wasn’t even in her vocabulary. “I had not realized I was studying a common-pool resource problem, nor that it was widely considered insoluble,” she said.11 It took many years, and the analyses of many more West Basin–like communities wrestling with similar problems, for Ostrom to identify a set of characteristics that successful efforts have in common. Any such governance system, she concluded, must

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• define the boundaries of the area where the resource will be managed; • determine who gets to extract the resource, and when, and how much; • establish who pays to maintain the health of the resource so that extraction can continue into the future; • create a process for monitoring the resource and how it is used, enforcing restrictions, and resolving conflicts; • determine how problems across larger scales—between the resource unit itself and the larger environment in which it exists—will be resolved; • create a framework for the evolution of rules over time as understanding of the resource and the demands being placed on it change.12

An Informal Start One of Ostrom’s most striking findings was the importance of informality as a tool in common-pool resource management. Ultimately, you often need to develop formal governmental and legal institutions, but at the beginning, non-binding communication—just finding a way to get together and chat—can play a critical role. Ostrom called it “cheap talk.” In lab experiments, Ostrom and others found that “cheap talk” made people more likely to cooperate successfully. In the field, they found again and again, it worked.

In coastal Southern California, the West Basin Water Association provided the “cheap talk” scaffolding upon which the institutions needed to solve the groundwater problem could be built. In the 1940s, basin water management was in turmoil. Inglewood mayor E. S. Dixon was adamant: his city had plenty of groundwater, and he saw no need to join with Inglewood’s neighbors in the creation of a municipal water district to solve the region’s water problems. “I have consulted with geologists and other water authorities,” he wrote the local newspaper in January 1947, “and all of the data convinces me that there is sufficient underground water available to the city of Inglewood to supply all of its

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present and future needs.”13 His neighbors in Hawthorne felt the same way. They saw only cost and risk in collaborating with their neighbors to the west.

Others had tried to convince Inglewood and other cities on the inland side of the basin that they, too, were at risk. “There is no known barrier in the West Basin to prevent saltwater encroachment,” F. N. Van Norman, one of the leaders of the community fact-finding committee formed to study the problem, told the Los Angeles Times during the summer of 1946. “This nullifies the theory that the ultimate water problem of one West Basin city is different than any other in the area.”14 Inglewood and Hawthorne weren’t buying. The cost of joining a regional municipal water district would be high for the inland communities, Dixon said during a speech before the Southwest Inglewood Improvement Association, while the benefits of avoiding saltwater intrusion were relatively small.15 Inglewood and Hawthorne were gambling that the other communities would shoulder the costs of bringing in the Colorado River water and hence would reduce their pumping, leaving those who didn’t join in the collective with an abundant supply of cheaper groundwater. They also were gambling that, if legal push came to shove, their water rights would win out in a court fight. That might leave the losers with no water, but Inglewood and Hawthorne didn’t seem to care.

In 1945, that “I’ve got mine and the heck with everyone else” attitude was widespread when a group of forward-thinking individuals representing some of the most at-risk water agencies came together to form a group calling itself the West Basin Water Association. At the time, Ostrom wrote in her doctoral dissertation, West Basin water management (if you could call it that) amounted to a “competitive race among the large number of poorly informed and, in some cases, deceptively competitive water producers.”16 Initially twenty organizations joined, including the coastal cities at greatest risk from saltwater

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intrusion and some of the private water companies. The region’s oil companies, with big economic stakes in the health of the aquifer, were active as well.17 Ostrom chose an interesting phrase to describe them: “public entrepreneurs.”

Looking back at the Water Association, it is easy to see how someone like Inglewood’s Dixon would see no need to play along. The organization’s structure was informal and it had no legal powers. But perhaps precisely because it was so non-threatening, it did something that in retrospect appears critical: it created a low-cost forum. Membership rules allowed essentially any agency or private entity with an interest in the basin’s water management to join, and an inclusive process allowed people who weren’t members to participate.18 For community discussions about the basin’s water, the West Basin Water Association created a very big tent.

This sounds weak, but Ostrom’s later work on common-pool resource-management regimes found repeated examples of such a “start small” approach. Resource users begin talking about their decisions, in the process developing trust and shared understanding of the resources involved and one another’s needs in using them. In short, they got to know one another.

Creating a Shared Understanding To solve a common-pool resource problem, you first need a shared understanding of what the resource is. This sounds simple, but in the case of the West Basin, it was not.

With individual pumpers keeping their well data to themselves, the Water Association’s first order of business was a fresh technical analysis of how much groundwater the basin really needed, and how much it had. The association hired an independent expert, a respected consulting engineer named Harold Conklin, to update Mendenhall’s early work on the basin. The findings on the volume of overdraft, the risk of

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saltwater intrusion, and the cost of fixing the problem, were grim. But as is often the case in such disputes, many of the parties either contested the data or remained oblivious to the risk.19 There’s a tendency in contentious situations like the West Basin’s water battles to think science can solve the problem—that sufficient evidence can be gathered to persuade holdouts, that you can win the policy argument by winning the argument over science. Political scientists call this “scientization.”20 It doesn’t work. Instead, as the reaction to the new West Basin study demonstrated, the science merely becomes a fresh focus of argument. The old arguments between Redondo Beach and its neighbors about what steps to take merely shifted to an argument over the evidence.21 But the West Basin Water Association also shows how “cheap talk” can create a forum for overcoming this kind of a problem. For the first time, pumpers were publicly sharing information about groundwater conditions in the basin. The group’s technical files and the minutes to its meetings were open. It published a newsletter with the motto “let there be no surprises, either pleasant or unpleasant.”22 Harold Conklin’s study laid out some promising approaches to dealing with the basin’s problems, including one that appeared particularly attractive—connecting the region’s water users to the network being built by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (known as “Met”) to bring Colorado River water across the desert to the coastal plain. At the time, the West Basin’s communities were outside Met’s service territory, so they would have to convince the agency to annex them into its boundaries to get the water. But Met’s management was strongly opposed to piecemeal annexation, and for good reason. The interconnected nature of the groundwater basins made freeloading a serious risk. Met water was more expensive than groundwater. If some communities connected to Met’s system and reduced their groundwater pumping, that would merely leave more water for those who did not

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join. Met customers would simply be subsidizing the continued depletion of the region’s aquifers.

The only way for West Basin communities to join Met was to first join among themselves, creating a regional water agency to act as a middleman. On a rainy January day in 1947, West Basin voters went to the polls to pass judgment on the formation of a new regional water district to bring the area’s cities under one umbrella, assessing to all of them the costs of connecting to the Metropolitan system. The measure failed.

The final tally reflected the geographic split plaguing the basin.

Coastal residents, sitting atop increasingly salty groundwater, supported paying more to hook up to Met by a margin of as much as five to one.

Inland residents of Inglewood and Hawthorne, feeling less threatened by saltwater intrusion, balked at the cost, and voted “no” by a more than three-to-one margin. That was enough to tip the balance, and the attempt to bind the West Basin together to take collective action on its water problems failed.23 Undaunted, the leaders of the coastal communities at greatest risk regrouped and succeeded in a second election, creating the West Basin Municipal Water District in the fall of 1947, without Inglewood and the other inland communities that had balked the first time. The boundaries were less than ideal, with large swaths of the basin left out. But it was not long before Dixon and Inglewood changed their minds, concluding by 1949 that they had more to gain by joining their neighbors and participating in the decisions over who got how much water in the basin, and how its aquifers could be protected.24 One by one, the other holdouts followed Inglewood and decided to join their neighbors, until by the early 1960s the region had a robust institution that covered the basin’s major water users, with the necessary authorities and institutional structure to both manage and distribute imported Colorado River water. Half of the problem had been solved.

But Hawthorne, one of the largest inland communities, one of the big-

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gest pumpers, and one of the handful of major water users who had never joined the association, remained a holdout.

Adjudication Solving the problem of regulating California’s West Basin groundwater pumping proved far more challenging than organizing to bring Colorado River water to the basin. But for self-governance to work, the West Basin needed both. The problem was holdout Hawthorne, happy to play its neighbors for suckers and continue pumping down the aquifer while everyone else tried to save it.

Legally, the basin’s water users turned early to a process called “adjudication,” a court action in which groundwater pumpers sue their neighbors, starting a formal process in which a court is asked to determine who is entitled to how much groundwater. In the old “water’s for fightin’ over” narrative, this sounds like a classic case of water wars, and it can be a high-stakes game. Winners can come away with a bounty, losers can see their wells go dry. But because of the risks and uncertainties, adjudication in Southern California groundwater basins proved a remarkably robust way of steering through the dangerous rapids of self-regulation. It was the prompt needed to get people to the table to negotiate a deal.

Notwithstanding Marc Reisner’s complaint about the Colorado being the world’s “most litigated” river, California water judge Leon Yankwich argued that the courts were a useful societal tool for settling differences.

“It is the aim of litigation,” Yankwich wrote, “to achieve social peace.”25 Sometimes the courts can be your friend. That is the way the water agencies were using the courts—not as a field of conflict, but as a tool with which they could fashion collaborative deals.

The adjudication process proceeded in parallel with the establishment of the new West Basin Municipal Water District to import water.

But it moved more slowly. The court asked the state Division of Water

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Resources to referee the matter, which it did by conducting a study whose findings were even grimmer than Harold Conklin’s. If the court adopted the referee’s findings, the basin’s water users would have to all but stop pumping entirely. The stick wielded at this point by the adjudication process was large, creating significant appetite for the carrot of a negotiated alternative that might still allow some groundwater pumping as the region shifted to the use of imported Colorado River water, worked on the construction of a saltwater intrusion barrier, and began learning to recycle its wastewater to make up at least some of the difference.

By the early 1950s, with Met water beginning to flow, basin water users took a critical step—one that demonstrated a new level of trust.

At the time, they were unable to agree on exactly how to share the pain of reduced pumping. The cuts required seemed simply too deep for many of the users. But realizing that something nevertheless needed to be done, they agreed to an interim deal in which water users would voluntarily reduce the amount of water they took from the aquifer. It was precisely the thing Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” argued would not happen, but after a decade of collective work, some of the users were ready to make reductions, even without binding commitments from all the others.

While negotiations continued, water users agreed to cut back to the levels they had been pumping back in 1949. It was a modest first step, but it worked. Despite the lack of a binding deal, the voluntary reductions reduced the pressure on the aquifer and the water table began rising in many areas of the basin. But it was a high-risk move, because it made free riding that much easier for those who chose not to participate in the new regime.

In that regard, Hawthorne continued to pose a problem, illustrating the shortcomings of the basin’s two-pronged approach. By the early 1950s, Hawthorne had joined its neighbors by voting to annex itself

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into the territory of the West Basin Municipal Water District. That gave it access to the Metropolitan Water District’s imported Colorado River water, suggesting that the collective management regime might finally include all the right water users. But Met’s concerns about free riding were well founded. While the other users shifted to more expensive Met water in order to preserve the aquifer, Hawthorne continued to pump cheaper groundwater, playing its neighbors for suckers. The aquifer rose, but a chunk of the precious water being saved merely flowed down beneath the ground into a trough, created by Hawthorne’s willful cheating, that was thirty to forty feet deeper than that of its neighbors. By using the cheaper water, Hawthorne saved $100,000 compared to what it would have cost to use Met’s Colorado River supply.26 Hawthorne continued to sit out the negotiations and complain, but in the end this didn’t matter. The other parties negotiated a compromise that represented a middle ground. More pumping was allowed than would have been permitted under the original state referee’s report, but limitations were imposed on each pumper that, with the addition of collective action to build a saltwater barrier, proved sufficient to stabilize the aquifer. The parties filed the settlement with the court, which had the power to impose the resulting restrictions even on those, like Hawthorne, who had not volunteered to be a part of the deal.

Hawthorne squealed, appealed, lost, and was eventually forced by the court to join its neighbors in jointly managing the West Basin’s water supply. The unpredictable threat posed by litigation, and the power of the courts, created a framework for the region’s water users to work out a deal.

Enforcement and the Future The West Basin finally had a deal, but how could they be sure that everyone would stick to the terms? Ostrom’s work shows that once an agreement is in place, institutional plumbing is remarkably durable. In

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a study that she and her colleagues conducted of governance institutions in the West Basin and other areas in Southern California, Ostrom found sturdy networks of trust, reciprocity, and shared understanding of the resource. With reliable public monitoring, compliance was high.27 The parties selected and funded a “watermaster” to monitor basin pumping.

The data was audited, trusted, and public. But, crucially, the watermaster was not an enforcement cop. “We want to stay as neutral as possible in order to gain as much voluntary cooperation as possible,” watermaster John Johams told Ostrom.28 Rather than the watermaster playing cop, the systems end up being self-policing. Pumpers have the option of taking a cheating neighbor to court, but Ostrom and her colleagues found that this was almost never necessary. She tells the story of the tiny Moneta Mutual Water Company, which early in the life of the agreement pumped more than its share. The watermaster, in addition to including Moneta’s pumping numbers in the tables of its annual report, included a several-page-long discussion of the problem. Soon after its over-pumping was made public in this fashion, Moneta stopped cheating. Even recalcitrant Hawthorne fell into line—no enforcement required.29

Expanding Policy Options In addition to regulating groundwater pumping and importing Colorado River water, the West Basin’s governance system created other new policy options. This is one critical difference between cooperation and externally imposed solutions. Once communities develop the social capital—the interpersonal connections, shared understandings, and collaborative institutions—the door is open to far-more-flexible problem solving going forward.

One of the West Basin’s most important new tools was a salinity-­ intrusion barrier, a system built along the coast to hold saltwater back.

Experiments in the early 1950s showed that pumping freshwater down

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injection wells along the coast could create a “mound” of groundwater that held the saltwater at bay, acting like a dam to help keep it from pushing into the aquifer and contaminating wells in places like Redondo Beach. This would allow more groundwater pumping inland than would otherwise be possible, not entirely eliminating the need for communities like Redondo Beach and Hawthorne to cut back, but softening the blow. Again, the creation of such a system involved collective-action dilemmas: free riders behind the barrier would benefit whether they paid or not. And where would the water come from?

And again, the informal West Basin Water Association provided the forum for lengthy discussions on how to build an institution to do the job and what its boundaries, legal authorities, funding, and responsibilities might be. Once again, as with the West Basin Municipal Water District, the solution came to a vote of the region’s residents about creating yet another overlapping joint water-management district, the Water Replenishment District of Southern California. The boundaries were different this time. West Basin water users realized that they would benefit by collaborating with their neighbors in Central Basin, the adjacent water basin to their east. But the goal was the same: create a broad institutional umbrella to accomplish collective water-management goals that no community could undertake on its own.

Again, Hawthorne mayor James Q. Wedworth balked, saying his community was already paying too much to solve regional water problems. He blamed the problem on a system that had deprived Hawthorne residents of water that should have rightfully been theirs. “If each city had been given fair and equitable water rights, the whole thing would not have come to a vote,” Wedworth said.30 But voters across the basin disagreed, approving the formation of the new district to provide imported Colorado River water as a source for the salinity barrier, and more generally to put surplus imported water back underground for future use.

Like the groundwater adjudication and West Basin Municipal Water

av e r t i n g t r a g e dy

District, the institutions have proven remarkably robust. Over the past fifty years, the region has taken active steps to replenish its aquifers, creating a healthy groundwater buffer that communities were able to draw on during the worst droughts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.31

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Speakers: Moderator: Ali Velshi, MSNBC Anchor and Business Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC David Crane, Senior Operating Executive, Pegasus Capital Advisors Trammell S. Crow, Founder of Earth Day Texas; President of the Crow Family Foundation Anson Hines, Director, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center William McDonough, Founder of William McDonough + Partners, Architects Dale Ross, Mayor of Georgetown, Texas Jigar Shah, President & Co-Founder of Generate Capital; Founder & CEO of SunEdison Marilyn Waite, Energy Lead, Village Capital Author, Sustainability at Work

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Heat or Eat? New York Tackles Energy Costs and Climate Change Jeni Miller

Originally published June 22, 2016 in The Energy Collective

H

eat or eat: that’s the stark choice faced by many low-income families during cold New York winters, according to Scott Oliver of PathStone, a non-profit group in upstate New York. But that could change.

In January, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a new $5 billion Clean Energy Fund that will sharply reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions while also lowering energy costs for low-income families.

Energy costs are a heavy burden for many: poor households spend more than three times as much of their income on energy as their wealthier neighbors, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. A home’s energy efficiency—particularly in climates with extremes of very cold winters or very hot summers—is a key factor in energy costs.

Those costs weigh heavily on every aspect of life. Paying more for heat or cooling means less ability to buy healthy foods, pay for doctor visits, or cover other life necessities. Under-heated homes in winter can increase circulatory and respiratory problems, and produce anxiety and depression. Hot weather is no better, leaving people who can’t afford air conditioning—particularly the elderly—vulnerable during increasingly frequent heat waves.

In New York State, a number of programs are now in place to reduce energy burdens for low-income renters and homeowners. There are programs that provide payment assistance with high energy bills, for example, and home weatherization programs. But currently, need far outstrips the supply. PathStone, for example, knits together grants and subsidies to 158

heat or eat? New york tackles energy costs and climate change • 159

renovate homes for low income homeowners, often enabling people to stay in homes that might otherwise be condemned or uninsurable. But Oliver says, “The need is so huge. [We’re] doing 10 houses a year here, 10 houses a year there. There are 90,000 houses in the city of Rochester. Even if we only had to work on a quarter of them that’s over 20,000 houses.”

To address these problems, the Clean Energy Fund seeks to unleash a wave of innovation and cross-sector collaboration. A design competition will mobilize ingenuity in the manufacturing and construction sectors to bring down the cost of “deep energy retrofits” (energy use reduction of roughly 70%) for multi-family affordable housing. With 1.7 million units of such housing across the state, the size of the market should create a business opportunity for manufacturers and contractors.

Financial incentives are important. That’s why the Fund is developing new mechanisms for property owners to receive a return on their investment in energy retrofits, while low income residents benefit from lowered electric bills. Also in the works: financial and insurance instruments to help low- and middle-income homeowners pay for energy retrofits and renewable energy projects, and mechanisms that give utilities a stake in promoting energy efficiency.

New York is exploring how the health sector can get involved, given the health benefits of improved housing and reduced energy burdens.

Collaboration among affordable housing providers, community developers, utilities and low income service providers will also be key.

The Fund’s energy efficiency measures will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by lowering demand for energy in New York State. And the Fund targets the energy supply as well, with financing and incentives that seek to shift half of the state’s production to renewable energy sources—including solar and wind– by 2030.

New York’s Clean Energy Fund was inspired by the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), which requires states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector to mitigate climate change. While the federal law is tied up in litigation and some states have put implementation on hold, New York is among a handful of states that are moving decisively ahead to reduce carbon emissions.

160 • section vii: energy

New York is showing that cutting carbon emissions doesn’t have to hurt. In fact, by improving energy efficiency and lightening the energy burden for low-income families, these measures can substantially improve the lives of the most vulnerable people. “Heat or eat” is a choice no one should ever have to make.

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RESILIENCE MATTERS 2016 Introduction by Laurie Mazur

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DON’T BE SUCH A SCIENTIST

DON’T BE SUCH A SCIENTIST Talking Substance in an Age of Style

by

Randy Olson

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright © 2009 Randy Olson All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.

ISLAND PRESS is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olson, Randy, 1955– Don't be such a scientist : talking substance in an age of style / by Randy Olson. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59726-563-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-59726-563-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Communication in science. 2.

Science in motion pictures. I. Title.

Q223.O47 2009 501.4—dc22 2009007081 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: Public speaking, public relations, messaging, anti-science movement, academia, film, documentary, Hollywood, conservation, evolution, Flock of Dodos, Carl Sagan, science and entertainment exchange

This book is dedicated to Professor Robert T. Paine, who taught me how to study the ocean and have fun doing it.

Introduction “You think too much! You motherf***ing think too much! You’re nothing but an arrogant, pointy-headed intellectual—I want you out of my classroom and off the premises in five minutes or I’m calling the police and having you arrested for trespassing. And I’m not f***ing joking, you a**hole.”

ell. That was my introduction to Hollywood, complete with the per-

W

sonalized profanity. Thirty-eight years old. Just resigned from my

tenured professorship of marine biology. Invested every cent to move to Hollywood. Entered film school at the University of Southern California and signed up for an acting class with this crazy teacher, now blowing her lungs out at me in front of the class.

I’m looking at this beast and flashing back to Antarctica, 1985, Cape Byrd, getting chased out of the water by a ten-foot leopard seal. Thinking that the seal seemed less threatening than this teacher. Thinking that the seal was more predictable.

To make matters worse, I had been warned. A screenwriter buddy got me into the class. He was friends with the teacher. His warning went like this: “She has laser beams for eyes and can see into your soul. Don’t even think

1

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about questioning her. Just listen to every word she says and know she’s always right. She’s the best acting teacher in Hollywood—she’s worked with everyone from Dustin Hoffman to Al Pacino. Don’t think you’re smarter than her.”

He said that over a game of pool, along with a variety of tall tales involving his Hollywood adventures, some of which I felt certain were hugely exaggerated. The “laser beam eyes” bit made it seem like just more of his hype.

So here I am. Standing in front of two dozen kids—all twenty-something hipster/aspiring actors, now roaring with laughter as this version of Bette Midler-on-angel-dust tears apart “the old dude.”

I stand before her, hands at my sides, palms open, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m just here to learn about acting.” It’s the first night of class. She teaches the Meisner technique—one of the most highly respected forms of training for actors. It revolves around repetition exercises: Two students stand in front of the class. One says, “That’s a lovely blue sweater.” The other replies, “This is a lovely blue sweater?” The first one repeats, “That’s a lovely blue sweater.”

If the original statement is sincere, the repetitions take on a sweet tone until someone finally feels an emotion and expresses it by saying something like, “Thank you for the compliment.” If the original statement is sarcastic, it doesn’t take long for the sweater wearer to end the exchange with an insult.

So I’m in front of the class and my assigned partner, a gorgeous twentytwo-year-old Malibu party girl, stands opposite me and is told to begin the process with an observation. She could have commented on my shirt. She could have commented on my posture. But instead she looks me over and says . . . “You’re going bald!”

Like a pack of wild hyenas, the entire class erupts with screaming, almost violent, laughter. The little sweetie looks to them with a smile and a gesture of “Boo-yah!” The teacher watches with fire in her eyes, and I’m supposed to answer.

Introduction

3

“I’m going bald,” I reply with a nervous, humiliated smile.

We trade the line twice more, and then it happens. The venom-spewing tirade begins with “How does that make you feel?” as the teacher jumps up from her chair and confronts me.

I shrug. I’ve been living in university settings for twenty years. Baldness has been a badge of legitimacy in that world. I’ve looked in the mirror. I can see it. No need to get mad at me. Everyone says I’m a nice guy. I’m just here to learn. “I don’t know,” I reply. “No big deal.”

The fire escalates. “What do you mean you don’t know? We want to hear what you’re feeling. We want to see what you’re feeling. Don’t try to stand here and tell us you have no feelings. This beautiful young girl says you’re going bald, like a pathetic limp-dick old man. She’s insulted you. Now I’m asking you again, How does that make you feel?”

Again I shrug and smile—and even make the fatal mistake of saying, “I’m not feeling anything.” To which I should have added, “Why should I? I’m a scientist.”

Well, that’s what triggered the final eruption.

The veins were bulging out of her wrinkled neck as she blasted forth.

“You cannot, I repeat, cannot come into this classroom and have no feelings.

You can be sad, you can be glad, you can be mad, but the one thing you cannot do is tell us you’ve thought things through and have no feelings. That’s what intellectuals do. They intellectualize the world. They move it all into their heads. They suck the life out of life. And that’s why nobody wants to watch an intellectual act. Actors act. They actually do things. Intellectuals don’t act, they think and talk.”

On and on.

And that’s where this book begins—with the realization that as an academic I had been trained to think rather than act. I heard that, and a whole lot more, in this acting class in 1995.

I did leave the premises that night, and I was definitely rattled. They say

4

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that fear of public speaking is one of the most widely shared phobias. I’m guessing that fear of public acting in front of a pack of attractive kids who are laughing at you has to rate right up there, too. I stayed up for hours that night talking on the phone to old friends, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into and giving some thought to the possibility that the move to Hollywood was simply a bad idea. It wasn’t too late to slink back to New Hampshire and cancel my resignation, though I kept flashing back to the scene in An Officer and a Gentleman where Richard Gere is doing push-ups in the rain, crying and screaming at the sergeant, “I got nowhere else to go, sir!” That was kind of my predicament.

I spoke with my screenwriter buddy the next day. He called the teacher up. She didn’t know I was his friend. Being pure Hollywood, she melodramatically apologized in front of the class the next night for having treated me so poorly, then told me to sit down and shut up, and continued to abuse me for the next year.

The class was of moderate interest then and for a while after. But it all changed in 2002, when I returned to working with academics. Suddenly the experiences of that course came raging back like a flood of suppressed memories.

I found myself listening to scientists and, even worse, science communicators and thinking back to that wretched woman screaming at me—“You’re too cerebral! Stop thinking and act!” I began seeing all the worst traits from acting school played out instinctually by these folks.

The acting class was the pivotal moment in my life, causing my fragile intellectual noggin to crack wide open and the former professor to see his scientist’s life in a new light. It gave me a 180-degree different perspective on my previous profession. For fleeting moments I could actually see and hear the consequences of so much education and development of the brain. All of which eventually led me at times to begin saying to old science friends and colleagues, in trying to help them communicate better, “Don’t be such a scientist!”

Introduction

5

A Scientist Turns Filmmaker This may sound like a lot of silly fun, but guess what’s at stake here—the entire fate of humanity. Let me explain.

What’s the most important problem confronting humanity today? I think most people would agree it’s the question of whether we’re going to exceed the resources of the planet, destroy the environment, and end up in total chaos leading to the post-apocalyptic visions that centuries of science fiction writers have warned of. Science can avert such a nightmare.

With the knowledge of science we can solve resource limitations, cure diseases, and make society work happily—but only if people can figure out what in the world scientists are talking about and why they should care.

How bad is the situation with scientists and their communication skills?

Well, I think it’s at a crisis stage. Consider this: On June 23, 2008, James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, in which he said, “CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

Now, don’t get me wrong—James Hansen is a superstar of the science world and deserving of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts in speaking out against the George W. Bush administration’s tampering with scientific studies. But this book isn’t about making people think scientists are cool. If that’s all you’re looking for, you should go elsewhere. It’s about examining the truth, which, by the way, is what science is supposed to be about.

And the truth is that the idea of trying energy executives for “crimes against humanity” is somewhere between laughable and insulting to the general public. This shows the extent to which scientists and the general public are not on the same wavelength. It’s as simple as the words of the prison guard in Cool Hand Luke, spoken to inmate Paul Newman: “What we have here is . . . failure to ko-mune-eee-kate.”

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When the disconnect between the science community and the general public is this large, there’s definitely a problem with communication. It’s like an infant, not yet able to talk, screaming and crying at its parents, trying to tell them something is wrong. And the parents are just staring at the child, unable to understand.

It doesn’t matter if the reality of the situation is that neglecting global warming could kill more people than a crime against humanity like the Holocaust. The only thing that matters in American society is perception (the old “perception is reality” bit). And, to the general public, accusing quiet businessmen of such crimes gives the impression that scientists have lost their minds.

I got to see how bad it all is when I was invited to take part in a special symposium in December 2006, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union titled “Communicating Broadly: Perspectives and Tools for Ocean, Earth, and Atmospheric Scientists.” It’s the largest annual gathering of climate and ocean scientists, and that year it was in San Francisco, with nearly 15,000 in attendance. I don’t like the meeting because of its enormity, so I initially declined, but the organizers made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

They put me in the middle of the opening session, amid the nation’s top global warming scientists, including the very same James Hansen; Stephen Schneider, head of Stanford University’s climate center; Michael Oppenheimer, head of Princeton University’s climate center; and a half dozen other big names. Plus Al Gore was set to give the keynote address in the session. It was too huge an invitation to turn down.

I spent three months working on my presentation—I edited a tenminute video for which I would provide the narration live, perfectly timed to weave in and out of the audio. It had both silly clips from my comic work and a very serious message about the role of likeability in the broad communication of science.

The experience turned out to be stunning, but in the worst way possible.

Introduction

7

I sat there that morning in disbelief as the speakers—supposedly the best of the best when it comes to presenting science to the public—gave some of the dullest, most uninspiring presentations I’ve ever seen.

Worst of all was Hansen (again, a true scientific hero), who gave a tedious and disorganized presentation. This comes as no surprise to any major climate scientist. They all know Hansen’s a nice guy but not a dynamic speaker.

Now, yes, I know that many in the science world feel that someone like him shouldn’t be criticized. They’re saying, “If you want to help the cause of science, just keep your mouth shut.” But most scientists know that science is built on a tradition of honest, at times (as I will explore in chapter 4) harsh, critical evaluation. So I’m not about to just sit quiet on this issue.

Hansen spent the first five minutes showing a single graph of temperature versus atmospheric carbon dioxide. The audience was dutifully respectful of him, given his greatness. But all he was doing was talking “science” rather than “science communication,” the supposed focus of the symposium. He finally looked at the crowd and said, “I guess you guys want to hear what it’s like to testify to Congress.” Everyone nodded yes.

He stumbled on, reading his talk haltingly from a laptop to the audience of five hundred. Then, after a total of twenty minutes, the moderator told him he was out of time. He turned to the crowd and simply said, “Well, I’ve got a bunch more slides. They’re all on my Web site if you want to see them.”

Then he slapped shut his laptop and left the room, presumably headed for the airport. No conclusion, no summary, no overall point to what he said.

Just “That’s all, folks!” followed by the twenty-three skidoo, exit stage left.

The other speakers weren’t much better. They tossed up one PowerPoint presentation after another. After a while it was just blue slide, blue slide, blue slide (by the way, don’t miss “The Blue Slide Pioneers” in chapter 4). And yet all the while they were held up as experts on “communicating science broadly.”

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DON’T BE SUCH A SCIENTIST

Now, as I discuss in chapter 3, two main errors can be made in presenting science to the public. The first is an error of accuracy. Had even one of the speakers made a significant mistake in accuracy—maybe stating that current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are around 800 parts per million (ppm) rather than 385 ppm—the audience of experts would have torn the speaker to shreds.

But the second is an error of boredom, in which the speaker fails to make a presentation that holds anyone’s interest. Such mistakes are traditionally shrugged off as no big deal—“At least he got the facts right.” No harm. Well, I maintain that today there is in fact harm.

A New Priority for Science Communication The time has come, in our new media environment, which is so cluttered with information that it is at times hard to tell fact from fiction, for new attention to be paid to this second type of error. The powerful and effective communication of science has to be a much higher priority than ever or the science community will lose its voice, drowned out by either the new antiscience movement or just the cacophony of society’s noise.

So I spoke with the organizers of the symposium the following week.

They said they were disappointed. They had thought their cast would have done a better job. But they also said I was about the only person they’d heard any complaints from. Most of the people were so dazzled by the credentials of the speakers and excited to have Al Gore at the end of the session that they didn’t really consider whether the title of the symposium had been justified.

I found that distressing, especially given the attacks that are under way against science these days.

A backlash has developed against science, in disciplines ranging from evolution to global warming to mainstream medicine. An entire antiscience movement has emerged that truly does threaten our quality of life. Large groups of people are fighting against hard, cold, rational data-based science and clinical medicine, simply saying they don’t care what the science says.

Introduction

9

Major groups are now arguing against certain childhood vaccinations on the basis of fears that are grounded not in scientific data but in anecdotes and innuendo. These are vaccinations that have been responsible for eradicating terrible diseases. It is a genuine threat to society.

In the midst of this conflict, communication is not just one element in the struggle to make science relevant. It is the central element. Because if you gather scientific knowledge but are unable to convey it to others in a correct and compelling form, you might as well not even have bothered to gather the information.

Seeing Is Believing (That Communication Is Important) As you read on, you will realize that much of this book focuses on filmmaking—making films, watching films, and understanding “the language of film.” Many scientists will say, “This is not for me; I’m not a filmmaker.” Well, guess what—if you aren’t yet, you probably will be soon.

I came to this realization in 1997, near the end of film school, when I met with Elizabeth Daley, dean of the USC School of Cinema-Television (now called the USC School of Cinematic Arts). She said that film is a language that everyone learns to “read” from a very early age. A young child has no problem watching a scene in a television program that changes from a man picking up his car keys to the man driving his car. The child doesn’t sit and wonder, “How did that man suddenly go from picking up keys to driving his car?” No, the child is able to fill in the missing scenes of the man leaving his house, starting the car, and driving off (called “ellipses” in the language of film).

But when it comes to “writing” the language of film, over the past hundred years only select individuals have mastered this technical medium. That is now changing rapidly.

Daley envisions a day in which everyone in every discipline will routinely communicate through the use of film—both writing and reading in the medium. And I have seen the beginnings of this in the science world since the

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1980s—slowly at first, but quickly in more recent years as a result of new video technology.

Today, when I run a video-making workshop at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with graduate students, almost all of the students have already had some experience with shooting and editing their own videos.

That’s a drastic change from just a few years ago.

So the fact is, the science world is in many ways converging on Hollywood. What?! Think that’s a heretical thing to say? Don’t believe it? Let me hit you with a little anecdote from my recent past.

I was helping a large science organization set up an evening event in Hollywood for which the organizers wanted a couple of scientists to talk, and they wanted them to be truly exceptional speakers. The communications director left me a phone message asking for help. I called back and told her about two scientists I know who are tremendous public speakers. She left me another message a few hours later, saying, “A bunch of us got together in my office and found clips on the Internet of one of the scientists, and you’re right, he’s amazing. But we couldn’t find anything on the other one. Could you send us some tape of him?”

When I heard that last phrase, I got a minor case of whiplash. I called her back and left her a message saying, “Do you know who traditionally says that phrase—‘Send us some tape on this person’? That’s what Hollywood casting directors say to agents when they want to consider an actor without having to trouble the actor to come in for an audition—‘Just send us some videotape of the actor’s best scenes.’”

So take a moment now to think about what this means. In the near future—maybe it’s already happening—prominent scientists who are good speakers are going to edit together their “demo reels” in the same way I’ve helped dozens of my actor friends in Hollywood edit their demo reels. Instead of taking scenes from movies and television shows, the scientists will take scenes from talks they have given.

Scientists will post their “reels” on YouTube for event organizers to con-

Introduction

11

sider. And, with time, they will realize that the best parts of their reels come from the talks they give where the lighting and camerawork and sound recording are best. They will realize that even if the substance of their talk is identical in all the talks, the style of the talks that are recorded effectively is what makes those videos better.

As they look at their reels over time, they will realize that it really does matter if they dress well and comb their hair and maintain good posture.

Though traditionally scientists have focused more on substance, in the future they will increasingly realize that style matters when it comes to communication, just as the people of Hollywood have known for over a century.

And I have nothing to do with this transition of scientists becoming more aware of these elements. With most of what I have to say, I’m just the messenger.

From Sea Stars to Hollywood Stars So my message, that science communication is extremely important, is not particularly novel, but my approach to it is, to say the least, unique. I say this because I undertook a journey, starting in 1989, that few (if any) tenured science professors have ever attempted. It’s been a journey to the epicenter of the most powerful mass communications machine on the planet—Hollywood.

After spending two decades battling my way into the inner sanctums of academia, I switched careers at age thirty-eight and did my best to party my way into Hollywood (yes, party; that’s the main work mode for Hollywood).

And I do feel that Hollywood is the most powerful, albeit hard to control, mass communication resource of today. When a blockbuster movie suddenly makes dinosaurs more interesting than ever, the subject permeates every level of society, from magazines to elementary schools to dinner conversations. The impact can last for many years. And when a Hollywood

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DON’T BE SUCH A SCIENTIST

celebrity pulls a shocking stunt (like a “wardrobe malfunction,” as I mention in chapter 2), it sends equally powerful waves throughout society.

Two Other Books In addition to this book, there are two others I would like to publish. A whole tome could be filled with adventures from my twenty years as a marine biologist. I got my start when I dropped out of college in my sophomore year and ended up in Puerto Rico working on an oceanographic project. I spent years in the Caribbean studying coral reefs—Jamaica, Panama, the Virgin Islands—and then migrated west to the Pacific. I spent the 1980s in Australia doing fieldwork for my doctorate from Harvard University, going back for a postdoctoral fellowship, and then finally settling in for the pot of gold at the end of the academic rainbow: a tenure-track professorship at the University of New Hampshire.

For the uninitiated, tenure means employment for life. They can’t fire you. It’s what every academic dreams of. By 1994 I had earned tenure at UNH. I had a group of graduate students studying with me, a major grant from the National Science Foundation, and twenty published research papers; at thirty-eight, I had essentially achieved the sort of career success I’d hoped for way back in college. I was professionally content. But, just as tragically as a happily married person can fall in love with another person, my heart had begun wandering from science to another career: filmmaking.

My affair with film had, actually, been slowly developing. Throughout the 1980s I gave countless slide shows about not just my research but also all the adventures I’d had diving around the world—from living on an island on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for a year to diving under the ice in Antarctica to living in an undersea habitat for a week and eventually meeting the guru himself, Jacques Cousteau. I enjoyed giving the talks and telling the stories. And by the early 1990s I’d become intrigued with the power of video to supplement what I had to say.

I often thought about putting those stories in a separate book, and in fact

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that book exists, sort of. In 1989, in a blinding blaze of passion I wrote a 120,000-word manuscript in four weeks, titled “Coral Reefs and Cold Beers,” which centered on my best and most favorite stories, starting with the years I’d spent living on Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. It was full of tales of getting drunk with fishermen, dodging sharks, and having the time of my life studying marine biology—including thoroughly enjoying the hypothetico-deductive process of science in the field. But alas, its brow wasn’t sufficiently high for the literary world, which demanded in 1989 that scientists write only in a voice of deadly seriousness. Despite three literary agents, a couple dozen publishers, and at least one academic press that gave it the green light, it never made it to publication. The overall opinion was summed up by one editor, who said, “The partying theme gets in the way of the science.” (Bah, humbug.)

The other book I’ve thought about writing is a thorough review of the state of science literacy in America today. It would examine the literary and popular image of scientists in our culture—how they are portrayed in movies and what effect that has on the public’s support for science in general. Fortunately, that job has been covered by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, published about the same time as this book.

Two Careers in Storytelling So “scientist-turned-filmmaker” ends up being the label that has been applied to me, which seems like a professional stretch, yet there is a unity to the two careers. They are both, in the end, about telling stories. A scientist goes out into nature, gathers data, comes back to the laboratory, and puts it together in order to present to the world a story about how things are. A filmmaker goes out into the world, shoots film, comes back to the editing suite, and puts it together in order to present to the world a story about how life is.

Same basic creative process. One group just tends to be a little better at the art of storytelling, as I’ll explore in chapter 3.

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My formal entry into filmmaking began in 1990, when I made a first, silly short film, Lobstahs, a five-minute piece on how to eat a lobster that starred a couple of New Hampshire lobster fishermen. By the next year I was receiving awards at the International Wildlife Film Festival for my films, including Barnacles Tell No Lies, a jazz music video about the sex life of barnacles. And I had begun exploring the bigger picture of the film world, including initial trips to Hollywood.

Academic friends would ask, “Why are you so interested in Hollywood?” and I would paraphrase the famous bank robber Willie Sutton (when asked, “Why do you rob banks?” he’s said to have replied, “Because that’s where the money is”). I’d say, “I’m going to Hollywood because that’s where the mass communication is.”

By mid-1993 I had approached USC’s cinema school and spoken with an admissions advisor, who asked my age. I said thirty-seven. He said, “You’re right on the cusp—better act now or it will be too late.” Suffice it to say, I acted.

I made my move to Hollywood in January 1994, fittingly just in time for the Northridge earthquake. I rented an apartment in Beachwood Canyon, right below the Hollywood sign, and lived there for more than a decade as my journey led me to film school, through the two-year acting program, to premiering my films at festivals from Telluride to Tribeca, to short films and commercials with such actors as Jack Black and Dustin Hoffman, and eventually to my documentary feature Flock of Dodos: The Evolution–Intelligent Design Circus, airing on Showtime.

It’s been fifteen years now since I jumped ship on academia, and I have lots of genuinely insane Hollywood stories from the countless nights of partying and networking. But, in the end, it all comes back to that acting teacher screaming at me. That was the golden moment. That was when I knew I wasn’t as worldly smart as I had been led to believe in academia.

And that’s most of what this book is about—the fact that academics (and scientists specifically) tend to think that the solution to all problems is edu-

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cation. Which seems logical at first. But the extension of such a notion is that, all else equal, highly educated people are better at everything.

I thought that was true in August 1994. I had several college degrees. I knew a lot. I figured I must know more about communication than the “idiots� in Hollywood. Boy, was I wrong. As I hope to make you see.

FOUR

Don’t Be So Unlikeable One night in Hollywood, a few years after film school, I hopped in the car with two former classmates, Jason Ensler and Jay Lowi, and Jay’s girlfriend, Courtney Ashley. It was Friday night, we were headed to a party in the Hollywood hills, and all of us were feeling optimistic at the end of a good week. Jason was being considered as director of a television show, Jay was up to direct a movie, and I had a feature script that several companies were thinking about optioning. With a big smile, I said from the front passenger’s seat, “You know, by Monday afternoon we could all be major players in Hollywood!” Before anyone could agree, Courtney spoke up from the back seat. “Now, listen,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t mean to be . . . how shall I say this . . . ‘the Randy’ of this group, but . . . I think the odds of that happening are awfully slim.” The car was silent for a moment as we processed this. Then everyone burst out laughing, and continued laughing for the rest of the night, as a new expression was born that we still use to this day. Whenever someone is deluding himself with excessive optimism and losing touch with the cold, scientific facts of the real world, somebody invariably chimes in, “Now, listen, I don’t mean to be ‘the Randy’ of this group, but . . .”

Like a Completely Dreamless Sleep It’s time to add up everything we’ve been through so far and consider how it affects the most important variable—whether the people in the audience 119

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like what they’re hearing. You can avoid the pitfalls of the first three chapters (be not so cerebral, be not so literal minded, and tell a good story), but if there’s something about you that people don’t like, you’re still not going to communicate very effectively. So let’s begin by examining the unique aspects of the scientist’s persona.

A fun piece of knowledge for marine biologists is that the great American novelist John Steinbeck spent much of his life probing the interface between science and society. Though he was a man of letters, his very best friend in life was a scientist—Ed “Doc” Ricketts, a marine biologist. Ricketts not only fascinated Steinbeck but is also believed to have been the inspiration for, and at times the source of, much of the author’s deepest and most contemplative writings. Some biographers of Steinbeck have even hinted that, at one point, when he was most fed up with the viciousness of literary critics and the superficiality of the world of fame that engulfed him, Steinbeck toyed with the notion of chucking it all and going off to study sea creatures full-time with his marine biologist buddy. When Ed Ricketts died in 1948 in a car-train collision, Steinbeck was jolted and said, “He was part of my brain for eighteen years.”

In 1940, at the height of their friendship, but in what some believe was Steinbeck’s winter of his own discontent, he took a sea journey with Ricketts.

Steinbeck’s second marriage was unraveling, Ricketts was trying to escape a failing relationship of his own, the planet was on the brink of world war, and the two men sought a spiritual escape through the ocean. The book Steinbeck wrote upon his return (much of it cribbed from Ricketts’ journal), The Log from the Sea of Cortez, is considered by many to contain some of Steinbeck’s most complex and sophisticated writing.

In one of my favorite passages, so relevant to the persona of a scientist, Steinbeck recounts the story of Jimmy Costello, a Monterey news reporter who was called to the beach one day on the news that a “sea serpent” had washed ashore. A wave of excitement had swept the town. Jimmy managed to find the creature and the assembled mob on the beach.

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He rushed, approached the evil-smelling monster from which the flesh was dropping. There was a note pinned to its head which said, “Don’t worry about it, it’s a basking shark. [Signed] Dr. Ralph Bolin of the Hopkins Marine Station.” No doubt that Dr. Bolin acted kindly, for he loves true things; but the kindness was a blow to the people of Monterey. They so wanted it to be a sea serpent. Even we hoped it would be. When sometime a true seaserpent, complete and undecayed is found or caught, a shout of triumph will go through the world. “There, you see,” men will say, “I knew they were there all the time. I just had a feeling they were there.” Men really need sea monsters in their personal seas and the Old Man of the Sea is one of these.

Steinbeck goes on to describe the mythical Old Man of the Sea and then comes back around: For the ocean, deep and black in the depths, is like the low dark levels of our minds in which the dream symbols incubate and sometimes rise up to sight like the Old Man of the Sea. And even if the symbol vision be horrible, it is there, and it is ours. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep.

Let’s take a moment to savor the beauty of what Steinbeck meant. It is the downside of scientific thinking—the evisceration of all that is mystical, alluring, mesmerizing, and elusive about life. It is the snapping on of the light in the dark room where the imagination is running wild, only to shed the light of science and reveal that no, there really isn’t anything too crazy going on here. It’s just a basking shark. No need to indulge your fantasies.

Had my friend Courtney been there, she would have told Ralph Bolin to word his message as “Now look, I don’t mean to be the Randy of this group, but there are no sea serpents and this thing is just a basking shark that we’ve all seen a thousand times before.”

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And the whole crowd of townspeople would have taken this in, looked at one another for a moment, and shouted back at Bolin, “Oh, don’t be such a scientist!“ Then they would have gone back to calling it a sea serpent.

This, once again, is representative of the standard psyche and public presentation of the scientist. It is a negating role: the designated driver, remaining sober amid the fantasy-blinded townspeople. Truth teller is a valiant role, and I am in no way saying scientists shouldn’t play it. When the spread of sexually transmitted diseases can be prevented by the use of condoms, we certainly don’t want scientists to hesitate in advocating them simply to avoid spoiling the romance of sex.

But in the end . . . it’s just not a very likeable trait. Nobody likes a party pooper. So the question is whether there are ways to play the scientist role without being the negating, annoying, no-fun voice. Essentially, is it possible to be the scientist and still be liked? That is the focus of this most important chapter.

Rising Above Before I get to the more positive side of things and address the subject of being likeable, let me begin with the inverse—how to be unlikeable, and what the consequences are.

It’s time to go back to that acting class that so thoroughly spun my head around. Yet another basic principle was ground into us night after night: all else being equal, audiences do not like characters who “rise above.” To rise above is to condescend, talk down to, be arrogant, act superior. All of those things. They are unlikeable traits. The audience no likey.

To see this up close and personal, we did exercises in which we acted out two different approaches to the same problem. The first involved rising above; the second didn’t.

So again, we’re back in acting class, this time with two students playing a husband and wife at home. The husband has just discovered that his wife stole $100 from him.

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In version one, he is furious, can hardly contain his anger, treats her in a degrading manner, and calls her all sorts of terrible things. He says, “You stupid, lying, thieving tramp. You’re a scumbag. Give me back my money or I’ll slap you!”

It doesn’t take long for the audience to start feeling sorry for the woman, figuring there must have been some reason for her to take the money and that he should try to be more understanding. Before you know it, it’s the criminal (the wife) who has the sympathy of the audience.

In version two, the husband avoids rising above at all costs and tries to come down to the wife’s level or lower. He speaks softly to her in a pleading, compassionate, understanding voice. “How could you do this? We’ve worked so hard to build a trusting relationship. I just don’t understand. You must have a good reason for it, since I know you would never do this without one.

Still, this hurts me very deeply.”

In this version the audience feels for him, turns to her, and practically wants to speak for him, saying, “Yeah, you rat, how could you do this?” And she is left with a great temptation to say, “Ah, quit your sniveling,” which is, alas, rising above, and the end of her with the audience.

It took me a while to really take this in and digest it. But when I did, I realized the value of this dynamic in the real world. I can tell you that, since watching those exercises, I have put it to use several times in actual conflicts.

The fact is, when something has gone wrong, and especially when people know they are guilty of something, they are defensive and ready to escalate immediately. All you have to say is “You lying thief ” and the other person will shoot up higher with “Well, who are you to talk—remember last year when I caught you . . .” and the whole conflict spins out of control.

But this is where you do have a certain amount of control over your own destiny. If you manage to restrain yourself, you can take the confrontation in a completely different direction. And I have done it—actually surprising people who expected me to erupt in anger.

Just last week, a friend caught a student cheating on an exam and asked

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for my advice. I said, “Instead of rising above and scolding this student, see what happens if you come down to his level—make it clear you were hurt that he did it and ask why he did.” Sure enough, the student ended up pouring his heart out, crying, and agreeing to withdraw from the class on his own. The professor had been braced for all-out warfare and was shocked by the different outcome.

In fact, my entire movie Flock of Dodos is one big exercise in not rising above. I interviewed people whose ideas and viewpoints I consider largely foolish and illogical yet restrained myself from belittling them. Many viewers have asked, “How did you keep from shouting at them?” and critics complimented the film for avoiding the attacks one would expect from an evolutionist.

The acting classes paid off.

Rising above is a guaranteed path to conflict, which is sometimes okay, but it’s important to know that it is not the only way to approach an issue— and, more important, people don’t like it.

Just look at your typical villain. What’s the most common trait, for everyone from Hitler to Dr. Evil? It’s the arrogance of believing they are smarter and better than the rest of the world. It’s a repulsive trait—a guaranteed pathway to not being liked. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. And, in fact, it’s characteristic of some smart people.

British filmmaker Adam Curtis created an excellent documentary on the history of public relations titled The Century of the Self, which focuses in its first half on Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays. The man was a genius at mass communication, applying many of Freud’s ideas to marketing and founding the profession of public relations in the 1920s. But, according to his daughter, he could also be arrogant, condescending, and hateful. She recalled, “It can be a little hard on the people around you. Especially when you make other people feel stupid. The people who worked for him were stupid. And children were stupid. And if people did things in a way that he

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wouldn’t have done them, they were stupid. It was a word he used over and over and over—dope and stupid.”

I’m afraid that is the same kind of language I heard coming out of the highly educated evolutionists in the summer of 2005, and it helped prompt me to make Flock of Dodos. They called the proponents of intelligent design all sorts of names. I thought to myself, “Don’t they realize how they’re coming off? Are they clueless about such simple interpersonal dynamics?”

Angry and Arrogant So let me take a minute here and venture into one of the most powerful, interesting, and sometimes distressing emerging modes of communication for the science world—the blogosphere.

Seed magazine was founded in 2001 with the subtitle Science Is Culture.

In 2005 the publishers got the nifty idea of pulling together the most popular blogs of major scientists. What began with a dozen or so blogs suddenly developed into a large sucking force, drawing in a whirlwind of other bloggers, until by 2007 there were about seventy-five blogs, all organized under the label ScienceBlogs.

In June 2005, as I was starting to look into the conflict surrounding the teaching of evolution versus intelligent design, I began checking out some of the evolution blogs. What I saw kind of stunned me.

I had been part of the science world for over thirty years by then, and I had been reading scientific writings since way back in the early 1970s. I had read firsthand accounts like The Double Helix and “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”; the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, and E. O. Wilson; and dozens of other personal narratives and essays. And in all my readings I had never encountered a scientist using foul language. Not in the books, not in the journals, not even in the magazines.

Now, all of a sudden, here were scientists writing directly from their laboratories, using the foulest, crudest, and most hate-filled language

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imaginable about the intelligent design movement. I honestly couldn’t believe it. I was baffled, and not in a good way. The voice that came through in all of these blog posts, and even more intensely in the comments of fellow evolutionists, was not just offensive; it was also incredibly condescending and arrogant.

The more I read, the more my mind drifted back to the acting class. To watching, night after night, how an audience responds to the simple act of rising above. And I began to wonder, first, whether these evolutionists had any idea of how poorly they were coming off to the general public, and second, whether they cared.

After following these blogs for a couple of years, I have to conclude that these writers really don’t understand how they’re perceived and largely don’t care. But their venom was a starting point for Flock of Dodos—I wanted to capture just a little bit of this arrogance, condescension, and closed-mindedness and then see how the general public would react to it.

I succeeded, in the form of a poker game I filmed for the movie. I assembled seven of my old evolutionist buddies for an evening of gentlemanly poker, which eventually deteriorated into a bitch session about intelligent design. Finally two of the bitchers turned on each other, creating a spat that can only be described as off-putting.

I honestly hadn’t intended to end up with such a negative portrayal of academic scientists, but the group did what they did without much prompting. It was just a typical night among a group of academics. In the end, it was the strongest element in the movie and what the critics cited most in their reviews.

The power of this negative portrait emerged in our very first screening.

Three hundred and fifty people had gathered for a sold-out show in the suburbs of Kansas City. At the time, the community was in the thick of a battle over the state school board, which had been taken over by members who opposed the teaching of evolution.

Among the audience members that night were a dozen or so high school

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seniors, brought by their biology teacher. There was also a science reporter from the journal Nature, and she spoke with these students after the film.

She said the single biggest impression they walked away with was not that the intelligent design advocates were dishonest, which they clearly are in the movie, but that the evolution professors were arrogant, condescending, and irritating.

And there you have it: yet another instance of the need to not be such a scientist. Yes, we know you’re smart, but if you act like you’re smarter than everyone else, you will quickly lose them at “You probably wouldn’t understand this.”

Want more proof?

Unlikeability on Display: A Debating Faux Pas A while back, a public debate over global warming was held in New York City. Two teams of three experts squared off over whether global warming is a crisis or not. Before the debate, the organizers polled the audience about which side they agreed with; then they repeated the poll when it was over.

During the debate, the two sides argued vigorously, and there really didn’t seem to be an obvious winner in terms of content presented.

However, when it came to style, there was one defining moment, according to the three audience members I spoke with—a moment that swung the tide for anyone who was undecided on the issue.

It was in the middle of the two sides arguing a point. The moderator zeroed in on one of the members of the “global warming is a crisis” team, asking him why he felt his opponents were misrepresenting the issues in their presentation. The scientist replied, “I don’t think they are completely doing this on a level playing field that the people here will understand.” The audience didn’t like this.

It wasn’t a malicious thing to say. There were no bad intentions, and I hate even citing this incident, since the scientist is a really good guy. I could just as easily have said the same thing without thinking. But, in a venue like

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that, perception is reality. And the comment was perceived to be condescending. It was a very educated Manhattan audience, and they didn’t take kindly to it. On the recording of the event you can actually hear people objecting in response.

When the debate ended, the second poll revealed a shift of about sixteen percentage points against the “global warming is a crisis” team. And while it’s true that the organizers had to some extent “stacked” the audience toward one perspective, there is no denying how this incident played. According to all three of my sources, you could feel the mood shift right at that moment.

They felt that the vote had little to do with the substance of what was presented that night. It mostly came down to style and an unfortunate moment of talking down to the audience.

Style becomes so much more powerful than substance in large public venues with broad audiences. And this brings us to a fundamentally difficult dynamic.

Science Is, Unfortunately, a Negating Profession I touched on this a bit earlier, in chapter 3. Now I’ll go into it in depth.

The entire profession of science has at its core a single word, and that word is “no.” Science is a process not of affirming ideas but of attempting to falsify ideas in the search for truth. This is what a hypothesis is—an idea that can be tested and possibly falsified and rejected.

When you give a scientist a paper, he or she reads it with the assumption that the writer is guilty of being wrong until proven innocent. The writer proves his or her innocence by either presenting data or citing sources. With each statement made in the paper, the scientist reading it says, “I’m not sure I believe this.” As the author presents graphs and tables of data and cites sources, the good critical scientist attempts to falsify what is being said.

Eventually, after the scientist has examined the data, looked up the cited sources, and found that in fact, despite considerable effort, the hypothesis

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presented cannot be falsified—only then does the scientist finally start to relax a bit and say, “Well, okay, I think I can probably live with this.”

Tough business. It really is. As I waded through my first decade of rejection in Hollywood as a filmmaker, people would ask me whether I found the rejection hurtful or depressing. And I would respond, “Are you shitting me?

Do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with the rejection of scientists?

Hollywood folks reject things on the basis of the idea that ‘it just didn’t grab me,’ and they can’t even articulate the reason for their decision. When scientists reject you, they hit you with a stack of data and sources that are the basis for it. That’s the sort of specific, substantive rejection that truly hurts.”

A Critical Thing Called “Critical Thinking” This negating approach gives rise to something known as critical thinking, which I believe can, to a large extent, be learned. I say this because of a wonderfully stupid experience I had as an undergraduate.

I grew up as a God-loving (sort of), Kansas-raised, young Republican imitation farm boy (I was raised in the suburbs of Kansas City but knew some farm boys) who transferred from the University of Kansas to the University of Washington in Seattle halfway through my undergraduate career.

There I fell in with a bunch of sandal-wearing, establishment-questioning, nonconforming (though looking very much alike) hippie graduate students in biology.

One night, at a dinner party blanketed by incense, candles, and patchouli stench, I got into an argument about politics that quickly turned into me, the frat boy from Kansas, versus them, the unwashed masses. Somebody finally interrupted me to say, “How do you know that’s true?” And I very smugly and confidently shot back, “I know it’s true because I read it in Reader’s Digest.”

Well . . . you can imagine what happened. There wasn’t the slightest trace of a smile or humor on my face—I was not joking—but the entire dinner

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party erupted into a screaming, howling pack of jackals, rolling on the floor, peeing in their pants, slapping each other on the back, as I sat there angrily shouting, “What? What? What’s so funny?”

Bastards.

It proved to be a moment of awakening. A voice in the back of my head asked at that moment, “Is it possible that not everything written in Reader’s Digest is correct?” I’d honestly never considered that.

Don’t worry; I went to graduate school at Harvard and got cured. And the world of science was the biggest part of my “awakening.” Which convinces me you can actually learn to be a more critical thinker (’cause I sure was a dumb Kansas bumpkin back then).

So in the beginning, when I was a junior at the University of Washington, I would read a paper for a discussion group, think, “Wow, what a great and exciting study,” and then attend the formal discussion with the graduate students, every one of whom, as they filed into the room, would say, “This week’s paper is a piece of crap!” And my smile and enthusiasm would immediately wither into nods of agreement, saying, “Yeah, it really sucked,” even though I had no clue why.

That was when I first began to learn the idea of reading a scientific paper with “no” being the starting point.

Fifteen years later, as a professor at the University of New Hampshire, I would bring a half dozen graduate students into my office to discuss recent research papers and realize the tables had turned. The students would come in saying, “That was an interesting paper we read this week,” and I would scowl at them with a look of “What do you mean?” Then I would tear into the paper, pulling it apart at the seams, showing them how poorly designed the hypotheses, experiments, and analyses were, and accusing the writer of presenting a discussion that was totally bogus. And on some days they would cower and glare at me as if to say, “Dude, don’t be such a scientist.”

It’s a problem. It’s at the core of the entire world of science. And it can, and frequently does, run amok. You meet scientists who have lost control of

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this negating approach to the world and seem to sit and stew in their overly critical, festering juices of negativity, which can reduce down into a thick, gooey paste of cynicism.

You should have seen some of the department meetings I sat through in the zoology department at UNH. Good ideas would be presented and then ground to shreds by the fifteen or so professors present who proudly “poked holes in it.” Finally, whoever had presented the good idea would leave with the feeling that it wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Crucified by a Scientist I got my own dose in graduate school of how badly scientists can lose control of their critical approach. A professor on my thesis committee was notorious for his destructive behavior with students. And he did it with me. He turned what was to have been a routine one-hour oral exam—where professors ask you a few softball questions just to let you show off how much you know, and then pass you—into a five-hour ordeal of humiliation and frustration. The worst experience of my academic career.

The same professor demolished the careers of numerous graduate students. One close friend quit her doctoral program after five years of work because he did the same thing—only worse—to her in a committee meeting.

As she was showing slides and presenting her research to her committee of five professors, he flipped on the lights and said, “I want you to stop right there and tell us what distinguishes you, in the way you’re doing this research, from a common hired laboratory technician.”

What do you say to that?

She quit. He went on. He mellowed over the years and eventually became less destructive. But there are countless stories like that; I’ve listened to so many over the years. In the last discussion I had with Stephen Jay Gould, he commented on what a shame it is that it takes so much positive energy to build up a student’s inspiration and drive, yet only a single negative experience to obliterate it all. It’s not an even balance, as I’ll discuss in a

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minute. But first, a few words about this spectrum that exists in scientific thinking.

Science, like art and most other professions, requires a mixture of two elements—creativity and discipline. Science without creativity is dull, but science without discipline is dangerous. And here we are again, back to these two key elements—the objective and subjective parts. Discipline is the rigid, regimented, more robotic objective component that has to be brought to bear for science to work properly. Wild ideas are fine, but without discipline they become a waste of time and energy. Creativity is the more human, liberated, unrestrained element that must be let loose for it to work. Science without at least a little bit of creativity is just plodding detail that does not expand our understanding of the world.

But at the ends of the spectrum—at the far ends—lies darkness.

Creativity, unleashed with no restraints and allowed to shoot too far out on that end of the spectrum, eventually results in sloppiness. This is the classic mad scientist stereotype. You see it in the real world of science. You can usually spot it in the scientist’s office—you walk in and there’s junk piled everywhere, hundreds of cartoons and meeting badges and photos plastered all over the walls with no organization whatsoever. And you ask for a copy of a paper by the scientist and he spends the next fifteen minutes exploring stacks of papers while talking to himself and discovering manuscripts that have been lost for weeks. Just like Doc Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in Back to the Future.

That’s the funny part of sloppiness. But the more tragic part is when those scientists give talks at scientific meetings or write papers and their data are as big a mess as their office. Then it’s not so funny. It becomes sad, depressing, and dysfunctional. Particularly when you watch the better scientists rip into them in public during the question session at the end of their talk.

At the other end of the spectrum lies an even more destructive excess.

Discipline shows itself in critical thinking and the ability to organize the sci-

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Table 4-1. Creativity and Discipline Spectrum I-----------------------------I----------------------------------I------------------------------I Sloppiness Creativity Discipline Cynicism

entific process effectively. It is essential, but just on the other side of discipline lies this abyss, this quagmire, this Hades known as cynicism.

In its lighter forms it’s funny and even somewhat healthy. But in its most concentrated state it becomes a toxic miasma where not even the existence of a soul can be seen. It’s a dragon, content only when it has managed to breathe its fire of negativity across the rest of the sparkling universe. And that force of negativity is the handicap that dogs the world of science when it comes to mass communication.

The Core Problem: No Doesn’t Equal Yes So what’s so bad about negating? Being known as a tough critical thinker sounds like a good thing. And when you watch a group of top scientists get together and critically analyze a proposed idea, doing what they are best trained to do, it can be an impressive spectacle—like a group of competing alpha males pounding their chests and proclaiming dominance as they grind up what previously sounded interesting.

But it’s a different story when you take that behavior out from behind closed doors. What is admired within the cloisters of academia can be horrifying when unleashed on the general public. And that’s because the masses thrive not on negativity and negation but on positivity and affirmation.

Don’t believe it? Just watch The Oprah Winfrey Show. What do you see, day after day? Stories of hope and joy, uplifting, inspirational, fulfilling . . . the kind of stuff that makes scientists want to vomit. But there you have it.

Like night and day. Scientists versus the rest of the world.

Just look at the most popular movies. They’re mostly inspiring stories of hope. Not a lot of blockbusters that end with the hero plowing his truck into a school bus full of kids.

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Now you’re thinking, “But science is fun! I’ve even seen that slogan on buttons from the National Science Foundation. Kids love science. It can be uplifting, too.”

Well, yes, in the right hands and presented the right way. But let it not be forgotten that deep in the belly of the beast that is science resides a ferociously destructive force. And what is scary is that the force is both powerful and unifying. Let me tell you about it.

The True Believer I’m no long-term fan of conservative writer P. J. O’Rourke, but he did nail one of the most insightful essays on the American environmental movement with a piece he wrote for Rolling Stone for Earth Day 1990. He gave it the brilliant title “The Greenhouse Affect,” and he drove his cynical SUV-like voice right into the heart of the environmental movement, pulled out a bullhorn, and captured the core of the worst side of environmentalism.

What he talked about is the incredible unifying force created by negativity and hatred. Citing Eric Hoffer in The True Believer, he said, “Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” He then recounts the famous anecdote of a Japanese diplomat sent to Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. When asked what he thought of Germany’s social agenda, he replied, “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.”

The world of science does have a devil, and that is inaccuracy. Things that are factually wrong are so motivating that I have seen scientists at meetings whom I know dislike each other team up to attack a speaker whose ideas they both believe are wrong. It’s the basic “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” dynamic inexorably come to life. That’s how powerful this force of negation can be. But again, when you bring it out into mainstream society, the dynamics just aren’t the same. Scientists have to learn to hide their inner

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Frankenstein when in public. Which they normally do. But, thanks to modern technology, glimpses of this cynicism are now no farther away than the screen of your laptop.

The Joy and Bane of the Blogosphere As I mentioned earlier, an increasing number of scientists have created their own blogs and are now building a public audience for their raw, unedited, uncensored thoughts of the day. And that’s great. Blogs are immensely compelling. They capture that unscripted spontaneity, that this-could-goanywhere energy, that’s so important in engaging an audience. Science blogs can attract people who wouldn’t naturally sit down and read The Origin of Species but who are intrigued by the frank debates about evolution.

Unfortunately, these debates can get more than spirited—they can get really mean-spirited. Much has been written about the overall tone of bloggers in general—not just scientists. Stand-up comic Patton Oswalt described the problem in rather crude terms on the Comedy Central show Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil: Bloggers have taken one of the most essential human activities—communicating—and degraded it to nothing more than electronic poo flinging. No, no, I’m sorry, that was an insult to the fine poo-flinging community, because at least poo flingers take into account wind velocity, aim, and poo density.

If you take an acting class, you’ll get a little insight into the dynamics of negativity. In learning to act (which is essentially a form of communication), anger is the starter/entry/first-step emotion that most actors are drawn to.

Our instructor explained to us from the outset that the real goal of acting is to “lose yourself ” in the performance—to become so totally absorbed in the character that you basically are that character while you’re onstage. The part of your brain that keeps saying “I’m acting, I’m up here acting, this is still just an exercise in pretending” finally gets shut down.

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We didn’t see it happening at all in the beginning. People would do exercises and you could tell they were just play-acting. But a few weeks into the program, people began to have breakthroughs where suddenly something very different and magical would happen. They would dive so deeply into a performance that, when the instructor finally shouted “Scene!” and walked onstage, the actor would look dazed for a few seconds as he or she let go of the fantasy world and returned to reality. The instructor always picked up on those moments and excitedly shouted to the class, “You see, you see—look at this actor! She doesn’t even know who she is right now— she fell so deeply into this character she has to shake herself to come back down to earth.”

But here’s the interesting part. The easiest and most accessible means of finding your way into that world of real acting was through “negative spirits”—basically anger, rage, hatred, bile, screaming, shouting—you name it.

And, to be honest, the simplest piece of dialogue for breaking through was two words, “Fuck you!“ Night after night we would have to sit and listen to our classmates screaming this over and over again.

We did all those exercises for a year, and then we were ready for the more advanced stuff, including “good spirits”—the exact opposite. That’s where we were able to see how harsh the contrast was.

It turns out it’s a whole lot harder to convince people you’re happy than it is to convince them you’re mad. The standard exercise was to receive the news that you’d just won a million bucks in the lottery. You’d be amazed to see how difficult it is to make that moment believable. It’s just so much more complex, elusive—hard to even put your finger on it. I only know we sat there night after night watching classmates get the good news and dance around in circles, jump up and kiss their partner, and say, “Yay! Yay! Yay!”— and none of it was the least bit believable.

So here’s my take on the blogosphere: the joy and bane of blogs is that the vast majority of their authors are not veteran writers. They are mostly newcomers with little experience in communicating to an audience. And yet

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they seek to create a compelling and believable voice—one that many people will want to listen to. They face the same challenge as the starting actor.

It’s not surprising, then, that they would be drawn to the same entry point in reaching their audience—the immediacy of anger. The new blogger, I would bet, almost always makes his or her first breakthrough—meaning a post that is widely circulated and talked about—not by extolling the joys of daily life but by cranking up the rage and anger, producing the sort of typical “rant” that draws readers in and gives them the feeling that they are listening to a voice that is speaking the truth (and notice that a rant is also a good source of tension or conflict, making it into a good story for people to relate to).

Bottom line—the blogosphere is filled with introductory students, just like in the acting class—all seeking a voice and trying to write something compelling. Anger is their entry portal.

When I realized this, I began to have much greater respect for the bloggers who have moved beyond the elementary emotions of negativity to the higher plane of good spirits (yet avoiding cloying, syrupy “Kumbaya” blather). They are a rare but highly cherished group. When you combine positivity with the spontaneity of blogs, you get a pretty powerful method of communication.

Positivity and Natural Selection One very simple notion that Stephen Jay Gould drilled into our heads, in the years I spent hanging on his every word, was that of the basic elements of natural selection. He would say it’s a relatively simple two-step process. The first step is the creative, nondirectional phase when offspring are created; the second step is the deterministic, much more directed phase in which the environment selects for those with the highest fitness.

This simple conception for natural selection parallels all the two-step/ birfurcating/duality phenomena I’ve described. And it’s especially similar to the creative process and the scientific method in general.

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When you have a problem to solve, you undergo the same process. First you brainstorm in a totally uncritical, nondirectional way in order to think of all the possible ways you can solve the problem. The more uninhibited you can be, the better the chance of coming up with something brilliant.

Then you enter the second stage, in which you select the ideas that are reasonable. It’s basically positivity followed by negativity. And it works well, provided you keep the two separate.

But the positivity stage—the creative stage—is the most vulnerable part.

And that is where negativity can wreak havoc. All you need is one person in a brainstorming session who starts saying, “Oh, that’s a stupid idea,” to immediately constrain the whole creative process. This is when lateral thinking gets inhibited. This is what produces the “typological thinking” that bedevils so many taxonomists—the idea that all species within a group have already been described, and therefore any variation from the established types is simply abnormal rather than a valid description of a new species.

It’s a sort of closed-mindedness. And that’s what negativity can lead to.

Of course, excess positivity can lead to flakiness, but that’s way over in the other direction.

All the truly creative scientists I’ve ever known have had a wonderful aura of positivity around them. They are creative, they are able to discover large ideas, it’s a very positive process, and in the end, if you really think it through, you’ll realize . . . it’s not that different from improv comedy. Just a whole lot of “Yes, and”-ing at work.

The Interview Dilemma: Yes versus No We now have these two giant forces—the positivity of spontaneity versus the negativity of critical thinking—that seem to be in opposition to each other yet are both crucial to communication. This may leave scientists in a quandary over how to present themselves to the public, particularly when being interviewed.

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Should they be the designated driver and make sure not to commit mistakes? Or should they be the fun, lively, go-with-the-flow “Yes, and” good sport who is the life of the party? The former runs the risk of coming off as an unlikeable grouch. The latter can be an absolute disaster, allowing the interviewer to tell the world that global warming will cure cancer and make everyone’s lives wonderful.

The solution is, once again, partitioning. Just as natural selection has two phases, just as creativity has two phases, just as science has two phases, so can the interview subject. The bobbing and weaving between modes can create texture and complexity in the interview, instead of it being onedimensional. A question is asked, the answer begins with a spark of spontaneity—a set of possible answers—and then discipline is imposed.

Q: What do you think caused the dinosaurs to go extinct?

A: Lots of ideas—could have been an asteroid, could have been climate change, could have been too much television, maybe they just got bored, I don’t know, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest that one hypothesis is the most logical, which is . . .

There are ways to modulate the answers.

So Are You Telling Us to Get a Hollywood Makeover?

If being unlikeable is a bad thing, then the obvious question is “How can we be more likeable?” I, of course, spent time in acting classes listening to the instructors talk about what makes characters more likeable, and everyone from the beginning of grade school thinks about what makes someone more popular than others. So should scientists just get a makeover and tell everyone what they want to hear?

This question comes up at many of the Flock of Dodos screenings, and I see it discussed on blog discussions of the movie. A number of scientists have implied that I’m suggesting that all scientists spend time in Hollywood, take acting classes, and buy new clothes. That’s not what I’m saying at all, but

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it’s entertaining to listen to these conservative voices in the science world.

They vocalize the ever-present forces opposing change. And it’s fun to see them be wrong. Just take, for example, the way scientific presentations have changed over the years.

The Blue Slide Pioneers I attended my first scientific talk in 1976. Back then, all scientists made their own 35 mm slides for their presentations by drawing graphs on white paper, placing them on a photo stand with lights and a camera mount, and photographing them on standard 35 mm film. The result was projectable slides that looked just like the artwork—black lines and text on a clean white background. But then someone discovered a new way to do it.

It was called diazo processing, and it produced white lines and text on a soothing blue background. Scientists began showing up at meetings and giving talks using these slides, which looked so different. And I distinctly, distinctly, distinctly remember hearing the first responses to them.

Specifically, Jim Porter, a coral reef ecologist from the University of Georgia who was a very flamboyant and lively speaker, was one of the first to use them in my field of marine ecology. I remember standing in the lobby during the East Coast Benthic Ecology Meetings at the University of Maryland in the spring of 1978 and listening to a group of scientists quietly cursing the man—calling him a showman and a huckster and asking, “Who does he think he is?”

It might as well have been a group of church elders fretting over a youngster who was combing his hair the wrong way. Same mass conservative behavior. Everyone subconsciously or consciously attempting to make sure nothing ever changes, regardless of whether it’s an improvement on the past or not.

What’s funniest for me is that—I guarantee you—all of those scientists assembled that day, and at many other meetings where I heard the scoffs of

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skepticism, are today using the standard PowerPoint slides, which have that same soothing blue background with white letters.

Things do change, but scientists are for the most part programmed, all else equal, to resist changes. And it’s particularly difficult for them when it comes to the changing dynamic in communication between substance and style.

Today, Style Is the Substance It’s now time to delve into the core conundrum faced by the world of science. There are many books in the field of communication theory that address this, and I don’t have the space or interest to discuss them all here, so I have only one book to point you toward. But it’s a good one.

Richard Lanham, in his 2006 book The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, provides a basic catchphrase—that today “the substance is style.” Those are words to live by. What he means is that for every given message there are the same two parts we have discussed—the objective and the subjective, the substance and the style—only he refers to looking at the message rather than looking through the message. He is pointing to the difference between getting caught up in the style of what is communicated (the “at”) and being able to get past style and into the substance (the “through”).

Scientists do a good job of looking through the message, into the heart of the substance that’s being communicated. But most people never get past the “at” part.

The amazing thing about scientists is that, if you went to a scientific meeting and a speaker got up dressed like a clown, the scientists in the audience, along with everyone else, would initially focus on looking “at” the appearance of the clown. But if the clown began talking about important discoveries and suddenly reexamined a hypothesis in a new and important way, the scientists would be able to get beyond looking “at” the clown and would

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actually look “through” the clown’s appearance to hear the substance of what was being said. And if it were true and correct, the scientists would have no problem having a serious discussion with the clown afterward. Seriously. I swear this is true. All you have to do is go to a scientific meeting and see some of the weird people (and I say this lovingly). They might as well be dressed as clowns.

There is one very famous scientist who for decades has dressed like a homeless person, maintained an unkempt beard, and picked his nose unashamedly during his talks to hundreds of scientists. Over the years his audiences have just gotten used to it. The man is brilliant. There’s no more reason to focus on his nose picking than to get hung up on Stephen Hawking’s computer-generated voice. Scientists know how to do this. It’s sort of the upside of being literal minded—the ability to focus only on what matters.

In contrast, going back to the clown, members of the general public would never get past looking “at” his appearance. Later they would talk about what a fool he was. End of story. Didn’t matter what was said. Never got past the big red nose and floppy shoes.

That’s the difference between substance and style. In today’s world people’s minds are cluttered with excessive information. As Lanham describes it, we live in an “attention economy,” in which the resource in shortest supply is people’s attention. Given such a circumstance, your message means nothing if it isn’t noticed. And that just takes us back to my earlier discussion about “arouse and fulfill.” It’s the same thing—the need to arouse is the same as the need to gain attention. Without it, you’re spinning your wheels.

This is where unlikeability can sometimes come into play. It’s entirely possible to use it as a tool to gain a certain (albeit limited) amount of attention. You can stand up and insult a room of people, and if you’re quick to turn it into a joke, you can actually do a good job of arousing them to what you have to say. But there’s a big difference between using a tiny bit of unlikeability intentionally as a tool and just plain being unlikeable.

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All else equal, unlikeable traits are simply things to identify and then avoid.

And now I shall launch into the most important element of what I have to say, which provides the synthesis of the previous sections.

That element is . . .

Likeability The tide goes out; the tide comes back in. The tide has been going out for a long time in this book. It’s time now for it to ebb and reverse direction.

I’ve told you about all the ways scientists, and academics in general, can go wrong in trying to connect with the broader audience. And there are surely plenty more ways I haven’t even begun to touch upon. But there comes a time to end the critique and answer the question, “So what do you suggest we do?”

Let’s start with the idea of being likeable. And I don’t mean telling people what they want to hear (though sometimes that can be a good idea) or being a sycophant. Those pathways are too direct.

Likeable Electoral Candidates So who are you going to vote for in the next round of political elections? Will you read the speeches of the various candidates, figure out exactly where they stand on the issues you believe are most important, and assess their leadership skills? Or will you just vote for the one you like best? Maybe vote for the man or woman you saw in television ads who sounded like a pretty decent and level-headed politician. The one you . . . liked.

This is one of the themes presented in Freakonomics, the hugely popular book by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. They talk about the widely held belief that, because of the huge amounts of money spent on political campaigns these days, some people believe it’s as simple as whoever raises the most money wins. But Levitt and Dubner put this assumption to the test.

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They looked at a large number of cases where two candidates have run against each other twice. Just as with William Jennings Bryan, who lost the U.S. presidential election to William McKinley in 1896 and then ran against him in 1900 and lost again, there are many cases where the loser again runs against the same incumbent.

They examined only the instances in which the loser spent more money the second time around, and they found that it made no difference. Money wasn’t the factor. Likeability was. When the public doesn’t like someone, no amount of money is going to get that candidate elected.

Bubba and Teflon And, of course, what is the ultimate example of the importance of likeability? For the past three decades, it was Presidents Ronald Reagan (the Great Communicator and the Teflon President) and Bill Clinton (Bubba). Both of them set the standard for likeability in America, and both had an ability to evade the facts of a situation simply by using their charm and charisma.

We’d like to think the general public is so interested, so analytical, and so savvy that they can devour all the long-winded speeches and arguments they are presented on given issues. But they’re not. And by “they” I mean myself included. We’re all too swamped these days to be able to read and analyze everything.

When the information reaches excessive levels, as Richard Lanham reviews in detail in The Economics of Attention, there comes a shift from substance to style—the only way to deal with the “information firehose,” as he calls it.

Likeable Lawyers Of course, this phenomenon isn’t limited to politics but can be seen in every area of life, including the courtroom.

My elder brother is a lawyer in Montana, in charge of training the state’s public defenders. I sent him an article from the January 2006 issue of Esquire

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magazine that he still uses in his workshops. It’s titled “The Drowsy Dozen,”

by Chuck Klosterman, who argues that the time has come to get rid of the silly, idealistic, antiquated notion of “a jury of peers” and replace it with a system of professional jurors.

He says this because he’s sat on too many juries in which two weeks of detailed testimony is presented on forensic science, fiber analysis, DNA testing, and all sorts of other sophisticated science that sails right over the heads of the jurors. At the end of the two weeks the jurors sit in the jury room, totally lost to the science, and end up making their decision on the basis of which of the two lawyers they found most convincing, trustworthy, authoritative, and, basically . . . likeable. Bottom line, they opt for style over substance.

Snap Judgments Lacking the time and energy to evaluate the information being presented, people end up evaluating the presenter. They are no longer able to transcend style to get to substance. As Lanham says, style becomes the substance.

By the way, the decision of whether you like or trust someone happens very, very quickly. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell cites Nalini Ambady’s work on “thin slicing,” which focuses on the accuracy of judgments people make based on only short clips of video. She and her colleague James Rosenthal gathered ten-second clips of professors teaching and had students watch and evaluate the professors on a series of standard variables—is the professor warm? enthusiastic? interested? well organized?—as if they were filling out student evaluations for an entire semester. When they compared the results with evaluations made by students who actually did have the instructor for the semester, the correlation was 0.76, meaning that a judgment made in a few seconds was about the same as one made over several months.

Scientists would like to think that people base their opinions about others on a thorough job of getting to know the “reality” of who they are. The harsh truth is that opinions are mostly based on the quick “perception” of

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who they seem to be. And this means that simple, superficial elements— such as picking your nose or wearing clownlike clothes—can be extremely important.

Yes, that is today’s world. I’m sorry to be the bearer of such news, but likeability is a very important factor. And let me tell you about my own experience with likeability in the television world.

The Power of Jack Black I mentioned earlier that I wrote and directed a television commercial (or public service announcement, PSA) with twenty comic actors, including Jack Black. He played the lead role as the conductor of our bad symphony for the oceans. When I finished editing the PSA, I hired a distributor, who packaged it, sent it off to 1,000 television stations, and then provided us with “tracking statistics” showing where and when it aired across the country.

Figure 4-1. Comic actor Jack Black turned in a splendidly silly performance as conductor of the Ocean Symphony public service announcement in 2003. His likeability factor was as big as his eyes. Photo by E. Schmotkin.

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The PSA proved enormously popular, airing on roughly 350 stations for a total of well over 30,000 showings, generating more than $10 million in free airtime (television stations choose a select number of PSAs and broadcast them for free).

Our distributor randomly chose a dozen stations that had aired the spot and then contacted them and ran them through a simple questionnaire. The main question was “Why, given the huge number of PSAs that you receive and the small number you can air, did you choose this one?”

For nine of the twelve respondents, the answer was not that they chose it because of the importance of its message, or the relevance of its message to their viewers, or the effectiveness of its message. No, those are all criteria that would have involved the substance of what we produced.

To the contrary. Nine of the twelve respondents said, “We aired it because we liked it.”

It was that simple. They popped the tape into their VCR (it was still preDVD days), they watched it, they all laughed, they all agreed they are big fans of Jack Black, overall they liked the spot, and so they aired it.

Now compare that result with the PSA produced by the Less Than One campaign, mentioned in chapter 1. That PSA had a dark, gloomy tracking shot of a bulldozer in a landfill pushing a mountain of garbage. As it faded to black, you heard gurgling of bubbles underwater and the narrator saying, “That’s what we’re doing to our oceans.”

I spoke with a PSA programmer at a television station in Los Angeles. He said they received that PSA, they watched it, they said to themselves, “Our viewers don’t want to see that sort of dark and gloomy message on their TVs,” and they threw it in the trash. Literally.

The likeable PSA scored over $10 million in free airtime. The unlikeable PSA scored virtually no free airtime.

Am I proud that I had to stoop to making a silly bad symphony for the oceans with comic actors in order to get my message on television? Not really. It’s a shame that our society has changed from the 1950s, when the NBC

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show Watch Mr. Wizard played to millions of kids and inspired more than 50,000 Mr. Wizard Science Clubs. But things have changed. We live in a new media environment, with different rules. And those rules make the conveying of substance harder than ever. But not impossible, if you’re willing to learn the basic constraints of the system.

So What Makes Someone Likeable?

If likeability came down to a formula, scientists would figure it out and be the most popular people in the world. Of course, it’s far too subjective for that. But we do know likeability is inextricably tied to elements arising from those lower organs—humor, emotion, passion.

And you can’t overlook the overall role of fun. Edward Castronova makes this point in his recent book Exodus to the Virtual World. In a speech, he said, “Fun is a societal element that governments have yet to fully appreciate.” If you can create an atmosphere of fun, there are no limits on popularity.

In the end, it is these human qualities that can reach beyond “the choir” of those who are interested in science no matter what. They can be incredibly powerful in mass communication. And, even as the new media environment has, in many ways, made communicating substance harder, it has also opened up new opportunities.

In the old days, scientists were forced to keep their heads low, their noses to the grindstone, doing their humble research and quietly awaiting the day when a journalist would knock on the door of their laboratory and ask them to explain their scientific work to the world. But that day is now over. New technology has brought about many changes in communications, and in the world of science this could prove to be one of the most profound developments.

With the advent of such innovations as blogs, video technology, and YouTube, a new day has arrived for scientists. No longer do they have to sit quietly awaiting that visitor from the media world. They can themselves “be the voice of science.” And this is the subject of the final chapter.

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ost scientists don’t care how they are perceived, but in our media-dominated age, style points count. In Don’t Be Such a Scientist, science professor turned

Hollywood filmmaker Randy Olson shares the secrets of talking substance in an age of style.

The key, he argues, is to stay true to the facts while tapping into something more primordial, more irrational, and ultimately more human. You’ll laugh, you may cry, and as a communicator you’ll certainly learn the importance of not only

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andy Olson earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University and became a professor of marine biology before moving to Hollywood for his second career as a filmmaker. Since obtaining an M.F.A. from the University of Southern California School of Cinema, he has written and directed the

critically acclaimed films Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus and Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and cofounded The Shifting Baselines Ocean Media Project, a partnership between scientists and Hollywood to communicate the crisis facing our oceans.

More books of interest: Marketing for Scientists How to Shine in Tough Times Marc J. Kuchner Clear, detailed advice about how to land a good job, win funding, and shape the public debate.

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Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein This book entertains as it educates, delivering a unique and enjoyable presentation of mind-blowing facts and critical concepts.

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Escape from the Ivory Tower A Guide to Making Your Science Matter Nancy Baron This practical and entertaining guide explains how to engage your audience and explain why a particular finding matters.

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Common Ground on Hostile Turf Stories from an Environmental Mediator Lucy Moore Shows how issues of culture, personality, history, and power affect negotiations, and that equitable solutions depend on a healthy group dynamic.

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What’s that Forest Worth?

Disaster Assistance (Finally!)

Takes Nature Into Account Laurie Mazur

Originally published February 9, 2016 on Mongabay

I

f a tree falls in the forest, what does it cost?

From the perspective of federal disaster assistance, the answer traditionally has been “not much.” But now—thanks to improved number-crunching—the federal government is taking nature into account when it tallies the cost of disasters.

And, even more importantly, it is recognizing the value of nature—forests, wetlands, parks—in preventing or mitigating disasters.

Remember the Rim Fire, which incinerated a 400-square mile swath of California near Yosemite in 2013? When the state of California first asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for a “major disaster” declaration, it was turned down. Why? Because most of the damage was inflicted on forests, rather than man-made structures—and there was no way to put a price-tag on that loss.

Just think: a backyard shed gets destroyed by fire, that’s a $2,000 loss.

But when 77,000 acres of Yosemite National Park are reduced to smoking embers? Nada.

Enter Earth Economics, an independent non-profit that helps decision makers assess the financial value of natural systems. The group’s economists looked at the services the forest provided—filtering drinking water for the City of San Francisco, preventing floods, sequestering carbon, providing 136

what’s that forest worth? disaster assistance takes nature into account • 137

recreational opportunities—and calculated the dollar value of what was destroyed by the fire.

Armed with those numbers, Governor Brown appealed FEMA’s decision—and won.

Fast forward to 2016. The once-radical notion of valuing nature’s services is now more widely accepted by the federal government. Recently, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded $1 billion to 13 communities through the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC)—and actually required applicants to calculate the value of nature and other non-traditional benefits in their proposals.

The competition asked applicants to use a holistic benefit-cost analysis developed by Earth Economics with support from The Kresge Foundation, which incorporates natural ecosystems’ value and services, long-term environmental sustainability, and community benefits such as health and employment. Earth Economics provided training, tools, and resources throughout the competition to help applicants calculate those values.

“The Earth Economics team helped us to capture the full range of benefits of the Community and Watershed Resilience Program, including the tremendous ecological benefits that it will provide not just to Tuolumne County, but to the State as a whole,” said Louise Bedsworth, Deputy Director of the California Governor’s Office of Planning and Research.

The winning proposals all make use of natural systems to build resilience to climate change impacts and other disasters. For example: •

A California county that was devastated by the Rim Fire received an NDRC grant to restore the health of its forests and watershed, generate energy and support the rural community.

•

Lower Manhattan, which was inundated by Superstorm Sandy, got funding to construct a coastal protection system that includes much-needed green space.

•

In Hurricane Katrina-pummeled New Orleans, the Gentilly neighborhood won a grant to restore coastal wetlands and build water-absorbing parks and green streets.

138 • section vi: nature and sustainability

Recognizing the value of nature and other overlooked social and economic benefits simply drives better decision making, according to David Batker of Earth Economics, who helped coach a number of the NDRC’s winning applicants.

“Benefit-cost analysis that includes nature helps us make smarter investments at federal, state, and local levels,” said Batker. “We owe it to ourselves and future generations to use this tool to identify the best, most robust and resilient investments.”

Indeed, investing in nature produces a bigger bang for the buck. For example, on a good day, the Lower Manhattan greenway is a park and bike path; on a bad day, it protects the city by absorbing potentially deadly storm surges. That is more than you can say for most single-purpose “gray” infrastructure, such as concrete levees.

Investing in natural infrastructure is a good way to get the most from taxpayers’ money, says Harriet Tregoning, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development.

“We are learning together about how to encourage a broader range of benefits from every federal dollar that gets expended,” Tregoning said during an announcement of the NDRC winners.

Valuing nature may seem like a no-brainer to many; the majestic forests of Yosemite obviously have tremendous value. But, too often, our public policies are structured by rules developed back when natural resources seemed inexhaustible. As the economists say, “you get what you measure.”

When we fail to measure the economic value of nature, we treat it as expendable. That is why the United States—one of the most resource-rich countries in the world—is now running an ecological deficit, according to the Global Footprint Network.

So, nature counts for more than pretty postcards and vacations. New tools to measure the dollars-and-cents impact of nature help planners, officials and taxpayers make the wisest choices for both the planet’s people and the natural systems that support them.

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Topographical map of Northern and Central California, 1873. (California Geological Survey, David Rumsey Map Collection)

The Death and Life of Monterey bay A Story of Revival

The Death and Life of Monterey Bay a story of revival

Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka

| Shearwater Books Washington | Covelo | London

A Shearwater Book Published by Island Press Copyright © 2011 Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 1718 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009.

Shearwater Books is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Palumbi, Stephen R. The death and life of Monterey Bay : a story of revival / Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka. p. cm.

“A Shearwater Book.”

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-1-59726-435-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 1-59726-435-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Environmental management—California—Monterey Bay. 2. Environmental protection—California—Monterey Bay— Citizen participation. 3. Monterey Bay (Calif.)—Environmental conditions—History. I. Sotka, Carolyn. II. Title. td171.3.c22m666 2011 333.7209794’7—dc22 2010035374 The paperback edition of this book contains the isbn-13: 978-1-61091-190-0 and the isbn-10: 1-61091-190-3 British Cataloguing-in-Publication data available.

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Design by David Bullen Design Manufactured in the United States of America 10

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Keywords: Monterey Bay Aquarium; Pacific Grove, California; Cannary Row; Hopkins Marine Station; China Point; Julia Platt; John Steinbeck; Ed Ricketts; marine protected areas; sardine fishery; sea otters; biodiversity

No book is written in a vacuum. For the air in the

vacuum, I thank my family: Mary, Lauren, and Tony.

Stephen Palumbi To Maria and Richard, who instilled a love of being outdoors and of nature; to Erik, who opens my eyes to the ecological wonders of even the smallest marine creatures; and to Kai and Liv, who inspire me to keep looking for ocean treasures.

Carolyn Sotka

Preface

Walking to work along the shore of Pacific Grove, at the southern end of Monterey Bay, is like a taking a stroll through another century.

The walking trail edges the bay, meandering around small coves with fine sand beaches. The tidal rocks are draped with red, green, and brown seaweed, and the water just offshore is peppered with the tops of giant kelp. Sea otters watch your slow amble, and black cormorants shoot through the sky toward their roosts on rock towers. The air is tinged with the tang of iodine and the bark of sea lions.

We began this project in awe of the life of Monterey Bay; it was a celebration of the diversity and plenty that we experience here. We intended to document the progress that had been made in the marine refuge in front of the Hopkins Marine Station, Stanford University’s marine lab on the border of Monterey and Pacific Grove. It started out as a project about otters, whales, and fish.

But as stories sometimes do, this one had a mind of its own. An eclectic mix of characters arrived in our narrative and took it over.

The people who first hunted otters, whales, and fish off the coast of Monterey lived in an exuberant age of exploration, when the ocean seemed inexhaustible. Then later, when the bay was at its worst, other people fought tooth and nail against its demise. And during the climb from pollution back to plenty, still others displayed astonishing talent and passion to help restore the bay.

So in the end we wrote a book not just about fish but about people, not just about marine ecology but about the ups and downs of economies and about human motivations. We are not historians and do not claim to lay out the whole human history of Monterey Bay. Instead we explore its natural history as it was shaped by people over the last three centuries. We have had to leave much out. And we have chosen xi

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to concentrate on a series of people and events that exemplify three stages of any recovering environment: the ruin, the turnaround, and the revival.

These stories draw the path between the death and life of Monterey Bay. They are noteworthy because their trajectory is not all downward. They are noteworthy because no superheroes or omnipotent governments saved the day. They are noteworthy because the same success in Monterey could happen elsewhere. And ďŹ nally, they are noteworthy because in the end, no act of environmentalism is conceived or acted on by ďŹ sh. It is people who are inspired to act and whose acts inspire.

The Death and Life of Monterey Bay

Chapter 9

The Otter Returns

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n unusual calm blanketed the sea, barely rocking the low, gray rowboat as it slipped quietly into the small cove on the Big Sur coast. Four friends fished, talking only in quiet whispers, jostling their lures through the clear water below, thoughts attuned to the fish they would catch and to the silent partnership of fishing. At the mouth of a cove the morning mists parted for a fraction of a moment, and a few rounded bumps appeared. Bull kelp floating on the slick surface?

“No,” John Pfeiffer told his guests. He lived along the rough Big Sur coast, and he knew the ocean and the hills. “Not kelp. And not seals.”

Twisting around in the boat, Hans Ewoldsen clearly saw three pairs of eyes and three sets of bristled white whiskers staring back.

“They don’t look like seals,” he agreed.

“They’re sea otters,” Pfeiffer told him quietly, “and they’re extinct.

Don’t tell anyone.”

The mania of the Roaring ’20s still gripped much of the United 113

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States in 1929, but the brittle intensity of that era did not penetrate the steep grottos and cliff-hung coves of the California coast. The boat with the four friends drifted away from the curious heads of the small sea creatures. Pfeiffer looked back as the fog rose up to shroud them, like a curtain being closed.

“Stay hidden,” his gaze said. “It’s not your time yet.”

Otters in Shangi-La Glittering in the sun, rough fingers of rock reach out into the cold waters of the Big Sur coast. They catch and channel the waves between them, concentrating the surge into combers that crash onto creamy beaches nestled between dark stone walls. It was a difficult place for a Depression-era workforce to raise bridges across five canyons and extend U.S. Route 1 along the California coast. Earlier builders had given up and sent the highway inland from Big Sur, to emerge back at the ocean miles farther south. The detour had been dictated by old engineering limits: The canyons of the open coast are deep, steep, and wide. Until the 1930s, this stretch of the coast was lonely and isolated.

It was a tiny Shangri-La for a surprising survivor.

The new coastal road opened in 1937. In the early spring of 1938, Mr. and Mrs. H. G. Sharp repaired their little telescope and, turning it toward the mouth of Bixby Creek, made a startling discovery.

Down below in the ocean canyons, they saw a small group of furry floaters, quieter than sea lions and smaller than seals, rafting in the waves and lolling among the healthy kelp forests. Without realizing the significance of their find, or that others had kept the secret for decades, the Sharps rediscovered the “extinct” southern sea otter.

The last heyday of the sea otter in central California had occurred in the 1800s, when hundreds of thousands of animals gave up their pelts to the voracious fur trade. A treaty in 1911 prohibited the trade of sea otter pelts while allowing Alaskan natives to continue traditional use. For Californians, the treaty closed the barn door long after the horse was gone: Few otters had been seen south of Alaska for 50 years. The southern population, once so large that it had spurred

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wild speculation by explorers and missionaries, had disappeared by the early twentieth century. Although reports of one or two animals occasionally surfaced, the otter was one more tiny victim of unrelenting commerce.

The Sharps estimated the sea otter population at several hundred, a number that Hopkins marine biology professor Rolf Bolin found “beyond belief.” So on March 25, 1938, Bolin hurried south to Big Sur to see for himself. There is a scene in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park when stunned paleontologist Alan Grant first looks up to see a living dinosaur calmly munching its lunch. This same sense of wonder and surprise must have greeted Rolf Bolin when he drove his old car down the highway from Pacific Grove to Big Sur, headed across the new bridge at Bixby Creek, and beheld the sea otters there. Despite the hundred-foot cliffs, he clambered down to the beach and encountered two otter sentinels: “They approached to within about 60 yards and stood upright in the water, eyeing me.” In Bolin’s understated words, the otter’s reappearance “excited much local comment.”

Munching on sea urchins and abalone, the sea otters displayed a stunning nonchalance at having narrowly escaped extinction.

Local citizens were not so laissez-faire and demanded that Fish and Game officials assign a warden to guard the population from harm.

Although they couldn’t prevent a reported attack by a pod of killer whales, the otters were soon protected from human hunting, and their population numbers began to grow.

The otters were a genie, now let out of their bottle, and they would revolutionize Monterey Bay.

Endless Appetites Otters eat a lot. Almost alone among marine mammals in cold water, sea otters are not layered with thick blubber. Without this insulation, they rely on two things to stay warm: their luxuriously thick fur and a voracious appetite. An otter has a metabolic rate about three times higher than that of a similarly sized dog and will consume about one quarter to one third of its body mass each day, or 15 to 20 pounds for

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a 60-pound animal. Not eating for a day drops their weight about 10 pounds. Losing 25 pounds will kill them. So otters need food—plenty of it—all the time.

A variety of marine shellfish can provide this bounty, from sea urchins and abalone to crabs, octopus, and snails. Long-term otter watchers have found that many individuals specialize on certain kinds of prey, some refusing all but abalone meals, some searching diligently for scarce sea urchins, with others being dedicated to dining on abundant but small turban snails. Whether the force of habit or some advantage to specialization drives these differences has never been determined.

No matter what they eat, otters try to never miss a meal, and a dense population can quickly affect the life of a kelp forest. Rolf Bolin used a healthy part of his published article about the rediscovery of the otters to catalogue their diets and eating habits: “Resting on its back and holding the food with its front paws, it proceeds in leisurely fashion to nibble or gnaw at it.” Although later researchers covered this ground in great detail, Bolin’s description provides the first account of the way sea otters interact with their environment.

Before the twentieth century, otters were a source of fur. They hid out while the science of ecology grew. They reappeared when field biologists were just beginning to document the precise ways in which organisms could dramatically affect the species around them. Otters provided a textbook example.

Foragers and Bandits Unlike their Alaska cousins, California sea otters regularly use tools.

After a dive, they pop back to the surface carrying a tidbit snail or a frantic crab, also bringing along a handy stone. Lying on their backs with the hapless shellfish on their furry chests, they bash the shell with the stone until their meal cracks open. They scoop out the innards, drop the refuse, stone and all, then dive back down to snatch another snack. They also use tools to eat abalone, creatures that are

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all foot, hanging onto the rocks for dear life. Human divers need a crowbar or a stout diving knife to pull an abalone from its rock home.

How does an otter do it? Ernie Porter, a local diver in Monterey, reported seeing the simple answer. Otters first find a grapefruitsized stone. Then they find an abalone and pound it until the shell fractures, allowing them to easily pull the animal off the rock. Earl Ebert catalogued the condition of the shells of abalone brought to the surface by otters, and 80 percent had been broken.

Foraging takes up about half of an otter’s day, usually the early mornings, later afternoons, and night. But during breaks, sea otters loll indolently among the waves and kelp fronds, famously rafting on their backs with their webbed back feet thrust out of the water. They raft in groups, grooming one another, quarreling, or caring for pups. Some serve as nervous sentries, floating vertically with their round heads bobbing up and down, their white whiskers framing a stern, blunt snout, their jet black eyes staring, unblinking, at any possible threat.

With curious, innovative brains, otters often come to explore a new sight in their world. Encountering a discarded glass bottle on the seafloor, an otter might well decide to pick it up to test its value. Using a bottle as an anvil to crack shellfish became a fad among California otters in the 1970s. Sucking octopus out of discarded soda cans also proved popular.

Otter societies are flamboyant and passionate, based on prolonged grooming sessions to tease out kinks in thick fur, and centered on largely same-sex groups of rafting animals. Young males form foraging parties to explore the edges of their territories. These gangs can be the vanguard colonists along new stretches of coast and can move into a new kelp neighborhood overnight to start pounding down the local shellfish. The rest of the population fills in behind. Through these forays, sea otters slowly left the strict confines of Big Sur and mile by mile moved up the central California coast.

By 1947, while Ed Ricketts brooded over sardine populations from his cramped lab on the doomed Cannery Row, the recovering otter population had bounded north to Yankee Point, south of Carmel. By

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then, 500 or so sea otters rolled and dove along the California coast, and the population looked to be expanding rapidly.

Fishermen along the shore regarded otters as marauding bandits bent on wiping out their supplies of abalone. Public meetings erupted with demands that otters be stopped. But where were they? Glimpses from shore teased the biologists but stopped short of delivering a perfect map. Hopkins graduate student Dick Boolootian had landed in Pacific Grove in 1952 from a stint as a fighter pilot, so he pursued a different idea.

Otters from Above and Below Dick Boolootian was holding court in a little restaurant in Pacific Grove. We were meeting to talk about his days as a graduate student in Monterey Bay in the 1950s. Nearly 80 years old in the summer of 2007 and having retired from his professorship years before, Dick was compact and energetic. He’d brought along an unexpected entourage and was delivering instructions to everyone around him.

“No, you can’t get up from the table. What? Drinks? Fine. No, you can’t have the adult menu. Yes, go to the bathroom.”

His cohort, a group of ten gifted middle school students, called him Dr. B and spent the next two hours testing the limits of their independence. “These kids are great,” he said. “I have them for a week of science camp, on-the-road science camp.”

Dr. B spends his summer introducing kids to science, hands-on.

These ten, between about 10 and 12 years old, were bundles of energy.

They occasionally paid attention to what Dr. B was telling me about otters.

“There was a lot of fighting over otters—they are extremely controversial creatures. Fishermen hated them for taking their abalone.

Wildlife people were thrilled they were back. So when they were starting to spread up the coast, everyone wanted to know where they were, how many there were and what they were doing.”

“Nobody really knew how many otters there were along the coast,”

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he continued. “And I knew the commander of the big Army base at Fort Ord. The Fort Ord commander lent me a helicopter—actually landed at Hopkins to pick me up, and we traveled the coast photographing otters from the air.”

Whack-whacking through the air above the rocky coves of the Big Sur coast, Dr. B encountered the otter population filling the coves and populating the kelp beds. He quickly saw that a luxuriant kelp bed usually was a good indication of high otter counts. But he decided that to get a better picture of otters, he needed just the opposite perspective: not from the air but from under the sea. So he shucked the helicopter earphones and grabbed a diving helmet, plunking himself down into the kelp forests off Carmel Point.

“It was one of those old diving suits, with a big old helmet, and me walking around on the bottom twenty feet deep. The bottom was covered by the skeletons of sea urchins and mounds of broken abalone shell. The otters were definitely eating their way through the area. But there were still abalone left.”

Drying off and grabbing a camera, Boolootian then spent 10 hours each day during May and June 1956 monitoring the otters at Rocky Point, just a little south of Carmel. One of the first people to record otter behavior in detail, he watched a raft of fifty animals eat 5,280 sea urchins during that time, about ninety a day, cleaning out one sea urchin bed before moving on to the next. Abalone and sea mussels also topped the menu.

A few years later, with scuba diving possible, other students also swept through the area looking for signs of the otters’ impact. Jim McLean logged about 20 hours underwater in 1959 and 1960 south of Carmel, noting that “one large invertebrate that might normally be expected was not found in the areas . . . the large sea urchin.” The bottom, however, held abundant sea urchin spines and shell fragments. McLean knew why the creatures were missing: Otters had eaten them. Areas without otters were full of them, especially near the shoreline of the Hopkins Marine Station and China Point, which he called Mussel Point. He wrote, “The subtidal rocks in Monterey

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Bay at Mussel Point at the depth of 10 to 20 feet are covered with urchins and abalones spaced only a few feet apart,” explaining that “the otters do not range into Monterey Bay.” This is why there is such a connection between two such odd creatures, otters and giant kelp, and why the abundance of one parallels the other so strongly. The voracious appetite of the otter chews into the populations of animals that eat kelp—sea urchins especially— and so where otters go, kelp follows.

The next decade saw otters expanding north as far as Pebble Beach. By the early 1960s they reached the southern, exposed shores of Pacific Grove and were dipping into Ed Ricketts’s Great Tide Pool. But now they were poised for a major change, a turn from the rough and rugged outer coasts, dominated by the pounding Pacific surf and dangerous winter storms, to the quieter shores and densepacked larder of Monterey Bay. Back at the restaurant, Dick Boolootian explained, “There were no otters in Monterey Bay in my time. They were still eating their way north, changing everything. Controversial creatures, otters. Very controversial.”

The Oscillation As the lights went out on Cannery Row in the 1950s, recovery of the bay began slowly. Canneries no longer dumped 100,000 pounds of fish entrails and other parts into the bay every day. No longer did the reduction ovens foul the air with the odor of burnt sardine. But missing too were the cannery jobs. And the question for everyone was, “Now what?”

Ed Ricketts had always thought the sardines would disappear, taking with them the economic lifeline of Monterey and the pollution of the bay. But Ed also thought that the sardines would soon come back. Such is the normal expectation of an ecologist thinking about a little fish with a prodigious reproductive rate and a short life span: Little fish with a large capacity to produce eggs can rocket back in abundance.

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However, Ed’s fishy calculus also tried to keep track of the bigger picture of the ocean environment and took into account that the ocean seemed to be changing in the late 1940s. Plankton abundances went haywire, and all manner of odd creatures floated ashore in the late 1940s. Something was happening in the ocean, and as the years clicked by after the sardine collapse of 1948, one season after another came and went without a return of the silvery fish that turned to gold.

Ed didn’t know—no one did—that the changes occurring in the ocean in the 1940s were not fleeting. The whole Pacific felt a metamorphosis in those years that eventually was named the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. With a period of 20, 30, or sometimes 50 years, the northeastern Pacific Ocean oscillates between a slightly cooler phase when deep cold water upwells easily to the surface and a slightly warmer phase when upwelling is weaker. A reconstruction of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation charts its changes over the past 500 years, showing that these oscillations are not a regular ticking climate clock.

Before 1850, the oscillations showed warm phases that lasted 50 years or so and occurred roughly every century (Figure 9.1). Though still uncertain, the cause for this older cycle may have been a slow brightening and dimming of the sun in a series called the Gleissberg Cycle.

But after 1850, the warm phases became shorter and came along more frequently. The warm phase that created Cannery Row lasted only a few decades, from about 1920 to 1942—one of the shortest on record.

It didn’t turn warm again until the mid-1970s.

California sardines mill about in southern California until spring, then move up the coast toward Oregon and Washington. During the Pacific warm phase, the upwelling of cold water off the California coast lessens, creating warmer conditions that allow sardine feeding and spawning ranges to creep northward. Spawning congregations sit off central California during the warm phases, and when they are near the highly productive waters of Monterey Bay, the populations stay longer.

During cool phases, the upwelling currents intensify and colder water along the coasts tends to keep sardines a bit farther south. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation warmed the ocean steadily from about

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Figure 9.1. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation over the twentieth century, showing the rapid shift from warm to cool phases between 1942 and 1948 and the persistence of the cool phase until the late 1970s. Warm phases are positive in the index, and cool phases are negative. Warm phases are favorable to movement of sardines into northern waters near Monterey. (Source: Climate Impacts Group based on N. J. Mantua, S. R. Hare, Y. Zhang, J. M. Wallace, and R. C. Francis. 1997. A Pacific decadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.)

1920 to 1942, but after 1942 it took the fastest nosedive of its history, collapsing by 1949 to an index colder than anything that had been seen since the mid-nineteenth century (Figure 9.1). The sardines fled the flip-flop of ocean climate and did not venture north of southern California in any great numbers. The cold phase persisted for decades, resisting whatever natural tendency to increase the sardines might have had in the absence of fishing. And in the interim, the city of Monterey held an empty Cannery Row.

From the Ashes Thanksgiving turkeys were in the oven, and Merilyn Derby Georgevich’s was cooking away like everyone else’s. Surrounded by friends and fellow teachers and artists, Merilyn looked downhill from her little house atop Prescott Street. The view was of a clear day with the

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tranquil blue waters of Monterey in the hazy distance. Cluttering the shoreline, like an abandoned playroom of building blocks, were the shells of the old canneries.

Suddenly, a siren sounded from down below, and a plume of smoke began to curl up from one of the vacant canning factories. In a flash, the gas mains of Cannery Row collapsed in a gout of flame. The gas supply to the whole hillside cut off as a gigantic valve slammed shut.

Every oven died, and every turkey went from cooking to cooling.

Thanksgiving was long in coming that year.

Fires in Cannery Row punctuated many days. The canneries had been emptied, first of the fish they thrived upon and then of the very equipment that powered them. The idle machines had been packed up and shipped to South America, where fish still swam and canneries could still make money. The skeletal remains of the buildings provided nothing anymore to the town or the people. Or the owners.

A convenient fire or two could bring in serious cash from insurance, money that did not actually have to be spent on refurbishing anything on Cannery Row. If the canneries had insurance, that is. If not, an empty lot might be less troublesome than an abandoned factory.

Of course, fires commonly flared even when the canneries were busy; one burned down Ed Ricketts’s lab in 1936. The hot reduction fires cooked fish products until they congealed and then dried, and these fires could get out of hand on a busy night when the boats brought in net after net brimming with fish. But idle factories also proved strangely prone to the contagion of fire, and over the years, as Cannery Row waited for a rebirth, one by one, the canneries burst into flames and then smoldered to ash on the shores of the bay.

Fifties Diving “We used to have contests,” Dave Greenfield said. “After school, we’d go abalone diving. The limit for abalone was five then. The winner was the guy who could get five in one breath. But back then, five in a breath was easy.”

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The self-contained underwater breathing apparatus had already been used by its inventor, film pioneer Jacques Cousteau, to explore the sea, but Cousteau’s invention hadn’t made it yet to Monterey.

Besides, the local high schoolers wouldn’t have had such an expensive item. Of course, they didn’t have wet suits either, and they dove into the cold waters off Pacific Grove in their long underwear—three sets at least.

“We came out pretty cold,” Dave said, his eyes widening out, head thrusting forward, and shoulders adopting a demonstrative shiver.

Dave is a world-renowned fish biologist who left Monterey to pursue coral reef fish in warmer water. But he still remembered his first underwear dives: “All that cloth kind of slowed you down.”

But things were changing fast in the late 1950s. “One day these guys who ran a car repair place in Monterey got a roll of neoprene.”

Dave said. “They were divers too, and we all went up there to see it.

We used newspaper and made patterns for wet suits, laid out the newspaper on the roll, and cut out the pieces. Then we used that black goopy glue to seal it all together.”

“We had to fight in and out of those suits by slathering up with corn starch,” he said. “But it sure was warmer than my old underwear.”

They went diving after abalone mostly, straining down through the emerald green waters, popping the big saucer-shaped shells off the rocks 10 to 20 feet deep, and letting them reattach themselves to their chests so that their hands were free for the next one.

“We went once a week I guess,” Dave said. “I’d take one or two home, but some of my friends, I think, lived off abalone, taking most of what we caught back to their folks. It was thin times in Monterey for some of them.”

An abalone grew large in the 1950s. Dave slid over an envelope that contained a single photographic slide taken of his buddy Nick holding the catch of the day from 1959.

“Nick’s a big guy,” he said, “so the abalone don’t look that impressive. But I’m still in touch with him, and I got him to measure the

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length of his hand and the width of his head.” Assuming Nick’s head has remained a stable data point for the past four decades, the abalone clocked in at 10.4 to 11.5 inches.

“Legal size was six inches, I think,” Dave said, leaving unsaid that no one would even consider taking such a midget. Today, of course, the only commercial abalone you can get in California are aquacultured— and are harvested at 4 inches.

Not only were they large in the 1950s, but abalone populated the underwater rocks as thickly as cars crammed into a drive-in movie.

The deep rocks heaved with the flat snails, from the canneries toward the mouth of the bay, past the Hopkins Marine Station and out to Lovers Point and beyond.

“The area in front of Hopkins and Lovers Point were off limits to abalone divers,” Dave said, “being part of the Hopkins Refuge and the Pacific Grove Marine Gardens.” Decades after Julia Platt had set up the refuge and the gardens, the bay water of Cannery Row was finally clear of pollution, and abalone carpeted the shore of the Hopkins Refuge. There, the abalone even abandoned their fear of heights and crawled up the intertidal rocks to jostle one another for space out of the direct path of the waves.

The edges of the refuge were marked by the hordes of intertidal abalone. When not chasing otters, Dick Boolootian measured abalone reproductive capacity by sampling ten red and ten black abalone a month. “You just walked out and got some from the tide pools,” he remembered. Asked whether anyone ever actually counted them, he looked quizzical for a moment and replied, “Nobody thought to— they were just all over the place.”

Other big, bottom-dwelling invertebrates grew abundant too once the water began to regain its health, particularly the spiny purple sea urchin named Strongylocentrotus purpuratus. These animals hugged the lower rocks in wave-swept areas but put in their strongest appearance on the shallow seafloor among the holdfasts of kelp plants. A kelp holdfast secures the plant to the seabed and looks like an explosion of hot-melt glue, gone green and stringy, with a riot of kelp

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stems (called stipes by alga lovers) shooting up from the center. In the 1930s, an intrepid graduate student named Harry Andrews donned a diving helmet and counted the animals that lived among the kelp holdfasts in Monterey Bay. He generally found about 30 or 40 purple sea urchins per square yard, sometimes as few as 6 or as many as 100, along with dozens of other species.

Divers disdained the sea urchin fishery until the 1980s, and even then they concentrated on just one species, so these animals were unaffected by hunting and, unlike the abalone, could live outside the refuge with spiny impunity. They roved, and prospered, and ate.

And by eating the kelp, nibbling away at its holdfasts and gnawing through stipes, they trimmed the giant kelp forests back year after year. Now, with the water quality improving, the urchins were thriving, and they ate the kelp forest.

Shells and Spines If a crazy ceramic artist were to design life, the result might be a sea urchin. An urchin’s intricate, globe-shaped shell accretes from a set of curved plates that lock together in a fragile armor of thin panels made out of white calcium carbonate. The tiny plates link up in rows that run from the south pole to the north pole of the shell, giving the structure a radial, Christmas ornament look. Hundreds of pairs of tiny holes penetrate this delicate crust in lacy lines, flanked by flat bumps and cones arrayed in five major, complex arcs from the south to north.

Each pair of holes serves a tube foot, the sea urchin’s major appendage. Like a garden hose with a suction cup at the end, a tube foot snakes from each pair of holes to attach to food or rocks. A sea urchin has no brain, and a thin ring of nerves running in a circle around the mouth serves as its closest imitation of a central nervous system. So it is in brainless unison that hundreds of hose-like tube feet attach to rocks and pull and reattach, to haul the whole animal around the seafloor. The thinner, more delicate hoses on the top reach

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out to snare passing algae or, in some sea urchins, grab onto shells and pebbles to hide from passing enemies.

In live animals, each bump or cone on the shell supports a sharp, conical spine, held firmly at the base by a ring of untiring muscles and tiny tendons that keep the spine erect. Some species use tiny lightsensing cells to aim their spines at passing predators. The purple sea urchin of Monterey Bay holds it spines out erect and stable as a strong defense against simple predators such as snails and starfish.

Otters are undaunted by the spines and can get through them to open an urchin more easily than modern humans can open the packaging of a new DVD. Both hungry otters and frustrated DVD owners rely on brute power and clever pounding. Lying on their backs with an urchin and a rock, otters can pound through the spines and shell, scoop out the goopy innards, and be back on the ocean floor looking for more in less than two minutes. A few weeks after a new raft of otters arrive in a cove, the only urchins left are ones that live very deep or those that cram themselves so far into cracks in the rocks that even the sharp-clawed otters cannot pry them out.

A Bad Century for Kelp By the end of the 1950s, Monterey Bay had largely cleansed itself of the waste and pollution of the 1930s and 1940s. True, the sardines had not returned, nor had the fishing economy. But the air didn’t smell and the water didn’t carry fish guts. Asked in the 1960s what might be done with abandoned and economically listless Cannery Row, John Steinbeck wrote sarcastically about what it would take to restore it to its former glory, demanding that “the rocks and beaches be stocked with artificial fish guts and scales” and musing evilly that “reproducing the billions of flies that once added beauty to the scene would be difficult and costly.” But by the launch of the Space Race, the Cold War, and the Kennedy presidency, Monterey had shrugged away this polluted past.

But a different sort of race was still playing itself out under the

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clean waves. Although the life of the bay was improving, the community of sea creatures still bore a wound that had persisted for a century. Carpeted with sea urchins, the bay still resisted the return of luxurious kelp forests, and without them the ecosystem couldn’t return to its normal state.

Julia’s Refuge Pays Off Like the pioneers and explorers of human society, otters that explore the edges of their world tend to be the young ones. Small bands of young male otters venture along the coast, seeking greener pastures under the waves. In their case, of course, they seek purpler pastures, or redder ones, stocked with purple or red sea urchins or red abalone. Even the earliest otter watchers realized that these quick and charming animals moved like a plague of locusts across the landscape, depleting resources in an area and then moving on. So it was no surprise that the first otters to round Point Pinos and enter Monterey Bay were a few young males, who turned the corner of California history in 1962.

As these youngsters paddled in from the Pacific, one place in particular must have been hugely attractive. Julia’s Refuge at the Hopkins Marine Station was carpeted with an otter’s favorite food: abalone.

There were also huge mussels on the shoreline rocks, protected from being collected, and a carpet of sea urchins in tide pools. From their perspective it must have been like Jean de la Pérouse first entering the bay, seeing what he thought was the greatest concentration of wildlife in the world. Like La Pérouse, the otters knew what to do with this abundance: They started eating.

It wasn’t long before more followed, and when they did, they came in droves. Just off China Point, a raft of seventy-five otters took up residence in April 1963, and they have been there ever since.

This was big, big local news. Isabel Abbott, Hopkins Professor of Phycology and the world’s foremost expert on the algae of California, remembers that time. “Everyone wanted to get a look at them,” she

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said. “And it became known that they tended to feed in the evenings between Point Pinos and the Monterey Harbor. Cars would line the road so that people could see them. They’d feed a while, and then wrap themselves up in a kelp blade for the night.”

“Like pandas,” she said with a wistful look, “sea otters are enchanting creatures.”

These enchanting creatures took up residence at the Hopkins Marine Refuge and began transforming Julia’s protected area back into the kelp forest it had been before otters were hunted. Where the 1930s and 1940s saw a polluted coast next door to one of the world’s biggest canneries, clean water and sea otters re-created the ecological community that the area typically had. It took more than three decades for Julia Platt’s stubborn advocacy to lay the foundations of this change, and maybe otters would have found an enticing home at Hopkins even if the shore had been stripped of abalone and mussels.

But the shoreline was protected, the abalone were there, and otters made a beeline for it.

The Kingdom’s Boundary The ecological army of otters swept through Monterey Bay from south to north, the vanguard of young pioneers, 50–150 strong, finding abundant food and moving on. Where they found hard rocky bottom, they fed happily on sea urchins, and they left luxuriant kelp forests growing in their wake. But soon the moving line of sea otters found less favorable habitat: Wide sandy beaches stretched across the middle third of the Monterey Bay, bare of algae and shunned by sea urchins and abalone alike. So otters made do with feasting for a time on pismo clams and other sand dwellers. But the phalanx moved quickly northward in order to find rock once more. There the pickings were not as good: A disease of sea urchins dropped their numbers in 1976, and divers had long since cleaned out the abalone.

To the north of Santa Cruz stretched another long rocky coast, replete with otters long ago but now brisling with urchins and heaving

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with abalone in the coves where divers did not go. A rough stretch of shoreline, it also housed a growing population of a far larger marine mammal, the elephant seal.

Here the otters could not cross in any numbers. Despite a few individual animals leaking north to the very gates of San Francisco Bay, an abundant otter population has never gotten a beachhead far north of the elephant seal island of Año Nuevo. Could the two-ton seals be intimidating their tiny marine cousins? “Probably not,” thinks otter expert Jim Estes. He points out, “There is a little colony of otters pretty persistently right next to Año Nuevo. They don’t seem to be incompatible.”

But otters have been stalled at Año Nuevo for decades. Why? No one knows for sure, but Estes has a theory.

“Hundreds of otters have washed up dead along that coast over the years,” he remembered. “And some of them look perfectly fine, perfectly normal. It is only after a detailed necropsy that you see what killed them—a line of puncture wounds, or a bone scraped by something razor sharp.”

Sharks. Great white sharks attracted to the bonanza of an elephant seal rookery also nibble on otters in quiet moments. “Of course, they could bite them in two,” Estes admits. “They can bite a seal in two. They could bite me in two.” But the otters are seldom dismembered.

Few people venture into the water at Año Nuevo to look for otter habitat, but one person who did just that in the 1970s was John Pearse.

“It was awfully murky,” he recalled, “and you just knew it was not a very good place to be. Bad visibility, dim light, and there goes a decapitated seal carcass floating past you.”

“But a little deeper, when you could spare looking around you all the time for what ate the seal’s head, there were walls of abalone, and a bottom covered, just covered, with sea urchins.”

“I don’t know what it’s like now. It was a bad place to be, and we never went back.”

Jim Estes is a little more clinical about the impact of sharks. “It’s like

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they do with humans. Great whites bite down a little, and then release something they don’t like, like a human. The otter is punctured— it dies. But it isn’t dinner, or even an appetizer. It’s spit out like a moldy grape.”

It may well be that white sharks, mostly intent on feeding on big seals, have set the limit on otter expansion, keeping them from moving north past the seal rookeries. But many other aspects of California’s kelp forest ecosystem shift near San Francisco Bay too. The abundant perennial giant kelp gives way to beds of stringier, annual bull kelp, changing the dominant “trees” in the forest.

Whatever the reason, the rapid northern expansion of the sea otter slowed after the repopulation of Monterey Bay. The expansion left behind a string of changed shorelines and a restored bay. Where there was once subtidal rock bristling with urchin spines, there now bloomed kelp forest with sea urchins and abalone restricted to crevices in the rock. Where kelp bloomed, there now thrived a bustling community of fish and invertebrates. And where these communities churned, the next layer of sealife began to reappear. The seals and sea lions and seabirds came back.

New from Island Press The Death and Life of Monterey Bay A Story of Revival Stephen R. Palumbi and Carolyn Sotka Anyone who has ever stood on the shores of Monterey Bay, watching the rolling ocean waves and frolicking otters, knows it is a unique place.

But even residents on the idyllic California coast may not realize its full history. Monterey began as a natural paradise, but became the poster child for industrial devastation in John Steinback’s Cannery Row, and is now one of the most celebrated shorelines in the world.

It is a remarkable story of life, death, and reivval told here for the first time in all its stunning color and bleak grays. The Death and Life of Monterey Bay begins in the eighteenth century when Spanish and French explorers encountered a rocky shorelines brimming with life - raucous sea birds, abundant sea otters, barking sea lions, halibut the size of wagon wheels, waters thick with whales. A century and a half later, many of the sea creatures had disappeared, replaced by sardine canneries that sickened residents with their stench but kept the money flowing. When the fish ran out and the climate turned, the factories emptied and the community crumbled. But today, both Monterey’s economy and wildlife are resplendent. How did it happen?

The answer is deceptively simple: through the extraordinary acts of ordinary people. The Death and Life of Monterey Bay is the biography of a place, but also of the residents who reclaimed it. Monterey is thriving because of an eccentric mayor who wasn’t afraid to use pistols, axes, or the force of law to protect her coasts. It is because of fishermen who love their livelihood, scientists who are fascinated by the sea’s mysteries, and philanthropists and community leaders willing to invest in a worldclass aquarium. The shores of Monterey Bay revived because of human passion- passion that enlivens every page of this hopeful book.

November 2010 www.deathandlifemontereybay.org 6x9. 216 pages.

Two photo inserts, photos, and figures.

Cloth: $26.95 $20.00 with code 5PAL 978-1-59726-435-8

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Stephen R. Palumbi is the Director of the Hopkins Marine Station and the Harold A. Miller Professor of Marine Science at Stanford University. Carolyn Sotka manages science and policy outreach activities for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative.

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THE SCIENCE of

O P E N SPAC E S Theory and Practice for Conserving Large Complex Systems

CHARLES G. CURTIN

the science of open spaces Theory and Practice for Conserving Large, Complex Systems

Charles G. Curtin

Washington | Covelo | London

Copyright Š 2015 Charles G. Curtin All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036 Island Press is a trademark of The Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014955498 Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Keywords: Island Press, open spaces, large landscapes, thermodynamics, Malpai Borderlands, ecology, ecosystem, place-based, resilience, resilience theory, resilience practice, top-down approach, bottom-up approach, sustainability, sustainable approach, complexity, ecological policy design, collaborative conservation, resilience design, large-scale science, policy design, climate change mitigation, process design, landscape ecology, ecological restoration, community development, capacity building, adaptive capacity, sustainability studies, ecosystem studies, complex ecology, large landscape experimentation, adaptive governance

v

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

—T.S. Elliot

Chapter Six

Practical Aspects of Sustaining Open Spaces

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.

Alice: I don’t much care where.

Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

Alice: So long as I get somewhere.

Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

I

n this final chapter, we focus on the practical aspects of conserving open spaces. Conventional approaches to science and policy often fall short in their relevance to the large and complex issues facing society because small and short-term or single-discipline studies are not sufficient to address the challenges typified by such issues as climate change and habitat fragmentation. Rather than applying more regulation and management to control each aspect of the process, the perspective promoted here focused on designing the preconditions for long-term success. The key step is development of the institutional capacity to maintain and enhance coupled ecological and social processes. Building on the foundation of theory and practical experience discussed in earlier sections, this chapter develops a framework for on-the-ground action and provides basic guidelines for undertaking conservation within open spaces.

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Addressing the Conservation Paradox Conservation faces a fundamental paradox: relatively small-scale reserves are limited by biological constraints, large-scale landscapes by social and economic ones. With small areas, one can close the gate or erect a fence and intensively manage human-related disturbance. However, no matter how many resources are brought to bear, it will always be constrained by the “tyranny of space.”1 It is ironic that for the most part any natural area that is small enough to be easily managed will likely never be large or whole enough to be ecologically sustainable.2 The opposite is the case in large landscapes, which are not limited by space, but by process. The irony here is that the larger and wilder a system, with the possible exception of the most remote and uninhabitable spots on the planet, the more sophisticated the science and policy that is needed to sustain them. For people cannot just manage their way out of situations in a large and complex system, but must harness the very force that most threatens the system’s survival: people themselves. This requires approaches that are proactive and strategic, especially in the face of uncertainty.

Shooting the Rapids Practitioners and theorists use the analogy of “shooting the rapids” (fig. 6.1) to describe the process of designing and implementing conservation practices or managing resources.3 In navigating whitewater rapids, preparing for the initial descent is crucial. Paddlers first scout a navigable route from the bank, because once they are in the river and the current takes hold, opportunities for course corrections are usually limited.

In rapids, as in conservation, some situations are relatively straightforward; you can see the path ahead, anticipate obstacles, and plan accordingly. Rittel and Webber4 referred to such challenges as “tame problems.”

Akin to class I or II rapids, they are easily navigable and the hazards are well defined. If questions over direction arise, you can always pull out of the current to scout the next steps at clear stopping points along the route. Much of the field of planning assumes that the world works this way. Unfortunately, reality is rarely so straightforward.

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Figure 6.1. In whitewater paddling, as in environmental science and policy, scouting the route and planning a path forward is key for success, with the larger and more complex the system, the more strategy and design needed. (Photo courtesy of Shutterfly.)

Rittel and Webber used the term “wicked” to describe more complex problems, analogous to class IV or V rapids. For these, there are no simple and straightforward solutions, just better or worse outcomes for optimal situations are not an option. Such rapids are extremely turbulent, providing little opportunity for pausing once you are in the flow. There is no simple formula for getting through; you must choose the best path and improvise when faced with challenging situations or adapt when presented with new information.

Increasing rates of social and ecological change are creating higher levels of turbulence and greater challenges for conservation science and management to navigate. Unfortunately, technological advances, from the internal combustion engine to the Internet, tend to further exacerbate the situation by increasing the short-term illusion of control, at the cost of longer term sustainability and increased unpredictability.5 Effectively addressing “wicked” problems requires understanding their underlying

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processes and pathologies to isolate potential solutions from an almost infinite number of traps.

So how does one navigate the safest path down the river in such turbulent times? Systems theorist Donella Meadows spoke of twelve policy “leverage points” that facilitate effective action.6 These leverage points, for our purposes, can be distilled down to eight principles essential to the practitioner’s tool kit. These are the basic concepts necessary for creating durable approaches to policy and maintaining open spaces. They are presented in order of highest to lowest impact, recognizing that many of these options may not be available in any given situation.

1. The influence of paradigms and values. Society has shared ideals—unstated assumptions that drive much of its legal and procedural actions.

They are our shared sense of what is reasonable and fair—societal conventions that are deeply held, but not wholly unassailable. Though these social norms or personal values are difficult to change, shifting them can be hugely important in setting the stage for all that follows.7 The circumstances leading to the formation of the Malpai Borderlands Group (MBG) provide a perfect example of shared perspective that needed to be overcome, namely, the suspicion and enmity toward conservation agencies and organizations long held by area ranchers, and the similar assumptions held by conservationists. Challenging these underlying assumptions can lead to new paradigms, but—as seen with the MBG—considerable effort is often needed to sustain these approaches over time.

2. Goals of the process. Goals determine outcomes; thus, being clear about the intended outcomes of a process is key to its ultimate effectiveness. In the Malpai science program, having a joint vision of the challenges recognized by the ranchers and researchers united the group’s purpose. By contrast, in fisheries conservation in Maine, it was much rarer to find a united focus, and without a unifying view of the questions to be addressed, it was all but impossible to develop consensus. For as with blind men describing an elephant, one group may describe the problem as overfishing and another as climate change, while still others see the need to restore forage fish. The parties talk past one another as an outcome of their radically differently perceptions of the problem. In conservation, the old adage is especially true that if you do not know where

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you are going, you will never get there, or at least you will be walking a very long way, as Alice found in her conversation with the Cheshire cat at the outset of this chapter.8 3. Power of self-organization. Sustainable processes are, almost by definition, self-organized. For example, the actions of the Maine lobster fishery have largely been effective because they were not planned or directed from the top down, but emerged once the right social preconditions were established and governance sideboards maintained. The same was true in the Malpai borderlands with respect to fire management, which ended up a powerful integrator of other system properties, such as the amount of ex-urban development or the extent of contiguous unfragmented rangeland. Effective assembly rules are built around those parts of the system where small shifts in initial conditions cause profound changes in outcome. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Peter Senge9 used the example of ships as fulcrums; it is impossible to change a ship’s direction from the bow without huge amounts of force that will likely cause damage. However, from the stern it takes only a small shift of the rudder to alter the ship’s course. Assembly rules are like a rudder, steering science and policy from the point of optimal leverage and transforming the direction of discourse and action.

4. Rules of the road. The legal, administrative, and social rules of a system—essentially its incentive structure—profoundly influence conservation outcomes. For example, among the Maasai, the expectation of reciprocity among family members, even distant relatives, sustains a scale of social and ecological function that generates large-scale patterns of landscape-level diversity by reducing the damaging impacts of maintaining cattle in the same relatively small area during drought. Conversely, in the case of ground fisheries, the New England Fishery Management Council process led to decisions driven largely by politics, whereas in the case of lobster fishing, the preconditions for restoration and sustainability through local control were put in place through a few simple rules that promoted local engagement and stewardship. As Meadows noted, “If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and who has power over them.” Power issues played a big role in the failure of large ecosystem programs such as Glen Canyon and

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the Everglades because economic interests trumped ecological concerns.

The successes and failures of all of the case studies can be directly tied back to the rule sets and the power structures they represent.

5. Structure of information flow. A crucial insight from the MBG example was that the coupling of science-based and local knowledge created the credibility to undertake activities such as land conservation and the resources to influence federal agencies to undertake landscape-level reintroduction of fire. The Maasai pastoralists and the Maine lobstermen displayed a more informal, but equally tight, coupling between information and action. The Maasai in their daily milking and the lobstermen in their daily catch each provide a regular assessment of environmental conditions to which the resource users can readily respond.

6. Impact of feedback loops. Negative and positive feedback loops have fundamentally different outcomes. A positive feedback loop is selfreinforcing; a negative feedback loop is self-correcting. Positive “success for the successful” loops compound the impacts but also provide less control. Negative feedback loops, by contrast, typically include a specific goal or braking function.

Fisheries use both positive and negative feedback-loop approaches.

For example, in the lobster fishery, fishermen follow local rule sets in a positive feedback approach that emerges from local norms and regional consensus. The groundfishery uses a negative feedback-loop approach with specific set points, such as “days at sea,” designed to regulate catch levels. Meadows noted that negative feedback approaches tend to be extremely resource intensive to implement. In large landscapes, due to their size and complexity, it is almost essential to use positive self-reinforcing feedback loops in governance and to avoid negative feedback approaches whenever possible.

7. Influence of time lags relative to the rate of the system. A system can not respond to rapid, short-term changes through slow, long-term processes.

It is possible to slow rapid changes to match the system’s capacity for adjustment, but usually it is more effective to alter the scale of focus of the response, rather than try to manage the change itself. For example, in finding consensus over climate change, reaching agreement at the international and national level has proved difficult, although numerous small

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municipalities have been remarkably adept at rapidly instituting local policies.10 Likewise, the processes of collective impact (discussed in chapter 3) uses backbone organizations to network numerous local organizations, rather than relying on highly centralized international agreements or overarching top-down governance schemes.

8. Size of buffers relative to their flows. Buffers stabilize complex systems by dampening short-term variability. Imagine if liquor stores had to order from a brewery every time a customer purchased a beer. Instead, keeping an inventory allows the merchant to respond to short-term demand.

Although expanding buffers (e.g., inventory) can stabilize systems, this can be expensive, and having too much investment in inventory has its own consequences. To continue with the beer metaphor, a store would be foolish to precisely predetermine which kinds of beer it will stock for an entire year because consumer demand may change. Instead, stores adaptively manage, letting signals from the market guide their short-term inventory decisions. The need for substantial buffers is why the groundfishery management approach does not work; maintaining the necessary buffers to avoid compromising populations during periods of low recruitment is rarely politically expedient because of the economic hardship it imposes.11 Meadows’s insights have proven to be immensely influential in applying systems principles to real-life situations, and yet the devil is the details.

Less clear is how to translate the theory into practice. One possible approach is through what I call resilience design, which builds on the lessons of resilience and adaptive management and uses a handful of practices and ground rules to alter overall system behavior. Its three core elements are (1) equity design—collaborative approaches that generate effective selforganization; (2) process design—developing effective knowledge through the establishment of more relevant and appropriately scaled science and monitoring; and (3) outcome design—a combination of the previous two.

Outcome design is primarily concerned with the practical aspects of sustaining organizations long enough and at scales large enough to make a significant difference in conservation outcomes.12 Resilience design applies post-normal approaches to large-scale conservation science. This includes moving beyond resilience science’s base

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in academia and agencies to apply the principles of a science of open spaces through a place-based approach that embraces local social dynamics and accounts for power dynamics in conservation design.13

Equity Design Solving complex problems requires breaking down barriers and establishing connectivity.14 Shared cognition is essential for success, as demonstrated by the MBG, which broke down the divides among ranchers, conservationists, and researchers to create synergy for effective land conservation.

The properties of personal and group collaboration, as illustrated by the cross-site coordination among pastoralists such as the Maasai in southern Kenya (discussed in chapter 1), demonstrate the power of collective thought and action and why these approaches, although complex and time-consuming, are more sustainable than command-control governance that tends to be brittle and unresponsive to change. As argued in previous chapters, the world is intrinsically dynamic, and governance arrangements need to be inherently flexible and adaptive while having a clear sense of their goals and expectations.15 The foundational principles from physical, biological, and social perspectives in combination illustrate that we need institutions that generate appropriately scaled feedback loops and interconnections for adaptation through learning. For this reason, double- and triple-loop learning approaches are essential for responding to change, but are also anathema for command-control governance that thrives on short-term control, accumulation of power, and the illusion of stability.16 From organizational theory developed by researchers such as Argyris and Schรถn to the practical experience of practitioners, successful action ultimately depends on effective governance principles that engage people in an equitable, open, and transparent process.17 Without collective goals and common ground, people experience social fragmentation, resulting in competition and conflict.18 Effective governance for science and conservation balances short- and long-term interests and mitigates power imbalances. Effective governance can be both implicit by using a few informal assembly rules to develop emergent outcomes that sustain selforganization, or explicit through developing clear goals and overarching

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guiding principles.19 For example, the Malpai Borderlands Group used an approach to fire management that coordinated diverse fire management organizations, while having relatively clear, but flexible, expectations about desired future conditions of the landscape set by each landowner.

Social and ecological fragmentation are closely aligned, for both are outcomes of breakdowns in connectivity. Among the numerous ways of rebuilding connectivity, Herman Karl, of the U.S. Geological Survey, and colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a process called joint fact finding (fig. 6.2), which represents a synthesis of best practices in natural resource decision making.20 In joint fact finding, although a mediator can help organize interactions among disparate interests, finding consensus does not need to be mediation-driven. Instead, the intersection of science and local knowledge can play a key role in “community building” by generating common ground and adaptive capacity to address complex information needs in a more deliberative process. To be viable, solutions cannot be just political compromises, but must find common ground within the context of the realities of the resource.21 The Malpai example demonstrates that community building can be undertaken directly by individuals or organizational leadership, or indirectly through joint knowledge generation, as in the case of collaborative science, such as the McKinney Flats project. In the borderlands, The Nature Conservancy originally played the role of convener, bringing diverse groups together. The Nature Conservancy’s logistical expertise and access to funders and capital were key to making the vision of the ranchers a reality. The borderlands example also illustrates why a balance of leadership between locals and outsiders is all but essential. In the early years, The Nature Conservancy shared leadership responsibilities with local ranchers. Not only was the symbolism of “big hats and baseball caps” (i.e., ranchers working with conservationists and researchers) especially effective at attracting funders and a powerful symbol at congressional hearings, but it also effectively balanced and leveraged the strengths of each group.

One major reason why a place-based collaborative should keep a portion of its leadership external is that in a close-knit rural community or any tightly linked group, there are limits to what one neighbor can ask

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Figure 6.2. Joint fact finding, by which science is developed with partners, lays out guidelines for collaborative science. The approach not only clearly spells out guidelines for success, but also shows how it is critical to engage partners at the outset of the process to promote trust and buy-in to the program (After Karl et al., 2007).

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of another, whereas an external person has more latitude to drive the process and keep competing interests in line.22 In the MBG example, the approach to science changed almost immediately following TNC’s departure as coleader. The rancher who assumed the role of executive director was as committed to science as TNC was, but as a longtime member of the local community, he needed be more careful to not compromise his relationships with friends and neighbors. The change from joint to solely local leadership coincided with reduced scientific input into the policy process due in large measure to these social constraints.

The Malpai case study in chapter 2 illustrates how increasing distance between the scientists and the policy process sowed the seeds for the eventual decline in researchers’ ability to inform the process. Scientists also provided expert advice that was less influenced by the political aspirations of associated agencies or organizations, following eminent ecologist James H. Brown’s call for scientists to provide the group with “what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.” This kind of pragmatic, critical assessment was lost as the process became politicized and advisors increasingly curried favor with the ranchers by playing to their sensibilities, rather than taking tough, if sometimes unpopular, positions.

The reduction in objective input was one of the greatest losses to the conservation program, for it led to a cycle of decline in effectiveness of both the science and the collaborative process.23 Equity design, therefore, requires collaborative approaches that are sustained through carefully crafted, governance-developing, institutionalized processes of critical selfreflection, with periodic external review to avoid the pitfalls of groupthink and prevent short-term demands from trumping longer term goals and objectives. The point is to balance power relationships and make sure that critical review and the testing of assumptions remain core parts of the process.

Equity design also involves a dynamic balance analogous to Kai Lee’s metaphor of the compass and gyroscope discussed in chapter 5, which describes the tension between science and politics in the adaptive management arena. The compass and gyroscope operate at the macroscale, examining the interaction of institutions of adaptive management and politics in large ecosystem projects such as the Columbia River. However, similar dynamics also operate at the microlevel within communities,

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where a dynamic tension exists between stabilizing forces of local interests and the destabilizing forces of science, new knowledge, and associated change. This dynamic tension is much like the forces of “understeer” and “oversteer” in the handling of a speeding car (fig. 6.3). Understeer makes the vehicle stable, but also unresponsive and slow to change direction.

Conversely, oversteer, in which the vehicle is prone to turn too sharply, makes the handling unstable, because the vehicle has a proclivity to swap ends and spin out or lose control. At high speeds or with sharp cornering, a skilled driver seeks a dynamic balance between opposing understeer and oversteer, because each, in turn, influences the car’s handling, just as effective policy skillfully applied also sustains a similar dynamic tension between stabilizing and destabilizing forces.

Equity design, therefore, requires instituting a continual learning process that can balance the metaphoric understeer and oversteer, building the institutional capacity to balance stabilizing and destabilizing forces.

For example, any inputs, such as science or critical review, can be destabilizing in the short term, but are essential for the long term. Sustaining the dynamic tension that maintains open spaces essentially boils down to five ground rules: • Maintain an open and transparent process.

• Engage all stakeholders, or their representatives, in the process.

• Build a shared vision of the system and an understanding of the opportunities and constraints.

• Ground decisions in empirical documentation and/or consensus with a framework for self-reflection and periodic external review.

• Instill permanent yet adaptive processes that foster adaptation and innovation while maintaining continuous cycles of double- and, the potential for, triple-loop learning.

All policy and design for effective and sustainable large-scale science and governance emerges from these five essential design principles, stemming from a strong base of collaborative process to build and sustain social capital. The next step is to ensure that the feedback loops are in place that can inform and sustain these dynamic processes because a continual flow of information maintains the communities’ ability to evolve and respond to change.

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Figure 6.3. High-speed cornering in a car illustrates the dynamic tension between understeer, in which the vehicle plows, and oversteer, in which the handling is twitchy and the vehicle prone to swap ends. In the course of even a single turn these opposing dynamics are transient and prone to change based on weight loading, acceleration, deceleration, tightness of the corner, and numerous other factors. This example is a metaphor for the complexities of developing policy that promotes stability, and yet is nimble and responsive to change. (Photo courtesy of Shutterfly.)

Process Design Process design depends on working across scales of resolution to sort through the options and find those that create the most leverage for sustaining open spaces. These points of leverage lie at the interface of ecological, economic, and social systems where both the risks and the opportunities are greatest.24 Finding these fulcrums requires integrating knowledge types in which the world is viewed through different paradigms and at different scales (fig. 6.4). Refining this knowledge and formally communicating it help to build the intellectual capital upon which scientific progress, and social durability, are grounded. The core tools to accomplish this include setting the context by attaining practical knowledge, understanding the scale of processes and extent of change through monitoring, and refining knowledge and testing assumptions through experimental science.

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Figure 6.4. In knowledge gathering there is an inverse relationship between intensity and breadth, with trade-offs between broad and low-intensity approaches, such as local knowledge, and intensive but more narrowly focused experimental research. These trade-offs between intensity and breadth suggest the necessity of integrating multiple knowledge types to understand complex systems such as open spaces.

Practical Knowledge The more complex or “wicked” a problem, the more informal the means needed to address it. System theorist Peter Checkland made a distinction between “hard” and “soft” systems.25 Hard systems exist where formal experimentation and empirical data are possible. The classic example of a

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hard system is the 1960s NASA space program, whereby a few equations calculated on the relatively simple computers of the period, could send a rocket to the moon. In contrast, soft systems are often social arenas where quantitative prediction is considerably more difficult due to the sheer complexity of interactions and usually requires a more descriptive approach.26 Large-scale conservation is intrinsically a soft system with a vast array of interacting variables, ranging from climate to land tenure.

The foundation for navigating soft systems starts with local and traditional ecological knowledge, the cultural capital by which societies convert natural resources into economic goods and services and sustain their populations. As illustrated in the rangeland and marine fisheries examples, the power of local knowledge is its ability to bring diverse groups together to broaden understanding.27 The challenge is to find places of common ground where different perceptions can come together to generate common points of interest in the development of a joint vision of the overall system (fig. 6.2). Local knowledge is also valuable in its own right, for it provides an essential context for decision making by generating crucial questions that need to be addressed through more quantitative forms of information gathering—much as the borderlands programs arose from the rancher’s questions and perceptions—while simultaneously addressing fundamental ecological theory.28

Monitoring Monitoring is commonly defined as a means of tracking long-term change. But it also has a second, almost more important role of documenting the range of variation within a system and, as such, is key to establishing the appropriate scale of conservation, science, or stewardship.

The level of design or scale of action must transcend that of ecological or social disturbances. All conservation and management is contextual, so understanding the role played by disturbance processes, such as fire in the West or hurricanes in New England, is crucial to designing for resilience.

For example, core protected areas must be larger than the typical scale of disturbance so they are not completely eliminated by it (fig. 6.5). Conservation below the scale of disturbance frequently leads to destruction of ecological processes, whereas conservation above the scale of disturbance can lead to a mosaic of habitats that increases landscape and species-level

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Figure 6.5. The relationship between scale and disturbance suggests that an understanding of the scale of disturbance is directly related to the minimum scale of conservation. Conserved areas must exceed typical areas of disturbance to ensure that functional systems are sustained, because it is not a matter of if, but when, such an event will occur. A classic example is gap creation by windthrow in forests, which introduces diversity to the system. Some damage from a hurricane in New England illustrates how these meta-disturbances, though separated by decades, are a part of the system and how sustainable reserves must be larger than the extent of typical disturbance events. (Photo courtesy of Shutterfly.)

diversity and ecological health. The role of large-landscape conservation is to transcend disturbances (both ecological and social) and incorporate them into the mosaic of different habitat types or institutional structures to maintain the adaptive capacity to respond to change or withstand surprise events.29 The need for monitoring can be seen in assessing the distribution of fire across the landscape, or in documenting vegetation change through time. However, monitoring must account for key driving variables. For example, in the Southwest, monitoring changes in vegetation is of little use without also documenting rainfall or grazing intensity. Otherwise, it’s unclear whether declines in grasses resulted from drought or mismanagement. Without an environmental or land-use context, there is no means

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of interpreting the data. This illustrates that undertaking effective monitoring is relatively simple in theory, but extremely difficult in practice, as we found in the borderlands, where even the monitoring designed by a science committee containing many of the region’s leading researchers still turned out to have shortcomings. Typically, it takes years of experience and critical evaluation to assemble a design that works under the range of conditions that affect a given area. Practitioners need to understand and account for the great deal of thought, planning, and trial and error required to get it right. The resource management literature and agency and conservation organization handbooks are replete with calls for monitoring to document system change. However, the process of monitoring itself is rarely evaluated.30 It is not enough to just monitor, one needs to be certain that the data gathered actually address the most crucial factors in the most effective manner with adequate replicates that take into account associated driving variables (such as the aforementioned rainfall and grazing).

Monitoring is an important part of effective decision making. However, as commonly practiced, it all too often represents institutionalized single-loop learning in which people document what they expect to see, rather than learning from the data. So part of the design process should be to ensure that monitoring is not conducted for its own sake, but generates significant new insights. Monitoring is also often a political solution that provides the illusion of action without accompanying insight that might force activity or challenge existing paradigms, so it is essential that procedures exist to ensure that the information is not only relevant and effective, but also that it is actually used.

Experimental Science At the highest level of research intensity are experimental approaches, studies that can be conducted only on relatively small portions of the landscape because of the relatively high investment in time and resources. Because of these constraints, experimental science must be used judiciously and is most effective when applied near ecological boundaries where system dynamics are most likely to be revealed.31 Although experimental science is not free of observer bias, well-designed experimental studies are critical in allowing scientists and their collaborators to empirically test

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their assumptions. Perhaps more than any other level of inquiry, welldesigned experiments, especially ones that extend over long time periods or across large spatial scales, can reveal unexpected results. The challenge is to develop science that yields fundamentally new insights—the tripleloop knowledge that is transformative and essential for effective response to change. However, there are two considerations.

First, more precision does not mean more accuracy. There are innumerable cases of highly precise studies that are ultimately irrelevant because they ask an irrelevant or uninformative question, or ask an important question at the wrong scale, yielding results that are misleading or limiting.32 We have already considered examples from rangelands and fisheries that illustrate how scale influences the outcome of research.

Considering the broader social context is profoundly important for developing more effective experimental design. For example, the Malpai Borderlands Group’s cooperation facilitated a level of science not accessible through conventional approaches developed in isolation from the local community, and fishermen’s insights about historical spawning grounds transformed the context within which fishery research was conducted.

Second, research is most effective when conducted at time frames sufficient to capture discernible patterns of environmental variation. It is better to document a few simple measures well over a long period of time than a broad range of variables poorly for a short period. This means that in large and complex systems, it is important to work back from what can be sustained long enough to reveal longer term patterns (ideally at least ten years), while building in periodic external review to reassess the process and ensure its continued relevance. Unfortunately, the grant system often requires that a project grow and evolve for its funding to be renewed. The need to tailor research priorities to meet shifting funding priorities too often generates short-term benefits at the expense of longterm continuity and good science, especially in large, complex systems that integrate social and ecological variables, and where scale-relevant research can take decades. This is where social design becomes essential, for to sustain the research program long enough and at scales large enough to be relevant to conservation and management entails the development of collaborative partnerships. The example of the McKinney Flats project

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in the borderlands illustrates both the benefits and pitfalls of undertaking the necessary large and dynamic, post-normal approaches.

In sum, when seeking leverage points and developing feedback loops, it is clear there are no shortcuts to gaining effective knowledge; a combination of approaches is usually needed. The intersection of local knowledge, monitoring, and experimental science is essentially triple-loop learning, developing a synthesis among the hard-won knowledge of local practitioners, the more formalized learning process of monitoring, and experimental science that tests underlying assumptions in a safe-to-fail environment.

Process design promotes interaction among diverse knowledge types in an integrated framework. This means that knowledge gathering should not be segregated into monitoring versus experimentation or social versus natural sciences, but developed as an integrated whole.33 Six questions should be asked at the proposal stage of a research project: • Is the knowledge gathered used?

• Is the knowledge gathered sustainable and cost-effective?

• Is the knowledge gathered integrated with other approaches to learning?

• Is there a process of critical external review and dissemination?

• Are the metrics leading or trailing indicators?

• Is there a process to integrate the results into governance and policy development?

A “no” answer to any of these should trigger reevaluation. These questions may seem obvious, but in my experience relatively few organizations ever formally ask them.34 To span the gulf between what academic writing describes and what practitioners face is ultimately where some of the most significant opportunities for promoting large-scale conservation occur.35 However, to do so successfully usually requires an understanding of how to translate theory into practice and the establishment of an effective adaptive governance framework that encourages and facilitates both learning and knowledge transfer. Outcome design considers the practical aspects of facilitating durable and resilient means of conserving large, complex systems.

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Outcome Design Henry Mintzberg’s classic article, “Crafting Strategy,” (1987) in the Harvard Business Review, though devoted to understanding effective business approaches, has much to teach conservationists and policy designers.

He stated, “In practice, or course, all strategy making walks on two feet, one deliberate, the other emergent.” The point is to have a framework in place that maintains the state of the organization, while simultaneously taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Conservation design needs to be “deliberately emergent” by developing processes to facilitate a more spontaneous, but reflective, response to change—to capture what Mintzberg called “discontinuities,” those moments in time when being aggressively proactive or seeking change really counts.36 So how can such an approach be proactive without being destabilizing? A first step is to use a logic model that maps decision processes.37 As with the “running the rapids” metaphor that began this chapter, a vision statement is essential for lining up the organization for the passage downriver. For example, the MBG’s goals and principles, as stated in its vision statement, and widely used by other rangeland conservation organizations in the West, are to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse, flourishing community of human, plant and animal life in our borderlands region. Together, we will accomplish this by working to encourage profitable ranching and other traditional livelihoods, which will sustain the open space nature of our land for generations to come.

MBG’s philosophy was to be inclusive, open, and transparent based on the values of the community and standards of practice influenced by Quaker activist Jim Corbett.38 This was accomplished by emphasizing peer-review-quality science and a standing invitation for critics to engage in dialog with the group. However, as the MBG case also illustrates, the drawback of relying strictly on a vision statement is that there is little guidance about how the vision will become practice, and how the practice will be sustained under changes in leadership. The MBG’s vision

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statement is also a value statement, but it does not indicate how those values are attained or sustained, and completely avoids the issue of power relationships.

By contrast, the principle-based ethos of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance provided an example for groups in the Gulf of Maine.

Developed in 1995 by Visa credit card founder Dee Hock, fishermen, conservationists, and marine policy leaders, the group’s message was simple: align diverse interests through basic principles.39 It did so through a series of meetings to build consensus, not unlike those of the MBG of the same time period. Likewise, its vision statement was similar to that of the ranchers: “to restore and enhance an enduring northwest Atlantic marine system, which supports a healthy diversity and abundance of marine life and human uses.”40 However, beyond this general mission statement, the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance also developed detailed principles of organization.

For example, they sought to “vest authority in and make decisions at the most local level that includes all relevant and affected parties.”41 They also developed principles of practice, including “encourage adaptability, diversity, flexibility, learning, and innovation in all governance processes and practices.” These instructions are considerably more detailed than those of the MBG, stressing the importance of developing preconditions for innovation that also sustain the integrity of the organization.

There are essentially two kinds of principles: ethical and procedural.

For effective governance and resilience design, it is important to incorporate and follow both and to ensure that there are provisions requiring the principles be followed. What happens if the principles are violated? The implications of such actions are not trivial, as in the case of the Downeast Fisheries Partnership (considered in chapter 3). In this case, when the organization did not follow its own principles, some of the most senior and influential organizations crucial for the group’s long-term success did not join the endeavor. In my experience, ethical breaches are the single greatest reason why conservation organizations do not reach their potential and why collaborative partnerships collapse. Too often, organizations assume that because they are doing important work, the ends justify the means. However, conservation at its core is an ethical venture, and ensuring that clear principles are maintained is essential to long-term success.

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Especially as the group evolves through time, it is important to have clear guidelines about how the organization will conduct itself, as well as clear boundaries as to the group’s priorities to prevent mission creep.

In the next section we transition from a review of levers for implementing effective or sustainable practice to their actual implementation.

This is an area not often considered in the conservation literature, where it is assumed that the implementation phase is implicit. But it can often be the most challenging facet of the process.

Putting Principles into Practice Effective practice is as much about pragmatism as idealism. In attaining durable solutions at evolutionarily relevant scales, one needs to develop the organizational infrastructure to sustain the process. How does one turn principles into practice?

Funding is the master key that links, locks, or unlocks much of the process of sustaining relevant programs. The marriage of finance and conservation is perhaps the ultimate driver of effective conservation and sustainable land use.42 Funding introduces another scale issue (fig. 6.6).

The problem with most grants and agreements is that they are generally short-term solutions to long-term problems. Some of the greatest threats and opportunities exist for sustaining open spaces in the context of this fundamental discontinuity.43 The greatest challenges reside in the transition period, from approximately seven to ten years, when a program has been around long enough to be old to funders but is not yet truly established. The MBG’s science program is an excellent example. After eight years, it was well established, serving as an effective foundation for policy making, but having an increasingly difficult time acquiring the funding it needed to continue.

By the tenth year, funding had all but dried up, despite MBG’s wellregarded work. Rather than growing or evolving, the science program became increasingly simplified and conservative in response to dwindling levels of support. The irony was that the value of the research dramatically increased after the first years of the program even though the costs of experimental research dramatically declined. Ironically, by taking a short-term approach, funders often accrue the most expense for the least return from their investment.44 The rarely taken long-term approach to

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Figure 6.6. A fundamental disconnect in conservation is between the length of time a funder will remain engaged (typically three to five years) and the many decades it takes to attain large-scale progress. However, the academic literature largely ignores finance, which may be the most fundamental constraint on conservation. Developing strategies to promote longevity is essential for allowing conservation to operate at meaningful temporal and spatial scales.

science and conservation investment, is what actually leads to the biggest payoffs.45 In the MBG example, the challenges seem to be largely institutional.

Although the science had demonstrated its utility, these lessons were largely lost on the funding community.46 In the end, the agencies, foundations, and even large conservation nongovernmental organizations that initially supported the MBG appear to have learned comparatively little from more than a decade of effort and over a million dollars of investment.47

Changing the Rules of the Game The examples in the previous section illustrate how practitioners and the process of developing long-term, durable approaches have been dealt a losing hand under the current rules of the game. There is a fundamental disconnect between the scale of conservation, stewardship, and science and that of funding. One of the first steps to designing for resilience

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is recognizing some of the common traps and short-term illusions that thwart long-term progress. Developing an effective science of open spaces means developing the resilience design to transcend these traps.

Some of the major pitfalls and essential responses are the following:

The Intellectual Trap Disciplines—the silos that organize academia—often have little bearing in the “real world.” There is considerable danger in applying strictly academic approaches, because complex problems typically do not fall into the neat and well-defined boundaries of intellectual disciplines. Though interest in socioecological systems has begun to change the emphasis of academia from single to transdisciplinary approaches, there are still relatively few rewards and incentives for cutting-edge research that spans disciplines.48 Even the term socioecological is largely an artifact of an academic approach that seeks a synthesis, but still implies a dichotomy between disciplines.49 By contrast, a science of open spaces seeks to break down this dichotomy and redefine the underlying incentive structure by demonstrating how transdisciplinary approaches grounded in place can expand the scale and scope of science and conservation.

The Private-Funding Trap Grants and foundation support provide an illusion of organizational sustainability (fig. 6.6). Foundations, as with most organizations, need to grow and evolve, and thus they rarely stay with a given project for more than a few years, and frequently do not have a good exit strategy for when they leave. External funding is crucial for jump-starting a conservation program, but real sustainability comes from within and is the outcome of an effective design process that aligns ecological and economic constraints, goals, and scale. Therefore, external funding can be looked at only as a partial solution. Self-funding mechanisms that develop internal funding streams may be the only long-term means of ensuring a program’s survival.50 The Federal-Funding Trap Federal funding can be extremely political, often having fewer formal review guidelines than other types of support. But perhaps the bigger issue

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is the bureaucratic hoop-jumping involved with federal grants, which can be extremely time-intensive. I typically consider a dollar from a federal grant to be worth about half of one from private foundations due to the added administrative time and other costs. The Malpai example illustrated how there can also be extremely slow turnaround time in reimbursements, which can be crushing to smaller organizations. But more importantly, the relationships with federal funders need to be managed to keep abreast of rapidly changing political mandates or procedural changes that can severely derail the process. External oversight and other means of addressing the extreme power imbalance when developing partnerships with federal agencies should be built into the process from the beginning.

The Nonprofit Trap The time and effort required to maintain a nongovernmental organization (NGO) are often underestimated. As with the rest of the federal government, the drive for accountability has increased the time and expense to nonprofit operations of meeting Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidelines; small NGOs have been drawing increasing levels of scrutiny in recent years and becoming a popular target of IRS audits. Without the permanent legal and administrative staff or a means of readily funding such unpredictable costs, dealing with the inevitable entanglements with the IRS is an unanticipated challenge not built into most business plans.

Even more problematic is that much of this tax work has become too complex to be handled by anyone other than an expert. Although many accountants claim to have expertise with NGOs, few actually do, and by the time the individual or organization discovers this, they are frequently on the hook for hefty fines and penalties or at a minimum a lot of unanticipated administrative work. One colleague who recently started an NGO went through three accountants before finding a reliable one, and she is an attorney with considerable tax savvy. NGO status should be a strategy of last resort, undertaken only after other options have been considered.

For-profit status, or using a fiscal sponsor to handle grants and donations, may be much less expensive and time-consuming, allowing the organization to focus on building capacity, rather than getting sucked into the funding vortex. It takes financial resources to sustain the accounting and reporting requirements associated with being a nonprofit. Here again,

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the usual assumptions about effective science and conservation typically ignore the most important decisions an individual or organization makes.

Such weighty decisions as tax structure rarely receive the thoughtful and strategic consideration such profound decisions require.

The Conservation Trap Conventional conservation has a number of pitfalls or pathologies that limit its effectiveness. These constraints include (1) a lack of vision of how an organization’s mission fits in with the broader conservation movement; (2) a narrowly defined mission to save particular wildlife species or pieces of the landscape, rather than working to conserve an integrated whole; (3) turf battles (an unwillingness to work with other organizations with complementary goals); (4) a perceived lack of funding potential for projects and operating expenses translated into narrow, ineffective scopes of work; and (5) various versions of “founder’s syndrome,” a lack of organizational flexibility because decisions are heavily influenced by the original founder, or the current leadership team persists in imitating the founder’s decision-making style. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg question to determine whether these pathologies are the outcome of conventional conservation approaches or are precipitated by current pathologies in the funding structure. Likely as not, it is a bit of both. Institutional designs typically avoid considering these issues, assuming they will not occur, and yet they are part and parcel of the process. Considering and anticipating them is foundational to sustaining effective practice; mitigating these intrinsic challenges must be built into program design from the inception.

So how does one organize an approach to avoid these pitfalls? The collective impact paradigm, discussed in chapter 3, provides a structure (fig.

6.7) for how to develop effective science and policy in large, complex systems. The three phases of design, including “initiate action,” “organize for impact,” and “sustain action and impact,” are key to the development of a flexible process capable of evolving to meet changing circumstances.

This approach provides a good initial framework for researchers and practitioners alike who are seeking to develop large-scale conservation and science.

As in all the examples that ground this book, stewardship and sustainability are facilitated or destroyed through alignment of economic

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Figure 6.7. The phases of collective impact spelled out by Hanleybrown et al.

(2012) provide a good road map for practitioners by recognizing relevant action in all three stages, which is key to organizing and sustaining collaboratives of all sizes.

incentives with ecological realities nested in a cultural context (fig. 6.8).51 What ultimately leads to success or failure is not only the internal program design, but also the external constraints imposed by funders. Do funding strategies inadvertently create perverse incentives or unwinnable frameworks, or set in place the preconditions for sustainability and longterm success? In summarizing the core principles of outcome design, several key points emerge: • Successful design must be grounded in a clear statement of principles.

This includes broad, overarching value statements, as well as more detailed principles of organization, ethics, or practice. • Guiding principles should include provisions for periodic external review and a clear and transparent process of priority setting, as well as a process for addressing deficiencies if they arise. • The design must be long term and inclusive, working from the need to sustain programs for multiple decades.

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• Sustainability depends, in large measure, upon finance. Strategies need to build local capacity and, to the extent possible, include a plan for reducing donor dependence after the startup period of the program. • Where long-term donor support is essential, learning feedback loops must include donors, because they often do not learn and evolve alongside the organizations they are supporting. • Be wary of opportunity costs and indirect effects. Less is more in developing processes and programs that generate resilience rather than debt or other barriers to institutional flexibility. In the end, financial constraints are another scaling issue needing alignment between policy and process.

Concluding Remarks A science of open spaces addresses the conservation paradox in which small systems are relatively easy to manage but too small to be sustainable, while large systems are ecologically sustainable, but comparatively

Figure 6.8. Large-scale science and policy is a bit like Russian dolls where researchers typically focus on the smaller internal elements, such as experimental design, while missing the larger social context within which science and policy are embedded. Practitioners typically focus on the larger social context, while missing the integral science and policy elements that provide the critical knowledge feedbacks essential for meaningful conservation. A science of open spaces in general, and resilience design in particular, seek to break down the artificial boundaries between science and policy and show that success for both is completely entwined.

(Photo courtesy of Shutterfly.)

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difficult to manage. The approach outlined in the preceding pages demonstrates that effective science and policy are akin to a nested set of perspectives, like a series of Russian dolls, each doll integrated into, and composed of the other, with effective science requiring the development of the preconditions for sustainable action as outlined in resilience design.

This chapter proposes that any plan to sustain large-scale systems must be designed with resilience foremost in mind. As with all complex adaptive systems, a science of open spaces is based on a few ground rules or guiding principles. What grows out of these guidelines is emergent, dynamic, and multifaceted. The aim is to build self-supporting systems in large landscapes using self-interest as a driver for, rather than a barrier to, progress. This is done by attaining and sustaining the organization’s vision through approaches that represent ecological and economic winwins. Without such alignment, durability over the long term is all but impossible.

The science of open spaces addresses the pathologies that lead to loss and implements design principles that encourage resilience and renewal.

There are no shortcuts; successful conservation is a multidecade process of seeking solutions, avoiding traps, embracing experimentation, and embodying the lessons from successes, while also recognizing and learning from failure. The preceding pages have provided one framework for considering the complex relationship between humanity and the planet we inhabit. May it help to provide a path forward in more effectively addressing change in one of Earth’s most rapidly declining assets—its open spaces.

The Science of Open Spaces Theory and Practice for Conserving Large Complex Systems

Since the days of the American Frontier, our management policies have promoted a one-size-fits-all mentality for large, complex landscapes. Landscape ecologist Charles Curtin argues that instead we need a science-based approach that accounts for the dynamic nature of complex systems and gives local stakeholders a say in their futures.

The Science of Open Spaces proposes that we return to “first principles”—fundamental physical laws of the universe— and think about complex systems from the ground up based on modern scientific theory backed up by practical expeCharles G. Curtin ISBN: 9781597269933 Paperback: $40.00 August 2015

rience. Curtin walks us through foundational concepts of thermodynamics, ecology, sociology, and resilience theory, applying them to real-world examples from years he has spent designing large-scale, place-based collaborative research programs in the United States and around the world.

“First principles” can save our open spaces Charles G. Curtin is a senior fellow at the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana and a landscape ecologist at the Center for Large Landscape Conservation. He helped design some of the largest place-based collaborative research programs in the U.S., including the Malpai Borderlands conservation area in the southwest and Downeast Initiative in the western Atlantic. He has helped established academic programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Antioch University with a focus on collaborative approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

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STATE OF THE WORLD

EarthEd __________

Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet

T H E W O R L D WA T C H I N S T I T U T E

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EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet “EarthEd is a welcome and urgently needed addition to the education of children. With their entire futures at risk from our current path, youth will benefit greatly from the wisdom and perspectives in these essays. Adults are often reluctant to change their lifestyles, but when their children see the world through the lens of environmentalism and ask parents to protect their futures, that can galvanize change.”

—David Suzuki, award-winning scientist, environmentalist, and broadcaster “The strength of EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet is the timeliness of its topic and the appeal of up-to-date scholarship and thinking coupled with the pedagogical implications and best practice applications. The book provides numerous, diverse, and exciting models of learning rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing, in learning from and in nature, in innovative collaborations between schools and governments, and in programs designed to make goals of sustainable development tangible and meaningful.”

—Thomas Walker, Director of the Environmental Studies Master’s Program, Goucher College “This book examines how we can rethink education to foster students’ natural development of their best selves—to allow them to play, to let them connect with nature, to encourage creativity through the arts, and to engage with issues through meaningful ‘real world’ experiences. The good news is that these steps are achievable in schools. And the more individual educators do them, the more chance we collectively have of helping shift education to prepare students for the realities of the future they face. Though it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the challenges facing our planet, this volume outlines actionable, viable, and satisfying shifts that we can make in the education of the next generation of leaders.”

— Buffy Cushman-Patz, Founder and School Leader of the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability (SEEQS) “The timing and theme of EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet is critically ­important to all of humanity. The planet’s survival rests on works such as this to inspire a new generation of educators to help students navigate the pathways toward a just and sustainable future.”

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STATE OF THE WORLD

EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet

Other Worldwatch Books State of the World 1984 through 2016 (an annual report on progress toward a sustainable society) Vital Signs 1992 through 2003 and 2005 through 2015 (a report on the trends that are shaping our future) Saving the Planet Lester R. Brown Christopher Flavin Sandra Postel

How Much Is Enough?

Alan ៀ ein Durning

Last Oasis

Sandra Postel

Full House

Lester R. Brown Hal Kane

Power Surge

Christopher Flavin Nicholas Lenssen

Who Will Feed China?

Lester R. Brown

Tough Choices Lester R. Brown

Fighting for Survival Michael Renner

ៀ e Natural Wealth of Nations David Malin Roodman

Life Out of Bounds Chris Bright

Beyond Malthus Lester R. Brown Gary Gardner Brian Halweil

Pillar of Sand Sandra Postel

Vanishing Borders Hilary French

Eat Here

Brian Halweil

Inspiring Progress Gary Gardner

STATE OF THE WORLD

EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet Erik Assadourian, Project Director Cem İskender Aydın Pamela Barker Nicole Bell Monica Berger-González Marvin W. Berkowitz Bill Bigelow Eve Bratman Kate Brunette Kelli Bush Melissa Campbell Liliana Caughman David Christian Dwight E. Collins Jonathan Dawson Rafael Díaz-Salazar Robert Engelman Joshua Farley Kei Franklin Russell M. Genet Josh Golin Dag O. Hessen

Andrew J. Hoffman Craig Holdrege Daniel Hoornweg Nadine Ibrahim Esbjörn Jorsäter Mona Kaidbey Lesley Le Grange Laura Lengnick Carri J. LeRoy Chibulu Luo Helen Maguire Michael Maniates Monica M. Martinez Amanda McCloat Amy McConnell Franklin Dennis McGrath Alexander Mehlmann Marilyn Mehlmann Asher Miller Melissa K. Nelson Simon Nicholson

Erik Assadourian and Lisa Mastny, Editors

Washington | Covelo | London

Sabine O’Hara Hugo Oliveira Ali Değer Özbakır Jessica Pierce Raquel Pinderhughes Olena Pometun Luis González Reyes Mark Ritchie Jacob Rodenburg Bunker Roy Michael Sanio Deirdre Shelly David Sobel Michael K. Stone Linda Booth Sweeney Takako Takano Vanessa Timmer Joslyn Rose Trivett David Whitebread Nancy Lee Wood Tetsuro Yasuda

Copyright © 2017 by Worldwatch Institute 1400 16th Street, NW Suite 430 Washington, DC 20036 www.worldwatch.org ἀe State of the World and Worldwatch Institute trademarks are reg­is­tered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. ἀ e views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Worldwatch Institute; of its directors, officers, or staff; or of its funders.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island Press, 2000 M Street, NW, Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036.

Island Press is a trademark of Island Press/ἀ e Center for Resource Economics.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017931703 ISBN 13: 978-1-61091-842-8 ISBN 10: 1-61091-842-8 ἀ e text of this book is composed in Minion Pro, with the display set in Myriad Pro. Book design and composition by Lyle Rosbotham.

Printed on recycled, acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America For additional related and updated content, videos, blog posts, and links, and to learn more about Worldwatch’s EarthEd Catalyst Network, visit www.EarthEd.info.

ៀ is book is dedicated to the teachers of the world: those connecting students to the living, breathing cycles of the Earth; those teaching character, life skills, and the ability to think critically and creatively about the future; and, most importantly, those teaching students to be bold leaders who will defend and heal the Earth in the tumultuous centuries ahead.

Worldwatch Institute Board of Directors Ed Groark Chair and Acting President united states Robert Charles Friese Vice Chair united states John Robbins Treasurer united states Mike Biddle united states

Tom Crain united states James Dehlsen united states Edith Eddy united states Ping He united states Stefan Mueller united states

David W. Orr united states Scott Schotter united states Richard Swanson united states Emeritus: Ă˜ystein Dahle norway Abderrahman Khene algeria

Worldwatch Institute Staff Ed Groark Acting President Kevin De Cuba Caribbean Program Manager Barbara Fallin Director of Finance and Administration Gary Gardner Director of Publications Gaelle Gourmelon Marketing and Communications Director

Philip Killeen Research Associate, Climate and Energy Program

Mary C. Redfern Director of Institutional Relations, Development

Haibing Ma China Program Manager

Michael Renner Senior Researcher

Lisa Mastny Senior Editor

Bryan Rohena Energy Specialist, Caribbean Program

Alexander Ochs Director, Climate and Energy Program Tom Prugh Senior Researcher

Worldwatch Institute Fellows and Consultants Erik Assadourian Senior Fellow

Corey Perkins Information Technology Manager

Robert Engelman President Emeritus/Senior Fellow

Lyle Rosbotham Art and Design Consultant

Wanqing Zhou Research Associate, Food and Agriculture Program

Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv David Orr Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

INTR OD U C TI O N 1 EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Erik Assadourian

PAR T ONE: E A R TH E D U C ATI O N F UN DAM E N TA L S 2 Outdoor School for All: Reconnecting Children to Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 David Sobel 3 Ecoliteracy and Schooling for Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Michael K. Stone 4 Education for the Eighth Fire: Indigeneity and Native Ways of Learning . . . . . . . 49 Melissa K. Nelson 5 Pathway to Stewardship: A Framework for Children and Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Jacob Rodenburg and Nicole Bell 6 Growing a New School Food Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Luis Gonzรกlez Reyes 7 แผ e Centrality of Character Education for Creating and Sustaining a Just World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Marvin W. Berkowitz 8 Social and Emotional Learning for a Challenging Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Pamela Barker and Amy McConnell Franklin 9 Prioritizing Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 David Whitebread ix

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10 Looking the Monster in the Eye: Drawing Comics for Sustainability . . . . . . . . . 117 Marilyn Mehlmann with Esbjörn Jorsäter, Alexander Mehlmann, and Olena Pometun 11 Deeper Learning and the Future of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Dennis McGrath and Monica M. Martinez 12 All Systems Go! Developing a Generation of “Systems-Smart” Kids . . . . . . . . . . 141 Linda Booth Sweeney 13 Reining in the Commercialization of Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Josh Golin and Melissa Campbell 14 Home Economics Education: Preparation for a Sustainable and Healthy Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Helen Maguire and Amanda McCloat 15 Our Bodies, Our Future: Expanding Comprehensive Sexuality Education . . . . 179 Mona Kaidbey and Robert Engelman

PA R T T WO : HI G HE R E D U C AT I ON R E I MAG I N E D 16 Suddenly More ἀ an Academic: Higher Education for a Post-Growth World . . 193 Michael Maniates 17 Bringing the Classroom Back to Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Jonathan Dawson and Hugo Oliveira 18 Preparing Vocational Training for the Eco-Technical Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Nancy Lee Wood 19 Sustainability Education in Prisons: Transforming Lives, Transforming the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Joslyn Rose Trivett, Raquel Pinderhughes, Kelli Bush, Liliana Caughman, and Carri J. LeRoy 20 Bringing the Earth Back into Economics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Joshua Farley 21 New Times, New Tools: Agricultural Education for the Twenty-First Century . . 259 Laura Lengnick 22 Educating Engineers for the Anthropocene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Daniel Hoornweg, Nadine Ibrahim, and Chibulu Luo 23 ἀ e Evolving Focus of Business Sustainability Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Andrew J. Hoffman

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24 Teaching Doctors to Care for Patient and Planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Jessica Pierce

CONCLU S I O N 25 ἀ e Future of Education: A Glimpse from 2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Erik Assadourian Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

C H A P T E R

16

Suddenly More Than Academic: Higher Education for a Post-Growth World Michael Maniates Over the past twenty years, higher education has undergone an environmental revolution. Campus sustainability offices that track resource use and promote eco-efficiency are becoming the norm. The number of academic programs in sustainability science and environmental studies has increased, as have student enrollments and passion. New ac ademic journals have flourished, and with them venues for publication by young academics aspiring to become tenured professors in the field. It is true that many colleges and universities worldwide have not fully embraced this momentum: they have yet to incorporate tenets of sustainability into their hiring, curriculum, infrastructure planning, or investment strategies. But these institutions are viewed increasingly as outliers that poorly serve their students and the social good. Anthony Cortese, an early advocate of environmental stewardship within higher education, gets it right w hen h e recently o bserved t hat “hig her e ducation’s rapidly exp anding response to this [environmental] challenge over the last two decades is a beacon of hope in a sea of turbulence.”1 Cortese’s beacon of hope is powered by an array of college and university sustainability programs, some of which are described here. It is a bright light that is not easily dismissed, but it must now evolve if it is to guide us though the coming turbulence of environmental change and social turmoil. The reason is both straightforward and stark: we are getting our first real taste of a post-growth world where rapid, sustained economic growth is a t hing of the past, and it looks to be a bumpy ride.

Higher e ducation i s uniq uely p ositioned t o n urture a nd di sseminate t he social innovations that we must embrace to make our way to a world free from Michael Maniates is professor of environmental studies at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. www.EarthEd.info

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the environmentally destructive imperative of rapid and sustained economic growth. Aἀer all, colleges and universities are globally distributed, loosely networked around an expanding agenda of sustainability, and open to new ideas.

They command respect. But they also are creatures of the high-growth world from which we must exit: they depend upon economic growth and oἀen promote it, and, as a result, the sustainability efforts that flow from them are oἀen tailored to it. If how we school our children is an important part of the puzzle of human prosperity in a t urbulent t wenty-first century, few t asks are more important than reorienting higher education toward a post-growth future.

Thriving in a Post-Growth World?

For almost forty-five years, since the 1972 publication of ἀ e Limits to Growth, a s liver o f t he en vironmental m ovement h as s truggled t o f rame un ending economic g rowth a s a co re dr iver o f en vironmental h arm. They a rgue t hat an ever-expanding economy generates exponentially increasing pressures on environmental systems that will inevitably carry us beyond the “safe operating space” of the planet. From the depletion of forests and fisheries, to ocean plastic pollution and climate change, it is the staggering growth in the volume of materials extracted, products consumed, and waste produced that brings us to the doorstep of an environmental unraveling. Emergent “green” technologies—renewable energy, polyculture agriculture, decarbonized transportation systems, reduced product packaging, and the like—can blunt these impacts, but not for long, since their ameliorative effects are quickly swamped by the environmental p enalty o f addi tional g rowth. To r eap l asting b enefits f rom these technological innovations, we need a suite of parallel social innovations to release us from political and economic systems addicted to growth.2 These a rguments h ave l argely fa llen o n de af e ars. R ather t han v iewing economic g rowth a s a s ource o f environmental deg radation, m ost s ee i t a s essential to sustainability. To them, an ever-expanding economy drives technological inn ovation w hile liἀ ing b illions o ut o f en vironmentally des tructive poverty. Growth also means more government revenue, which supports ambitious environmental initiatives at no cost to other programs, thus avoiding nasty political conflict. From this vantage point, growth is the solution, not the problem, so long as it is environmentally sound growth. The job of higher education is to train students and to conduct research that produces the technologies and practices that fuel this growth and turns it from “brown” to “green.”

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For t he p ast f ew y ears, t his p ro-growth log ic h as b een un der es pecially fierce assault by scholars and activists. (See Chapter 20.) One is Boston College sociologist Julie Schor, who calls for a “slow consumption” movement inspired by t he push toward “slow food” and w rites p ersuasively about a “ plentitude economy” divorced from the growth imperative. Another is economist Richard Norgaard, professor emeritus of energy and resources at the University of California at Berkeley, who likens today’s obsession with growth to a modern-­ day religion built around a disastrous faith. “The economy,” Norgaard suggests, “really is the world’s greatest faith-based organization.” And Gus Speth, former dean o f t he p restigious Yale S chool o f Forestry a nd Environmental S tudies, recently wrote that “it is time for Americans to move to a post-growth society, where our communities and families are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth.”3 The rough outline of social innovations for this post-growth society is clear.

As S peth exp lains: “[W ]e a lready k now t he t ypes o f p olicies t hat m ove u s toward a p ost-growth economy that sustains both human and natural communities . . . . [There i s] a lo ng li st of public p olicies t hat would slow GDP growth, thus sparing the environment, while simultaneously improving social and in dividual w ell-being.” S peth’s li st, w hich dra ws o n w ork b y n umerous scholars, includes shorter workweeks, longer vacations, and more investment in local, small-scale economic enterprises that prosper by staying small. A shiἀ to worker cooperatives and community banking with a strong commitment to social equity and environmental limits also makes the list. So too do progressive t axation p olicies, s eed g rants to promote community entrepreneurship, and guarantees for part-time workers.4 Speth’s recommendations could easily be dismissed by those unpersuaded by t he p ost-growth a rgument, ex cept f or o ne g laring r eality: f or m ore t han a de cade, we have b een living in t he very low-growth world t hat many dismiss a s im possible, h opelessly di smal, o r a r etreat t o s ome d ark a ge. “ Economic growth,” explains Neil Irwin of the New York Times, “has been weaker for longer than i t has been in the lif etime of most people on E arth.” Since 2001, U.S. e conomic growth p er c apita rose 0.9 percent a y ear, a lmost a 60 percent decline from the 2.2 percent annual increase between 1947 and 2000.

Economic growth in Western Europe and Japan has been even lower. Because of a number of still-unclear factors—aging populations, slowing population growth, and t he intermittency of e conomically t ransformative t echnologies, among others—there is good reason to expect this tepid growth to continue, with some ups and downs, for the foreseeable future. These will be turbulent

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times that call for a particular kind of education across colleges and universities. (See Box 16–1.)5 It is tempting to double-down on the economic growth machine by mobilizing multiple forces in society, including higher education, to get us back to the time of 2 percent-plus growth per year. In the short run, this might work, but i t u ltimately w ill h eighten t he co nflict b etween exp onential e conomic growth and the integrity of environmental systems upon which human prosperity rests. Much of this growth, aἀer all, delivers ambiguous benefits, and some of it actively undermines human prosperity. In the end, we will still need to de al w ith t he implications of p ersistent low- or n o-growth—the m aterial base of t he e conomy c annot continue t o g row exp onentially—with a n e ven more despoiled environment on our hands.6 More important, pining for the “good old days” of robust growth diverts us from the critical task of adjusting, now, to a low-growth world in ways that are j ust, e quitable, dem ocratic, a nd en vironmentally r estorative. E ven if w e believed that a return to muscular growth was just a few years away, wouldn’t we want to explore how to gracefully adapt to our current conditions, if only as an insurance policy against the possibility that the days of high growth are behind us? Few, if any, of the social innovations described by Speth are inherently anti-growth, so there is little to lose by assessing and spreading them as we are able.

For reasons still opaque to e conomists, slow g rowth is no longer a f uzzy wish tossed about by environmental scholars. It is here, among us, in our communities, on the ground, affecting our pocketbooks and driving our politics.

It is no longer just academic. Rather than treating tepid growth as a problem to be solved (“how do we get the economy growing again?”), higher education can r eclaim i ts b eacon o f s ustainability b y a ttacking a n a ltogether different but immediately relevant question: How do complex human societies thrive— environmentally, equitably, and justly—in a post-growth world?

Higher Education and the Growth Machine Under normal cir cumstances, i t would b e foolhardy t o expect co lleges a nd universities to tackle this question. Aἀer all, higher education has long been understood as an engine of economic growth. When educational researchers Anna Valero and John Van Reenan show that universities around the world drive economic growth, their results are publicized by higher education leaders as evidence that the university is doing its job. No one raises an eyebrow when

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Box 16–1. Running the Rapids The past fifteen years of low economic growth helps us envision a post-growth society.

But a sluggish economy is no cause for celebration. Slow growth constrains government spending and drives politically toxic zero-sum thinking, and it can exacerbate social inequality, leading to deep feelings of marginalization. That makes it difficult to marshal the shared commitment critical to a sustainable future. These forces also can engender a yearning for strong leadership, and even authoritarianism, that offers comforting answers to complex questions. Spin grows more important than fact, and elite decision making informed by careful analysis falls into disrepute. All this arises at a moment of environmental instability and human hardship spawned by climate instability, water scarcity, collapsing fisheries, and stark economic inequality.

It is going to be a bumpy ride to a post-growth future of prosperity and justice. Navigating this turbulence requires college and university students that are imbued with a special set of skills and temperaments: a steely equanimity, adept at conflict management, familiar with notions of social change, well versed in the science of sustainability with a rootedness in values of justice and community, and more at home in the metaphorical turbulence of whitewater rafting than the placid predictability of canoeing on a gentle summer’s day.

Alas, these are not the sort of people that higher education typically graduates. Most institutions focus on producing experts who will command the respect of policy makers and citizens by virtue of their training. They are canoeists, poorly acclimated to a world of surprise, unpredictability, and opportunity.

Teaching for this coming turbulence does not mean skimping on analytic rigor. But it does require more than getting the facts right in the classroom. Students must become practiced in coping with ambiguity and diffusing conflict around contentious environmental issues, drawing with ease on a healthy mix of qualitative and quantitative insight.

They will be well served by their instructors if they come to understand themselves not as “I have the right answer” elites, ready to assume their place in the halls (or cubicles) of power, but as “knowledge brokers” tasked with creating and disseminating knowledge in ways that privilege values of precaution, systems thinking, and advocacy for the defenseless—typically the poor, the environment, and future generations.

Cultivating these orientations calls for a special breed of professor, one that is open to curating student experiences that foster boldness and humility. Fortunately, professors like these exist, and they are no longer restricted to institutions such as College of the Atlantic or Prescott College, both exemplars of sustainability. Higher education is changing, and for the better, but it must quicken its pace if students are to confidently run the rapids to come.

Source: See endnote 5.

Dave Brenner, SNRE

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administrators such as Elisa Stephens, president of the Arts Academy in Sa n Francisco, assert that “higher education, job creation, and economic growth” are in extricably linked. History explains much. In t he United States, public universities were launched in the nineteenth century to innovate agricultural and en gineering p ractices in s ervice o f e conomic g rowth. (S ee C hapters 21 and 22.) The co ntemporary in carnation o f E uropean uni versities f ollows a similar path. It is by design, not by h appenstance, t hat hig her education in i ts modern form is a core component of “the great acceleration”—the exp onential increase in p roduction, co nsumption, a nd en vironmental assault since 1950.7 Higher education’s reading of sustainability r eflects t his m arriage t o g rowth. D espite lo ἀy and oἀen genuine commitments to planetary health by many colleges a nd uni versities, t he b ulk Students at the University of Michigan take part in a “Waste Audit & of t heir s ustainability ini tiatives Education Day” sponsored by the Ross School of Business. center o n f our p ractical g oals: increasing efficiency, reducing waste, decarbonizing energy use where affordable, and improving the institution’s environmental image. Programs that trim energy u se, wa ter co nsumption, a nd wa ste p roduction t ypically t ake cen ter stage, and for good reason: they generate positive publicity and cultivate student goodwill while producing financial savings. All three then can be redirected to support the overall growth of the institution.8 This p attern s urfaces in UI G reen M etric’s “ World U niversity R anking,” which a ssesses c ampuses o n wa ste g eneration, wa ter u se, c arbon f ootprint, transportation choices, infrastructure innovation, and a catch-all “education” category. The t op institutions a re t echnologically inn ovative, a re s ensitive to t he s ourcing of f ood a nd en ergy, a nd dem onstrate h ow t o do m ore w ith less, s o t hat t hey c an t hen g row in o ther ways. The s ame l argely h olds t rue for the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AA SHE), w hich b y J uly 2016 h ad a nalyzed inf ormation f rom a lmost four hundred colleges and universities in nine countries. For AASHE, the best colleges and universities are becoming smarter in t heir resource use and are

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rewarding faculty for helping their students and the larger world do the same.

They are good green consumers at an all-campus level, much like individual households that try to “save the planet” by buying recycled products or using renewable energy, and sharing their experiences with their neighbors.9 These accomplishments are not t rivial. Twenty years ago, most observers would have dismissed them as impossible. They reveal remarkable flexibility and innovation, proving that higher education can indeed become a “beacon of hope in a turbulent world.”

But with few exceptions, these initiatives accept and oἀen facilitate a social logic o f unr estrained e conomic g rowth. R ecycling ini tiatives o n c ampus marginalize questions about t he g rowth of disposables in in dustrial s ociety; instead, r ecycling i s o ἀen exp erienced a s a r eward f or co nsumption. C omposting o f f ood wa ste i s admira ble, b ut i t m ay side line q uestions a bout t he drivers o f wa ste o r t he e cological a ffordability o f m eat. En ergy- a nd wa ter-­ efficiency savings are redirected to facilitate growth in other areas of campus operations. A much-needed shiἀ to decarbonized energy sources skirts more fundamental questions of how much energy is enough. And divestment from fossil fuel providers, a new and important feature of campus sustainability (see Box 16–2), nevertheless normalizes a broader logic of growth-driven investments in private firms that themselves are wellsprings of growth.10 By accepting growth as given, higher education undercuts its considerable power to drive lasting sustainability. Consider, for example, the common scenario where funds generated by energy-efficiency improvements in academic buildings are redirected to faculty research. Professors are delighted, as is the admissions office, which can trumpet the greening of the university. But the overall c arbon f ootprint o f t he c ampus g rows a s h appy fac ulty fly t o m ore international conferences to share their research with colleagues. Expand this example, and it becomes apparent that, when growth is king, the environmental b enefits of s ustainability initiatives in o ne s ector of t he e conomy c an b e swamped by growth in a nother. This is not an argument against energy efficiency or other smart technological innovations; it is a p lea to combine t he familiar focus on eco-efficiency and decarbonization with searching initiatives for a post-growth world.

Now is the moment for higher education to mobilize around this plea, but it will not be easy. Colleges and universities are not just agents of economic growth; they also depend upon it, which makes it doubly hard for them to envision a p ost-growth w orld. B igger b udgets, n ew b uildings, b etter-paid faculty, an expanding student body—all are markers of institutional success,

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Box 16–2. Student Activism and Training Within the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement Student organizers on college and university campuses have begun pushing—hard—for institutional endowments and other funds to be stripped clean of investments that support the fossil fuel industry.

Today, a movement that began in the United States is finding global reach. The effort also has moved beyond higher education to challenge other institutions to consider their role in supporting fossil fuel extraction. By the end of 2016, more than six hundred institutions, including seventy-five colleges and universities, dozens of religious institutions, over a hundred foundations, and well over fifty municipalities, together representing more than $3.4 trillion in assets, had committed to some level of divestment from fossil fuels.

Although unlikely to make a big dent in company bottom lines, the divestment push ratchets up the moral stakes. The campaign raises hard questions for fossil fuel companies and for the investments and investors that support their operations.

More than this, the fossil fuel divestment effort has proved an extraordinary training ground for a new breed of student climate activists. The campaign has discovered a way to take the intractable challenge of climate change and to direct the energies of students toward direct, creative forms of action against an identifiable target. Students are learning what it takes to move stubborn institutions in positive directions, by employing insider/ outsider campaigning strategies, by embracing a climate justice framing that broadens the set of constituencies interested in working for divestment, and by radicalizing the very notion of campus sustainability.

The student leaders of the divestment push are suggesting that for a campus to carry the label “sustainable,” it must do more than commit to green buildings and on-campus composting. Instead, these students are saying, a truly sustainable campus is one that contributes to tackling rather than perpetuating the world’s most critical problems.

Colleges and universities remain our principal institutions for post-secondary education and for the creation of new knowledge. Traditional forms of teaching and learning matter for the transition to sustainability. The fossil fuel divestment campaign shows, however, that some of the most important learning is happening outside the walls of classrooms, as students define for themselves the opportunities that exist in taking up the climate challenge.

—Eve Bratman, Franklin & Marshall College —Kate Brunette, Raise Up WA —Simon Nicholson, American University —Deirdre Shelly, 350.org Source: See endnote 10.

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and all become difficult to achieve amid slow economic growth and pinched public funding.

It is never clear, moreover, how much of each is enough given the spiraling “arms race” in higher education, where new facilities and programs at one university must be matched by other institutions to avoid losing ground in the battle f or g ood ra tings, s trong s tudents, a nd t op fac ulty. C ornell University economist Robert Frank captures it perfectly when he notes that “universities face increased pressure to pay hig her salaries to star fac ulty; to spend more on marketing, student services, and amenities; and to offer ever-more generous financial aid to top-ranked students from high-income families. It is little wonder, then, that their financial situations have grown more precarious.”11 Happily, w e do n ot li ve un der n ormal cir cumstances. O ur c urrent b out of lo w g rowth cr eates o pportunities t o r eorient t he i vory t ower t oward a post-growth world. Smart institutions will not bet the farm on a low-growth future—that w ould r un co unter t o t he D NA o f hig her e ducation. B ut w ith prodding, colleges and universities will become increasingly receptive to initiatives that offer a Plan B for their own financial struggles, and for society as a whole, should low growth become the norm. If pursued successfully, these initiatives will make human prosperity in a post-growth world more realistic, more tangible, and—one hopes—more desirable. And this can drive momentum for change.

Building Momentum Seeds of this momentum are now sprouting as colleges and universities become more comfortable w ith resilience a s a guidin g s trategic concept. Notions of resilience—the capacity to absorb shock and bounce back, perhaps better than before—have b een p rominent in hig her e ducation sin ce t he attacks o f S eptember 11, 2001. Or iginally preoccupied w ith how colleges and universities might recover from terrorist attacks, disruptions to information technology services, or natural disasters, resilience thinking among campus administrators has g radually exp anded to include disruptions f rom climate change. In May 2014, B oston-based S econd Nature—a n onprofit o rganization co llaborating with colleges and universities on climate issues—sharpened this focus on climate by launching the Alliance for Resilient Campuses (ARC). Still in its infancy, ARC helps colleges and universities formulate programs that respond proactively to the effects of climate change on their own operations and the surrounding community.12

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The growing prominence of resilience within higher education, reflected in projects like ARC, offers a striking opportunity to nudge colleges and universities toward a post-growth mindset. That is because campus and community resilience, especially in response to climate change, is not primarily about economic growth or enhancing an institution’s reputation. Focusing on resilience means zeroing in o n noneconomic foundations of human prosperity: s ocial capital, mutual trust, strong community, loving and respectful relationships, local knowledge, community self-reliance, and limited inequality. As colleges and universities cultivate these elements in their own operations and within their n eighboring communities, t hey are l aying t he g roundwork for human flourishing in a post-growth world.

Those a ssociated w ith hig her e ducation—students, s taff, fac ulty, a lumni, administrators, and funders—would thus do well to promote climate resilience in c ampus co mmunities k nown t o t hem, a nd t hen t o en courage t he s chool to infuse resilience thinking into existing environmental initiatives. Together, they could steer the sustainability conversation away from asking “how can we be more efficient (so that, perhaps, we can keep growing)?” and toward “how can we enrich human connections and a strong sense of collective self-reliance to reduce our impact on the planet (in ways that make us more resilient and, coincidentally, help us thrive in a post-growth world)?”

As interest in resilience begins to supplant a campus focus on eco-­efficiency, it will become easier to draw colleges and universities into developing, testing, and disseminating the policies and norms we need for a p ost-growth world.

One place to begin is with campus-sponsored experiments in economic reorganization, especially around locally based worker and community cooperatives. In the future, these enterprises will need to be the norm, not the exception. They deliver human prosperity and environmental sustainability without an intrinsic need to grow, and they enjoy citizen support across the political spectrum—an important quality in t hese politically f ractured t imes. Higher education commands the expertise, capital, and experience to assess and disseminate s everal va riations o f t hese b usiness m odels. L asting s ustainability demands nothing less.13 Inspiration abounds. Take, for instance, the Evergreen C ooperative Initiative in Cleveland, Ohio, which enjoys support from Case Western Reserve University. Modeled aἀer the eighty-five thousand person Mondragon C ooperative in S pain, Evergreen includes a g reenhouse, a l arge-scale environmentally advanced laundry, and a solar panel and weatherization company. It is cooperatively governed, hews to core notions of sustainability, and provides good jobs

for some of the city’s most challenged neighborhoods. Community interventions such as these appear to be on the uptick: the Democracy Collaborative and the Responsible Endowments Coalition report that 16 percent of U.S. colleges and universities invest locally, although few with the ambition and effect demonstrated by Case Western Reserve. H owever, fa r m ore must be done in the domain of community investment.14 Retooling o lder f orms o f economic o rganization f or the t wenty-first cen tury i s one wa y f or hig her e ducation t o r espond effectively to t oday’s s low g rowth w hile sliding u s t oward a f uture post-growth w orld. A nother is t o a ggressively m odel n ecessary c hanges in w ork lif e.

The Evergreen Cooperative Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, includes Scholars agree that w orkweek Green City Growers, a 1.3 hectare hydroponic greenhouse filled with reductions a re cen tral t o a ny leafy greens. transition t o a p ost-growth society. The s tandard f orty-hour w orkweek ado pted in t he United S tates in 1940 i s n ot et ched in s tone, j ust li ke t he h undred-hour w orkweek in 1890 was not s acred ei ther. A t low o r no economic growth, we will all need to work les s—to s pread t he w ork a round t o en sure a n accep table deg ree o f income di stribution—while finding s atisfying wa ys o f swa pping lei sure for consumption.15 Corporations already are experimenting with workweek modifications.

Amazon.com, f or in stance, i s p iloting a t hirty-hour w orkweek f or s elect employees, who will receive full benefits and a 75 percent salary. Given the positive influence o f s horter w orkweeks on employee productivity, retention, and absenteeism, this makes good business sense. But we cannot rely solely o n o rganizations guide d b y p rofit t o cr eate a nd di sseminate w orkplace arrangements for the future. Higher education must pitch in, too, with innovative workweek programs of its own that look beyond next quarter’s balance s heet. These p rograms w ould p ush t he f rontiers o f c ampus s ustainability fa r more t han another c ampus co mmunity garden o r array o f solar panels.16

Horticulture Group

Suddenly More Than Academic: Higher Education for a Post-Growth World | 203

204 | EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet

Universities a nd co lleges a lso c an co ntinue t o p ioneer a nd s pread consumption-­reducing “choice edits” that are critical to a post-growth future.

Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has banned the sale of bottled water on its s prawling c ampus, installed filtered water di spensers, and distributed reusable water bottles, helping students save money and modeling a needed shiἀ from recycling to reuse. Like many schools, Yale-NUS College in S ingapore h as do ne a way w ith t rays in i ts c ampus dinin g r ooms a nd i s preparing a s hiἀ t o smaller plate sizes, m oves that can cut food waste up to 30 percent. Additionally, an electricity meter in every dorm room means that students receive individual bills for their air conditioning use, which prompts them t o co ol t heir r ooms o nly d uring t he h ottest h ours o f t he d ay, o r n ot at a ll. Suddenly, it i s n ot s o co ol t o u se air conditioning. At t he University of Wisconsin-Madison, bicycles are the primary mode of transportation for almost o ne-quarter o f s tudents, in p art b ecause o f t he uni versity’s s upport of the city’s bike sharing program. This helps make biking feel like the natural thing to do in Madison, which can lead to more bikers, stronger support for biking, and falling demand for other economically and environmentally costly transportation options.17

Overcoming Obstacles If these initiatives—cooperative businesses, worktime reductions, and choice editing, a ll supported by resilience t hinking—are to t hrive w ithin t he h alls of ac ademia, t hey m ust r esonate w ith t he co re r esearch a nd t eaching mi ssions of the university. That will be difficult if these measures are understood as f undamentally oppositional t o g rowth, corporate c apitalism, or m aterial acquisition. H igher e ducation, a ἀer a ll, iden tifies as a n en gine o f g rowth, and the deep insinuation of corporate interests in t he modern university is well documented.18 Fortunately for academic researchers, today’s lukewarm economic growth offers s afe h aven. I nquiry in to p ost-growth a lternative w ork a nd b usiness models, a nd o ther p ost-growth p olicies, c an b e f ramed a s applied r esearch motivated b y o ur c urrent e conomic do ldrums: i t i s a ll a bout s earching f or solutions to today’s problems rather than arguing for low growth later. Characterizing r esearch a s s olution-driven a lso co uld f ree u p n eeded f unding, which is key, since less research money exists for post-growth research than for studying how to address pollutants from an expanding economy. One notion that is attractive for its symmetry is to divert all savings accrued from

Suddenly More Than Academic: Higher Education for a Post-Growth World | 205

campus eco-efficiency projects to faculty research on the transition to a postgrowth world.

It is more difficult to address conflicts with the teaching mission of environmental studies and sustainability science. Do these programs recruit students, generate r esearch m oney, co nfer p restige o n t he in stitution (b y im pressing business a nd g overnment e lites), a nd si tuate s tudents f or g ood, w ell-paying corporate jobs or en try into prestigious technocratic graduate programs? If so, then all i s w ell. B ut programs that q uestion the un derlying rationale of growth-centered e conomies o ἀen a re mi smatched t o t hese im peratives o f higher e ducation. These p rograms, v ital t o o ur t ransition t o a p ost-growth world, are especially vulnerable to being labeled as “anti-corporate,” “insufficiently scientific,” or “too ideological,” and then marginalized, as if faith in the perpetual growth of industrial economies is somehow objective or reasonable.

One piece of a solution is to connect these programs to external networks of credibility and prestige. A project like the Ecosphere Studies initiative (see Box 16–3) t hus b ecomes important n ot just for t he radic al c urriculum t hat it is producing, but also for the impressive credentials of its participants and the wide dissemination of results. When highly respected academics develop hard-hitting curricula and build networks around their delivery, it is easier to view like-minded curricula as “state of the art” and “cutting edge” rather than “overly normative” or “unscientific.” That creates the space that innovative programs need to work and thrive.19 And let us not forget AASHE and UI Green Metric, as well as groups like The Sierra Club that also publish environmental rankings. They can help by highlighting co lleges a nd uni versities t hat r igorously exp lore p ost-growth options for the future. Schools no longer should be lauded for making cost-­ effective investments in water, energy, and waste efficiencies. Nor should they receive hig h p raise f or m oving t o r enewable en ergy w hen i t i s in creasingly affordable to do so. To paraphrase Robert Reich, professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, that is not socially responsible behavior—these days, it is just good business. The highest marks and the best publicity must be reserved for those colleges and universities at the edge of social innovation for the planet.20 The next frontier of sustainability in higher education, now at our doorstep, revolves around charting new paths to a p ost-growth future in w hich we all would want to live. With fifteen years of low growth behind us, higher education is finally starting to move in t his direction, despite its affections for a high-growth world. Now all it needs is a good strong push.

206 | EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet

Box 16–3. Reframing Higher Education Around Ecosphere Studies The seeds of an initiative to develop a transformative curriculum for higher education have been sown by The Land Institute in Kansas and its cofounder, Wes Jackson, a plant geneticist and international leader in sustainable agriculture. The Institute is best known for developing perennial grains to grow in polycultures, to help shift food production away from industrialized agriculture’s unsustainable reliance on monoculture annual grains, such as wheat.

Now Jackson and the Institute have assembled an inaugural core faculty of twelve educators and scientists from eleven colleges and universities and The Nature Institute, a nonprofit organization, to design a curriculum that transcends disciplinary boundaries while drawing from the different sciences, philosophy, history, and the arts. The goal: to propose a comprehensively holistic approach to radically realign teaching, learning, and research around the theme of “ecosphere studies.” Reorganizing around a vision of the living world itself as the ultimate educational authority, collaborators believe, is a remedy for higher education’s current core contributions to propping up extractive economies.

Such economies threaten ecosystems around the world and even the super-ecosystem— what Jackson calls our planet’s “ecosphere”—the entire global web of relationships that comprise life’s only home.

In Jackson’s view, modern agriculture lies at the heart of the problem, and a radical new way of perceiving and orchestrating our relations within the ecosphere is essential.

The Ecosphere Studies initiative will explore how to make “nature as measure” the new paradigm for human action and specifically in connection with feeding the growing world population. That means consciously striving to fit agriculture and all other activities into the realities of natural systems, rather than assuming that nature’s limits can be conquered or exploited.

After an exploratory conference with forty scholars in 2015, the core faculty and invited guests met in 2016 to plan further for such a new curriculum. In the coming years, the focus will be on developing teaching materials that are both radical and relevant. Some core faculty members are already testing new courses and methods on their own campuses or revising existing courses. Their practical experiences will inform the initiative as it moves forward.

— Craig Holdrege, director of The Nature Institute and core faculty member of the Ecosphere Studies initiative Source: See endnote 19.

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Frontline communities will lead the fight for environmental and climate justice under Trump | Grist

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Frontline communities will lead the fght for environmental and climate justice under Trump

By Amy Vanderwarker on Dec 22, 2016

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No matter who’s been president, low-income communities and communities of color have always been disproportionately impacted by pollution. But during Donald Trump’s presidency, the scale of attack will be bigger and the few backstops we’ve had will be gone.

Environmental justice or “EJ” communities are likely to be hit frst and worst by rollbacks under the Trump administration — but they will also be at the forefront of the fght for environmental and climate justice.

Under President Obama, the needs of EJ communities were on the policy agenda, through initiatives like the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice. While those efforts had mixed success in improving health and environmental outcomes, they

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Frontline communities will lead the fight for environmental and climate justice under Trump | Grist

helped to institutionalize an understanding of race, class, and pollution in federal agencies and created important points of leverage for communities. In this way, they fed into a set of political and social conditions that allowed our movements to grow.

These points of leverage will most likely be eviscerated under a Trump administration.

Trump and his cabinet nominees have promised to weaken environmental regulations under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other laws. If Trump succeeds in appointing ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, Big Oil will have a whole new kind of foothold in American policy. And with Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Ryan Zinke at the helm of the Department of Interior, we can expect a retreat from federal action on climate change and a full-throttle expansion of fossil fuel development.

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Oil and gas infrastructure like drilling sites, pipelines, and refneries are typically located in low-income communities and communities of color. Here in California, fracking happens in the rural felds of Kern County — a predominately Latino area. California’s refneries, from Richmond to Long Beach, are located next to diverse, low-income communities. These are the areas where drilling will expand and new pipelines will be built.

For low-income communities and communities of color, the disproportionate burden of pollution will only increase. That means more “code red” air quality days, more trips to the ER for asthma sufferers, more cancer and respiratory disease.

As climate change worsens, it will be low-income people who lack the means to evacuate before major storms, and don’t have money for air-conditioning when heat waves roll through. We’ll see Superstorm Sandy and Katrina on repeat. And climate change will be layered on top of other threats — from increased deportations to the loss of health care if the

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Frontline communities will lead the fight for environmental and climate justice under Trump | Grist

Affordable Care Act is repealed.

But as we have seen in the inspiring protest at Standing Rock, frontline communities also offer the most hope for resistance over the next four years. Our communities — as always — will be the battlegrounds, and we are prepared to fght.

We have a stronger movement than ever before. From the People’s Climate March, which was led by communities of color, to intersectional alliance-building with groups working on immigrant rights, gender justice, and more, we are linking our efforts together. We are demonstrating that climate and environmental policy must go hand in hand with justice for people of color.

And, even in Trump’s America, there are real possibilities for gains at the city, state, and regional levels. In California, we have opportunities to both protect what we have won and push even further. Our task in California and other progressive areas is to dream big and show that a different path is possible.

As we gear up for this critical work, it is more important than ever to invest in the leadership of people of color and indigenous communities. Climate solutions must come from the most impacted communities, and we must look to the leaders of those communities, who are crafting campaigns of resistance and vision. This has always been a key message of the environmental and climate justice movement. Now, under Trump, there is simply no other way to succeed.

Amy Vanderwarker is co-director of the California Environmental Justice Alliance. This article was produced by the Island Press Urban Resilience Project, with support from the Kresge Foundation and the JPB Foundation.  Share

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On the Nature of Cities—and the Future of Conservation Rob McDonald

Originally published June 22, 2015 in E- The Environmental Magazine

M

ore than 25 years ago, author and activist Bill McKibben famously declared the end of nature. Defining “nature” as wild places essentially untouched by people, McKibben argued that our collective environmental impact—especially our alteration of the planet’s climate—has left nothing on Earth in pristine condition.

By this definition, McKibben was right: Nature is dead. And, in the last quarter-century, our domination and destruction of the Earth has only grown. The climate change McKibben warned about is unfolding around us. We have crossed other boundaries that have fundamentally altered the chemistry and function of the planet. And we are farther from nature than ever, as more than half of humanity now lives in cities.

The cities we call home are, in many ways, the opposite of McKibben’s vision of nature. They are almost entirely human-made spaces, designed to suit our needs and desires. Yet those cities have launched a new wave of environmental activism. Urban environmentalism has caused considerable soul-searching among conservationists—but it may also herald a new chapter in the relationship between human beings and the natural systems that sustain us.

Today, cities are embracing nature—albeit an engineered version of it.

New York City, for all its famous skyscrapers, has generated buzz about a pop-up forest in Times Square and its High Line park, built on a repurposed railroad spur. Meanwhile, ecologists and economists have quantified the value of nature in cities, showing its contributions to everything from stormwater management to air quality to improved health.

125

126 • Section v: energy & Conservation

And, while the international fight against climate change seems moribund, hundreds of cities are taking significant actions to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions, working together in groups such as C40 and ICLEI. As part of this surge of activism, many environmental and conservation groups are launching new programs in urban areas. My own organization, The Nature Conservancy, just started such a program. The World Wide Fund for Nature is focusing on the urban environment, as is the World Bank and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Major philanthropic organizations in the U.S., including The Kresge Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation, have launched programs to make cities more resilient in the face of climate change and other shocks.

Some urban environmental programs focus on restoring “natural infrastructure.” Others promote the idea that islands of urban nature—even just street trees–can make city dwellers happier, healthier and more productive.

Hard to argue with, right? And yet there is a deep and bitter debate within the conservation movement about whether these urban programs are really about protecting nature at all. Is it protecting nature if we save a forest that surrounds a drinking-water reservoir? Most conservationists would say yes, even if that forest has been logged or otherwise altered by people. But what about an artificial wetland, or some stubbly grasses growing on a green roof? Many conservationists feel there is nothing at all natural about these novel assemblages of plants that humans have thrown together for our own purposes.

This raises larger questions. Is conservation just about protecting nature from people–by safeguarding biodiversity and the few remaining mostly wild places? Or is it also about maintaining nature for people, by saving— or even creating—natural spaces? Old-school conservationists view the idea of nature for people as offensive, a sell-out of Mother Earth. As legendary naturalist E.O. Wilson said to author Emma Marris a few years back, “Where do you plant that white flag you’re carrying?”

The problem with the old-school vision of conservation is this: If we believe that we are now 25 years past the end of nature, then conservation itself is now at an end. By 2050, two thirds of humanity will live in cities.

on the nature of cities and the future of conservation • 127

If conservation has nothing to offer them, then it is largely irrelevant. On the other hand, if conservation is, at least in part, about people, then making our urban world more green and humane is an essential part of a conservationist’s job.

The latter view points to a new kind of relationship with the Earth. The microbiologist Rene Dubos once wrote about the “wooing of the Earth.”

Rather than living as masters of the Earth, bending it to our will, Dubos envisioned human beings as lovers of the Earth, making decisions about nature with love and respect in our heart. Nature is not something apart from humanity, but something that we should love and interact with, something that we will change as it changes us.

In our ever more urbanized world, we could mourn the death of nature as McKibben once defined it. Or we could broaden our view of nature and to include beautiful, green, humane cities. That is not the end of nature, but a new beginning.

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