Island Press fall 2014 sales kit

Sales Information Sheet Connecting to Change the World Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact

Fall 2014 Discount: Trade Pub Date: 9/29/2014

Peter Plastrik, Madeleine Taylor, and John Cleveland Hardcover: E-Book:

978-1-61091-532-8 978-1-61091-533-5

$29.99 $29.99

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Nonprofit Organizations & Charities BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Management Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 240 13 B&W illustrations, 3 tables Author Residence: Beaver Island, Michigan Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts Tamworth, New Hampshire Comparative Titles: • Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World, Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine. ISBN: 978-1118-13760-4, Paperback, Oct. 2012, $34.95, Jossey-Bass. Bookscan: 3118.

• Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, 2nd Edition, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant.

ISBN: 978-1-118-11880-1, Hardcover, May 2012, $29.95, Jossey-Bass. Bookscan: 5299.

• The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, and Randi Zuckerberg. ISBN: 978-0-470-54797-7, Paperback, June 2012, $34.95, Jossey-Bass. Bookscan: 8700.

Previous Works: • Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government, Peter Plastrik. ISBN: 978-0-9767026-0-3, Paperback, July 2005, Viking/Penguin.

• The Reinventor’s Fieldbook: Tools for Transforming Your Government, David Osborne and Peter Plastrik. ISBN: 978-0-78794332-5, Paperback, July 2000, $70.00, Jossey-Bass. Bookscan: 2422.

Sales Handle The first comprehensive guide to creating and managing social-impact networks that tackle complex, unpredictable problems. Written by the three leading thinkers and practitioners in the nonprofit field, this resource will help organizations enhance their reach and effectiveness.

Description Something new and important is afoot. Nonprofit and philanthropic organizations are under increasing pressure to do more and to do better to increase and improve productivity with fewer resources. Social entrepreneurs, community-minded leaders, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropists now recognize that to achieve greater impact they must adopt a network-centric approach to solving difficult problems. Building networks of like-minded organizations and people offers them a way to weave together and create strong alliances that get better leverage, performance, and results than any single organization is able to do.

While the advantages of such networks are clear, there are few resources that offer easily understandable, field-tested information on how to form and manage social-impact networks. Drawn from the authors’ deep experience with more than thirty successful network projects, Connecting to Change the World provides the frameworks, practical advice, case studies, and expert knowledge needed to build better performing networks. Readers will gain greater confidence and ability to anticipate challenges and opportunities.

Easily understandable and full of actionable advice, Connecting to Change the World is an informative guide to creating collaborative solutions to tackle the most difficult challenges society faces.

Selling Points • Networks for collaboration are regarded as the most effective way to tackle many of the challenges we face and more organizations than ever are looking to create them.

• This book, full of insights, examples, and practical advice, is one of the few resources available on how to create and maintain effective networks for change.

• The authors are highly regarded as both the leading thought leaders and practitioners in creating collaborative networks that work.

Author Bio Peter Plastrik is cofounder and President, Innovation Network for Communities (INC), a nonprofit national network of community system innovators. A prolific author, Peter wrote Banishing Bureaucracy: The Five Strategies for Reinventing Government and The Reinventor’s Fieldbook: Tools for Transforming Your Government with coauthor David Osborne.

Madeleine Beaubien Taylor, Ph.D., has conducted policy and evaluation research for the public and nonprofit sectors since 1987. She has consulted to governments, universities, and foundations as well as to community-based nonprofits, on issues that include culture and the environment, community economic development and nonprofit network-building.

John Cleveland is Vice President and a founder of the Innovation Network for Communities, a national nonprofit that develops and spreads scalable innovations that transform the performance of community systems.

Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1. The Generative Network Difference Chapter 2. Start Me Up: Designing a Network Bonus Track—Advice to Funders and Other Network Engineers Chapter 3. Connect the Dots: Weaving a Network’s Core Chapter 4. Network Evolution Chapter 5. Enable and Adapt: Managing a Network’s Development Chapter 6. Know Your Condition: Taking a Network’s Pulse Chapter 7. Back to Basics: Resetting a Network’s Design Chapter 8. Three Rules to Build By Afterword Resources for Network Builders Appendices Acknowledgments Index

Connecting to Save the World Excerpts From the Introduction People use the word “network” to describe many things, but this book is about something quite specific: networks of individuals or organizations that aim to solve a difficult problem in the society by working together, adapting over time, and generating a sustained flow of activities and impacts. We call these “generative social-impact networks”—“generative” because they are designed to be a platform for generating multiple, ongoing kinds of change, not just accomplishing a single outcome, “social impact” because they specifically focus on achieving change that results in social good. They are quite different from social-media networks like Facebook and LinkedIn and from other forms of member-based social organizing that usually get tossed into the network basket. Each of these networks is a set of people, typically numbering in the hundreds, whose connections with each other enable them to generate more and more collaborative effort over time. The members don’t just connect, share, and collaborate online; they forge powerful, enduring personal relationships based on trust and reciprocity, supported by face-to-face engagement as well as digital tools for connectivity. Nor do they come together like a coalition to tackle just one thing, like advocating for a specific government policy, and then disband; connecting makes it possible for them to undertake numerous activities, many of which emerge over the years. And they don’t just gather to pool their resources to obtain services they all want, like an association; they link to enable themselves, not staff, to do the work.

A generative network is a social-relationship platform—a human operating system—for spawning activities. It’s a unique and renewable capacity, and this makes it especially useful when taking on complex, unpredictable, large-scale problems like climate change, homelessness, or education system performance, which won’t yield to a silver-bullet solution.

In the chapters that follow we’ll introduce you to active, long-lived, generative social-impact networks and some of their founders, funders, and coordinators, and explain more about how they’re different from other types of collective effort and what makes them tick. These networks include: •

The Urban Sustainability Directors Network and 8 regional networks of sustainability directors—local government officials—from more than 150 cities in the U.S. and Canada

•

Three business-driven networks: the Partnership Fund for New York—a network of some 200 corporate and financial-institution executives, started by Henry Kravis, cofounder of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.; Advanced Energy Economy—a U.S. association of businesses started by Tom Steyer, founder of Farallon Capital Management; and the West Michigan Manufacturers Council— learning networks that involve dozens of medium to large manufacturers

•

Rural People, Rural Policy—five regional and two national networks of rural-based organizations, initially assembled and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to promote public policies that benefit rural communities in the U.S

•

Reboot—a network of young, Jewish-American “cultural creative” professionals in the arts and media, that explores and redefines Jewish identity and community in the U.S. and the United Kingdom

•

Lawrence CommunityWorks—a network of thousands of people in Lawrence, Massachusetts, established to revitalize the fading industrial community

•

RE-AMP—more than 165 nonprofit organizations and foundations in eight Midwestern states working together on climate change and energy policy

From Chapter 1 The Generative Network Difference Many social-impact networks burst into life, out of an unpredictable mash-up of like-minded people who share a problem, get together to see what will happen, and then invent a common path forward. They have an itch to do something and share a belief that pooling their resources and collaborating might get them what they want. But they don’t know what they’ll do together.

Just seven years out of college, Sadhu Johnston had become Chicago’s Chief Environmental Officer in 2005, appointed by Mayor Richard Daley to lead the greening of the nation’s third largest city. Two years earlier, he’d started working on that goal as an assistant to the mayor, and found himself struggling to find out what other cities were doing. “I was cold-calling people in other cities and Googling to get information. I didn’t know anyone in a similar position. It was really a vacuum. For several years this was the primary frustration of my job. What information you did get was largely spin—the positive stuff without any of the challenges. You learn as much from the failures as from successes, and it was really hard to get that.”

Daley had announced that Chicago would become the nation’s greenest big city, but no one was sure what that meant and how to do it. “Even most environmental groups were not seeing cities as playing a role when it came to climate change and environmental benefits,” Johnston recalls.

“Cities were still viewed as ‘the evil city,’ with pollution coming out and resources going in to be consumed.” Gradually, though, the idea of urban sustainability, of redesigning urban systems for improved environmental and economic performance, especially reduced production of carbon emissions that triggered climate change, started to catch on. When Daley met with other mayors, Johnston compared notes with their staffers and found they too were frustrated by the lack of useful information. “A number of us thought we needed to be coordinated. But I realized I couldn’t do it myself; I had a full-time job.” There followed a period of false starts: one organization was interested in helping but didn’t follow up; another proposed to help, but wanted

far too much money; a gathering of people from a few cities didn’t lead to anything. “I was casting about, trying to figure out how to get this done.”

In an entirely different context, that of the American-Jewish community, Rachel Levin also had an itch to organize something different. In Los Angeles she had helped establish Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and co-founded the Joshua Venture Group, a fellowship program for young social entrepreneurs. The daughter of a rabbi, she was looking for ways to engage young American Jews like herself with Jewish identity and community. Census data had found a high percentage of Jews were marrying non-Jews, sparking national headlines that the Jewish community was marrying itself out of existence. Other research concluded that the Jewish community was irrelevant to younger Jews. As a result, renewal and continuity had become a part of the Jewish-American agenda. At the foundation, Levin recalls, “We were getting a lot of proposals from more established Jewish organizations, but they were based on how they had organized people in the past. It was not going to work with the majority of young Jews, who didn’t want to be forced into a Jewish-only space.” There had to be another way.

For Fred Keller, the itch was about securing the future of the $70-million-a-year manufacturing business he had started at the age of 29. He was worried about global competition. Cascade Engineering, Inc. had three plants in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area with about 600 employees and a line of products for the office furniture industry. “We were doing well,” Keller recalls.

“But I was concerned.” He had visited Japan a few years earlier, and what he’d learned had blown his mind. “I was in awe of what their manufacturers were doing. We had a lot to learn from these very disciplined Japanese companies. They had figured out how to be incredibly efficient; they focused on quality and, as a result, they reduced costs.” American firms—his and others he knew—hadn’t figured out any of this. “Maybe for the first time in the history of manufacturing in the U.S., the competitor was not across town; there was international competition,” Keller says. “I had a sense that we’re either going to get this right or we’re going to lose to them.” He turned to his local competitors, talking to fellow CEOs of privately owned manufacturing companies. “I wanted to have a dialogue with some other folks,” he says. “I didn’t know all of them very well, but we all had a sense that we had to get better fast.” How could they do that?

When Keller, Levin, and Johnston scratched their different itches, each decided to work with peers to build a network.

In 2008, Johnston met Julia Parzen, a Chicago-based consultant, who expressed interest in helping. “She seemed like the kind of person who could actually pull it together. It would be about the members, not about her and her organization. She was open to listening to others and helping them pull something together. We started to pull in others to make it happen.” What was it? “I didn’t want an association, because I knew I didn’t want to start a big organization,” Johnston says. Someone suggested that they hold an annual conference, but Parzen proposed instead that they form a set of ongoing relationships. “We needed to build relationships among folks in the emerging field of urban sustainability,” Johnston says. “A network was the right

approach.” They started with a core group of seven sustainability directors, each of whom invited five peers to join the new network and attend its first gathering in the fall of 2009. “We called it the Urban Sustainability Directors Network.”

Rachel Levin also spent time wandering in the wilderness before turning to a network approach.

She, Roger Bennett of the Andrea & Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, and several colleagues designed an experiment. “We believed that if you bring smart, creative people together, good things will happen.” They asked some 30 next-generation Jewish Americans to participate in a weekend retreat in Utah to talk about Jewish identity. “We invited people and were surprised when they said they wanted to come.” Most of the participants in the summit didn’t know each other, but nearly all were “cultural creatives,” people working in the arts and media. “We focused on people who had influence beyond themselves and would come up with ideas we would not come up with.” Several rabbis and historians attended as Jewish resource people, but there was no lecturing, just “open space” discussions that took whatever course people wanted.

“We thought this was likely a one-time gathering. We were hoping maybe some creative ideas would come out of it.” As the retreat came to an end, its organizers weren’t sure what to do; they hadn’t planned the closing. “We just said, ‘Thanks for coming,’” Levin recalls. “And people said, ‘What happens next? Are we going to do this next year? Now what happens?’ That was the beginning of realizing that this experiment hadn’t failed. We had absolutely underestimated what it would mean to people to have this open experience discussing issues of Jewish identity, meaning, and community—that it would have power and meaning for them personally, not just creatively.” The next year, 2003, many retreat participants reassembled for a second “summit” weekend. That’s when the Reboot network came to life. “We fell into the notion of having an ongoing network as ideas started emerging and we saw people working together from so many creative sectors. We saw how impact was magnified and leveraged in ways we could not have imagined.”

Fred Keller had an easier time engaging the five fellow CEOs he linked with; they were in the same community and agreed that collaboration might be useful. “We thought we could learn faster from each other than if we were to go into the textbooks.” They formed the West Michigan Manufacturers Council to support the region’s manufacturing economy. “It came together because of the energy of the network, not because I did anything special,” Keller explains. But it wasn’t easy to get going. Learning from each other, from competitors, was not a comfortable process for the group. “It was new,” says Keller. “You didn’t really know what sharing would lead to. Are you going to be sharing more than the other guy? Are you going to be revealing something you shouldn’t? We had to overcome a bias about not sharing information with our competitors. We had to open ourselves up to potential ridicule when they visited our shop floor.

What if our plant wasn’t as good as the other guy’s?”

After an initial burst of energy, a mash-up startup network’s progress can often be slow, because its founders do everything by instinct and trial-and-error; they’re feeling their way in the dark.

Sometimes the network runs out of energy and fades away or gets stuck doing easier, low-level

activities—meetings, not network building—that don’t energize the members for long. Despite the challenges, the three networks we’ve described built momentum and produced results. Years later—five years for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, 12 for Reboot, and more than 20 for the West Michigan Manufacturers Council—they are still up and running.

USDN has members in about 120 U.S. cities and counties and Canadian cities. A network that no one’s ever heard of—and can’t find out much about on the Web—affects the lives of 53 million city dwellers. More than 400 staffers in local governments participate in many of USDN’s activities. The network stages a high-spirited, well-attended three-day annual meeting, operates two funds that have granted about $3 million to members’ projects, supports eight regional networks and more than 15 working groups, and has attracted financial support from a dozen foundations. USDN has also started working on climate change with the C40 Cities world network of megacities, including Berlin, Johannesburg, London, Mumbai, Shanghai, and Sydney. Sadhu Johnston, co-chair of the USDN Planning Committee and now deputy city manager of Vancouver, British Columbia, has the connections he was looking for: “I can call 120 different cities in North America and get a return call that day. I have access to leaders in each of those cities. I can get on our website and ask a question and get multiple responses. We all have access to each other and to information. This is a game changer for how we do our work.”

Reboot members started to act on ideas that had popped up during their annual summit conversations. During the first few years, as new people were invited into the network, innovative products for next-generation Jews (and others) emerged and attracted national attention, including the National Day of Unplugging, designed after the Jewish Sabbath, to encourage and help hyper-connected people of all backgrounds to embrace the ancient ritual of a day of rest; a 2007 best-selling book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, that’s being made into a movie; a 2009 CD, Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos, a blend of traditional Jewish and Latino music; and a 2010 international design competition, “Sukkah City,” to reimagine the temporary structures—sukkahs—that Israelites lived in during their exodus from Egypt, which received more than 600 entries from 70 countries, hosted more than 100,000 people at the display site in New York City; and gathered more than 17,000 votes for best design. A decade after its birth, Reboot has more than 400 members, mostly in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco, and now also in the United Kingdom. The network’s unique capacity continues to generate innovative products, and members have developed new religious and cultural organizations that also serve non-Rebooters and have started to engage mainstream Jewish organizations, becoming lay leaders or board members, or planning a Reboot-inspired event for younger Jews. “The fact that Reboot still has creative output is incredible,” Levin says. “It’s totally beyond my expectations.”

The members of the Western Michigan Manufacturers Council learned to share their problems and expertise with each other. After a few meetings spent talking about various shop-floor problems, Keller says, the CEOs’ anxieties about sharing “melted away. The enthusiasm around

the table grew. It was more exciting than scary.” The excitement proved to be contagious and during the next six years, the Manufacturers Council became a busy hive of activity. It grew to 19 local manufacturing members, ranging in size from 125 to more than 2,000 employees, and sponsored annual conferences on world-class manufacturing. Council members developed a common framework about world-class manufacturing practices. By the end of 1993, more than 150 companies in the region were involved in 18 different Council-driven group-learning processes. “The personal relationships between the members of the network are critical to its maintenance and success,” reported a case study; thanks to peer-to-peer learning, the network “combines the introduction of new information with the application to real problems, and learning from each other.” In 1995, the Council sponsored an estimated $1.4 million in activities, most of it from member contributions and fees. It settled into an 8,000-square-foot office, training, and demonstration facility. It stimulated development of an Advanced Manufacturing Academy to prepare entry-level employees with the skills needed for world-class manufacturing.

Fast forward nearly 20 years and the Council has some 30 manufacturing members, champions four strategic initiatives, and “remains committed to its founding vision to strengthen the West Michigan manufacturing economy through collaboration.”

Fred Keller continues as a member of the network—and points to other impacts. As the network’s confidence grew, he says, members developed a proposal to the U.S. Department of Labor that resulted in a $15-million grant to the area for workforce development activities.

“After that, we launched ‘Talent 2025,’ which now has 75 CEOs working as an organized network to hold talent systems [education and personnel] accountable for real results for people and organizations in our 13-county area. I doubt any of this could have happened had we not learned what our network of manufacturers could do together.” Meanwhile, Keller’s company, still headquartered in Grand Rapids, grew to 1,100 employees located in 15 facilities in North America and Europe. Its annual sales have quadrupled since Keller helped kick off the inter-firm collaboration to learn how to compete successfully.

Advantages A social-impact network can assemble novel and flexible combinations of human talent that would be difficult or impossible to pull together in a single organization. This aggregation can come from organizations or individuals. When multiple organizations identify a shared goal, then align their capacities and coordinate their efforts to achieve it, they create a new, more powerful ability embedded in a network. This is precisely what the builders of RE-AMP and Kalamazoo’s Learning Network were after. When the Garfield Foundation launched the process that led to RE-AMP, it was rare to see this sort of network building, but this is no longer the case. Now some funders are insisting that their grantees work together, and social-impact organizations, especially those that deliver education and other services within a community, are also turning to collective action as a way to solve intractable problems. “Examples suggest that substantially greater progress could be made in alleviating many of our more serious and complex social problems if nonprofits, governments, businesses, and the public were brought together around a

common agenda to create collective impact,” say Kania and Kramer in an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. They cite, as successful examples, Strive, a collaboration of more than 300 leaders in greater Cincinnati working on improving education, and the Elizabeth River Project in Virginia, which engaged more than 100 stakeholders from four local governments, the state and federal governments, the U.S. Navy, universities, businesses, community and environmental organizations, and schools.

As we saw in the cases of Reboot and USDN, individuals also network to build capabilities that are highly innovative. They bring together a fresh diversity of people and ideas, and they can be highly responsive to changes, because they assemble only small portions of people’s time for episodic use, rather than locking their members into full-time, stable work. Reboot’s Rachel Levin wanted hundreds of creative people to interact and then make innovative products relevant to young Jewish Americans. It wasn’t just about making movies, playing music, writing books, or holding events; it was all of the above—and whatever else might be invented. The effort needed more than a few employees. It was episodic work, not continuous. It was risky, not certain.

The need for flexible capacity was also evident in the Partnership Fund for New York, a generative network (originally called the New York City Investment Fund) started by financier Henry Kravis in 1996 to help diversify and grow the New York City economy. The Fund was an experiment to combine the capabilities of a private investment firm with the purpose of a placebased government economic development agency. But to successfully invest millions of dollars in business startups, the Fund needed a capacity to analyze, negotiate, and follow-up on complicated financing deals with scores of entrepreneurs in many different types of industries. It needed talented people who would interact occasionally, but not continuously, to do work that was not highly predictable. Kravis built a volunteer network that quickly attracted the energy of nearly 250 business and finance leaders and entrepreneurs, who in their first few years together labored over more than 400 investment proposals and provided financing for 46 businesses.

A social-impact network can also create what’s called “small-world reach,” the ability of members to connect efficiently with many people—network members and their networks—and gain access to information and other resources. For instance, each of the 100 or so members in USDN connects to hundreds of other city staffers and, through them, to other networks. When a member searches for help, as co-founder Sadhu Johnston appreciates, it’s just a connection or two away. Thanks to this multiplier effect, a network can potentially provide its members with efficient access to thousands of other people.

Another network advantage lies in its ability to grow rapidly because of what’s called the Law of Increasing Returns. In a nutshell, it’s in members’ interests to have more members with whom to connect and transact. “The overall value of the network [increases] with the addition of each new member,” explain The Starfish and the Spider authors Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. A network may expand explosively when its members bring some or all of their networks into the network—an instant infusion of many new members. This growth potential is one reason that

foundations investing in the developing of large-scale capacities for public policy advocacy favor a network model. For instance, the RE-AMP network grew to more than 165 organizationmembers after starting with several dozen. When the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched a “Rural Places, Rural Policy” initiative to develop a national critical mass of advocates for public policies that supported rural communities, it chose to build networks of rural organizations, hoping that they would greatly expand their connections.

Finally, a network can move information quickly and widely. Information flows between members through the numerous links they have established, instead of having to go through a central hub or the top of an organization chain of command before being sent out to the troops.

This unmediated exchange facilitates the swift dissemination of ideas and the collection of feedback, across a large and potentially diverse number of nodes. The Fire Learning Network uses its members’ information flows for “the generation and dissemination of innovative fire planning and management techniques,” according to its evaluators. As Beth Kanter and Allison Fine note, a network’s “collective intelligence creates a ‘cloud’ of information that many people can distribute for use.” USDN, for example, surveys members regularly to find out what its more than 100 cities are doing to improve their sustainability and what their priority needs are, and then shares the aggregated information with all members.

These effects—flexible capacity, small-world reach, the Law of Increasing Return, and more— are due to a network’s distributed capacity and decentralized, non-hierarchical organizing structure, which can’t be fully replicated in other forms of social organizing. But there’s still more to understand about what social-impact networks can do and how they work.

Sales Information Sheet Smart Power Anniversary Edition Climate Change, the Smart Grid, and the Future of Electric Utilities

Fall 2014 Discount: Trade Pub Date: 9/16/2014

Peter Fox-Penner Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-589-2 978-1-61091-590-8

$28.00 $27.99

SCIENCE / Energy Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 352 9 illustrations Author Residence: Falls Church, Virginia Comparative Titles: • Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, Amory Lovins. ISBN: 978-1-60358-371-8, Hardcover, Oct. 2011, $34.95, Chelsea Green. Bookscan: 11599.

• The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America’s Future, Michael Levi. ISBN: 978-0-19-998616-3, Hardcover, April 2013, $27.95, Oxford University. Bookscan: 2677.

Previous Works: • Smart Power: Climate Change, the Smart Grid, and the Future of Electric Utilities, Peter Fox-Penner. ISBN: 978-1-59726-7069, Paperback, April 2010, $30.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 3657, Warehouse: 7432.

Sales Handle This pivotal work offers a clear and accessible vision of how we can transform the electric power industry to adapt to twenty-first century challenges.

Description Few industries in the U.S. are as stuck in the past as our utilities are. In the face of climate change and the need for energy security, a system that took more than a century to evolve must now be extensively retooled in the span of a few decades, although many of the technologies and institutions needed are still being designed or tested. It is like rebuilding our entire airplane fleet, along with our runways and air traffic control system, while the planes are all up in the air filled with passengers.

In this accessible and insightful book, Peter Fox-Penner considers how utilities interact with customers and how the Smart Grid could revolutionize their relationship. He considers the costs of, and tradeoffs between, large-scale power sources such as coal plants and small-scale power sources close to customers. Finally, he looks at how utilities can respond to all of these challenges and remain viable, while financing hundreds of billions of dollars of investment without much of an increase in sales.

This Anniversary Edition includes up-to-date assessments of the industry by such leading energy experts as Daniel Estes and Jim Rogers, as well as a new afterword from the author.

Selling Points • With climate legislation will come new demands for the reform of our system of generating and distributing power, and this book will be perfectly timed to describe the nature of that reform • Fox-Penner, trained as an engineer and an economist, was the Clinton administration point person on electric utility restructuring • Book describes a fascinating vision of a new energy world governed by a smart grid in which we are charged by the services provided by energy rather than just the electrons themselves • Book lays out the regulatory regimes and business models by which the new era of smart power can (and must) be realized.

Author Bio Peter Fox-Penner, Ph.D., is a consulting executive and an internationally recognized authority on energy and electric power industry issues. He is a Principal and the Chairman Emeritus of The Brattle Group, a leading international economic consulting firm.

Table of Contents Chapter 1: The First Electric Revolution Chapter 2: Deregulation, Past and Prologue PART I: The Smart Grid and Electricity Sales Chapter 3: The New Paradigm Chapter 4: Smart Electric Pricing Chapter 5: The Regulatory Mountain Chapter 6: The (Highly Uncertain) Future of Sales PART II: Supply Side Challenges Chapter 7: The Aluminum Sky Chapter 8: The Great Power Shift Chapter 9: Billion Dollar Bets PART III: Business Models for the New Utility Industry Chapter 10: Energy Efficiency: The Buck Stops Where?

Chapter 11: Two and a Half Business Models Chapter 12: The Smart Integrator Chapter 13: The Energy Services Utility Conclusion Technical Appendix A Technical Appendix B Technical Appendix C Notes Bibliography Abbreviations Acknowledgments Index

Smart Power Anniversary Edition Excerpts from Chapter 3 The New Paradigm Sequim, Washington, was not a likely place to start the transformation of the world’s electric power systems. The town—pronounced Squim by the locals—is known mainly as a stop on the way to hiking or kayaking on the beautifully forested Olympic Peninsula and for a climate that is ideal for growing lavender. The town of nearly six thousand hosts an annual fair proudly billed as the largest lavender event in North America, But it was here in Sequim in early 2005 that researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) convinced the tiny Clallam Public Utility District—a utility too small to own a single power plant—to try something that had never been tried before. The researchers wanted to equip volunteer households with free, custom-designed computers that received electric prices set every five minutes. With the help of appliance giant Whirlpool, they would also be given thermostats, water heaters, and clothes dryers that could be programmed so that households would receive continuous feedback on the current price and quantity of power they were using and adjust their load accordingly.

PNNL’s researchers knew that Clallam’s power use was growing, and that Clallam’s large distribution cables, known as feeders, were expensive to replace. They were influenced by experience in wholesale power markets, where auctions are sometimes held to award capacity on oversubscribed transmission circuits to the highest bidder. In turn, wholesale markets were influenced by the work of economists such as Bill Hogan and Vernon Smith. What if prices were set to induce customers to keep their power use below the capacity of the nearly overloaded feeder? Customers who wanted to keep using power could bid for the right to use the feeder when it was filled up; other customers could bid to reduce their demand, in effect being paid by those bidding to use the feeder.

Another part of the experiment focused on the ability of the computers to help Clallam boost reliability. The computers allowed Clallam to shut down by remote control the heating element of the experiment’s clothes dryers for a maximum of one minute if its operators needed a small balancing adjustment. The dryer kept spinning—only the heat cycled off and on, invisible to all but those who happened to be watching their own energy-monitoring computer at the time.

Each family was given a few hundred dollars in a bank account and told that they could keep whatever was left after their transactions were tallied at the end of the period. After a few lessons on the software, which was designed to be exceptionally user-friendly, the experiment began.

Jesse Berst, editor of the fledgling Smart Grid News, declared it “the beginning of the GridWise era.” (GridWise was a label the U.S. Department of Energy used for the smart grid that has since evolved into a major trade group.)

The head of the PNNL research team, scientist Rob Pratt, was amazed at the experiment’s results. The 112-household marketplace successfully kept demand below the feeder’s capacity at all times, though not without some fairly severe price spikes. Participating households saved an average of 10% of their power bills by managing their use and reduced their use of peak power even more. Many of the households asked to keep their equipment after the experiment ended, which unfortunately was not an option.

It was not an experiment that could be immediately replicated or scaled up. The specialized equipment cost about $1,000 per household. Customers were happy to participate because they had a guarantee that their power bill could not go up, only down—a promise reminiscent of the provider-of-last-resort rate decreases that largely undid retail choice. Price spikes were tolerated because of this guarantee, removing the need to create market power monitoring. The equipment worked seamlessly because a single government laboratory made certain it did, offering free onsite assistance when anyone had a technical glitch. Examined at close range, the GridWise Olympic Peninsula Testbed Demonstration project foreshadowed both the Smart Grid’s tremendous promise and its equally large regulatory pitfalls.

While the industry was busy coping with deregulation and its aftermath, power technology marched on. Communications and sensing technology became cheap and ubiquitous. Like all other technologies, nearly every kind of electrical equipment changed from analog to digital control and became progressively more sophisticated. These changes have started to unlock an entirely new vision of the power industry. To understand it, we are going to have to take a brief architectural tour of the system.

Imagine the power grid as a network of large water ponds arrayed across a vast landscape.

Several narrow channels run between each pond and other adjacent ponds in every direction. The ponds are all at the same elevation. If a waterfall dumps water into one particular pond, the receiving pond naturally directs the water into all of its channels to the next adjacent ponds.

They, in turn, route the water out through their other connections. Water flows freely around the network so that the level of the system is naturally even in all ponds, when there is no ability to direct the water into a specific channel.

The ponds are similar to power generators, and the channels are like the transmission system, often called the grid. Power generation is a waterfall putting water into the pond system— whichever pond the generator is attached to. The precise flow rate for water (generation) added from every generator is set by a system operator who works for the local grid.

In this pond system, using electricity means withdrawing water from a pipe that you insert into the closest pond. If you use a lot of power you need a larger pipe; if not, a straw or a piece of bamboo will do. Up to the capacity of your pipe, you can withdraw as much or as little water at a time as you want, without any sort of advance notice to the system. This is exactly like your own electric supply, where you can turn electric devices on and off at will; the only constraint is the capacity of the box of circuit breakers in your closet or basement.

The single most important aspect of power systems’ architecture is the requirement for continuously perfect balance, that is, the same level of water in all ponds. All of the water that everyone is withdrawing from the ponds, the sum total of everything flowing out through the inserted pipes and straws, must equal the amount dumped into the ponds by all of the generators continuously without any interruption. This balance requirement applies on a split-second basis—the flow rates in and out must not go out of balance even for a few seconds. In the pond system, losing balance means the ponds and channels overflow; in a power system an imbalance triggers an immediate blackout. To prevent this, a power system operator who controls all of the generation in one region adjusts the power output from all of them to match total consumption on the grid on a second- by-second basis.

The requirement for perfect continuous balance may sound like a ridiculously strict requirement, but it is one that power system designers and operators conquered long ago and live with every minute of every day. In real power grids, system operators sit in secluded control centers and monitor the total power being used in each part of the country continuously. In fact, the official name for the system operators in this control center is the balancing authority, and the area they are required to balance is called the balancing authority area. With the help of computers that do most of the work, they adjust the generators in that balancing area to match demand, instantaneously and exactly.

From Chapter Ten Energy Efficiency: The Buck Stops Where?

If energy efficiency (EE) is often the lowest-cost option, why don’t we take more advantage of it? This is often posed as one of the great conundrums of American energy policy, sometimes to try to discredit the existence of low-cost efficiency or the idea that we have any successful ways of accessing it. The real answer lies in understanding the gap between what we measure as EE’s cost and the economic actions of real-world consumers and energy firms. And the first step in closing that gap is in setting the right market conditions for those consumers and firms through policy mechanisms.

When we say an EE measure costs less than a new supply alternative, here is what we mean: if you spend the capital to buy and install more efficient technologies in a building, the added cost will more than come back to you in savings over the lifetimes of the technologies. If you buy a more expensive air conditioner that’s more efficient, your electricity bill savings over the next five or ten years are larger than the added cost of buying the better unit.

Cost-effectiveness conclusions like this come from comparing the net present value of the costs of EE to the alternative of building and fueling a new power plant over its lifetime. A net present value takes a stream of costs and benefits stretched out over years and reduces the stream to an equivalent single dollar value paid today.

Investing in EE and buying more power are very different options, especially in the timing of the money outlays and the return of benefits. You have to pay 100% of the costs of buying a more efficient appliance before you get a single unit of benefit; the benefits are then stretched out over the next several years. In contrast, regardless of how much it cost to build the power plant we buy from, we only have to pay for it 1 kilowatt-hour at a time.

The use of net present value ensures that any comparison of the two options is accurate from the standpoint of modern financial theory. The problem is people don’t act based on net present value. There are dozens of ways each of us could save money over the next several decades if we spent money now and waited patiently for the savings to materialize. We might be better off in the long run, and society might be better off, but still we fail to act.

The notion that people do not act to maximize their welfare, defined and measured by economic concepts such as net present value, is now a well-accepted field of study known as behavioral economics.1 Thaler and Sunstein’s popular book Nudge explains nicely why humans don’t always act with “economic rationality”: Those who reject paternalism often claim that human beings do a terrific job of making choices, and if not terrific, certainly better than anyone else would do (especially if that someone else works for the government). Whether or not they have ever studied economics, many people seem at least implicitly committed to the idea of homo economicus, or economic man—the notion that each of us thinks and chooses unfailingly well, and thus fits within the textbook picture of human beings offered by economists.

If you look at economics textbooks, you will learn that homo economicus can think like Albert Einstein, store asmuch memory as IBM’s Big Blue, and exercise the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi. Really. But the folks that we know are not like that. Real people have trouble with long division if they don’t have a calculator, sometimes forget their spouse’s birthday and have a hangover on New Year’s Day. They are not homo economicus; they are homo sapien.

The rationale for EE policies is strongly related to these behavioral insights. Real-world people can’t absorb the information nor do the calculations needed to evaluate energy-savings opportunities, and they respond to complex choices with all-too-human inertia. In addition to pointing out that real people have trouble with long division, Thaler and Sunstein note that decision making is especially “non-economic” when people are “inexperienced or poorly informed and in which feedback is slow or infrequent”—an apt characterization of EE decisions.

If policies can help energy users overcome these limits without offsetting waste or welfare losses, both society and the power customers who save will be better off. Part of the welfare improvement is in the form of lower life cycle power bills for those who conserve with no loss of comfort; the rest comes from lower costs, higher employment, and lower environmental impacts for everyone else.

Efficiency in National Climate Strategies All over the world, nearly every study of climate policy options concludes that the single cheapest option for CO2 savings is energy conservation. Among all conservation options, electricity savings are almost always cheapest, and they are excellent for boosting employment as well.

Following a major assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that most countries of the world could reduce carbon emissions by 11 to 85% in 2020 by making buildings more energy efficient at less than $25/ton of CO2 saved. Nearly all other options cost more or have lower potential, including every type of low-carbon energy supply and most savings options in the transport sector.

These findings occur in essentially every other climate policy study, including those by McKinsey, EPRI, the Union of Concerned Scientists, EIA, the International Energy Agency, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Climate policy experts across the political spectrum urge that energy efficiency be the first action taken to reduce greenhouse gases. Eileen Claussen, head of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, calls energy efficiency “about as close as you can get to a silver bullet.” It is telling that the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency, the most sweeping set of efficiency policy proposals in decades, was produced in 2006 by the Climate Change division of the EPA along with the DOE. For all the climate policy benefits of EE, however, you haven’t accomplished anything until you get someone with sufficient information, motivation, and capital to make an investment in greater efficiency. The industry has been confronting this challenge for decades with very mixed results. Improving this performance is essential for a successful climate policy.

The Barriers to Greater Efficiency Policy wonks often use the word barrier to refer to all of the factors that cause consumers not to install EE measures that pay for themselves over the measures’ lifetime. The barriers have been thoroughly studied and documented. The main barriers—information, capital availability, transactions costs, and inaccurate prices—can be described briefly as follows: Information. EE is a field of expertise and specialization just like energy supply. It takes training and experience to keep up on the cost and performance features of energy use technologies and evaluate savings options for a specific building or application. We should not expect most homeowners or businesspersons to have the knowledge to do this. Furthermore, EE options raise important decisions and tradeoffs right inside one’s home, office, or factory—tradeoffs much more complicated than simply leaving your building alone and buying more power. Because so many of our structures and energy needs are unique, each energy-saving application must be somewhat tailored to each customer.

Researchers rarely measure or count as a cost the time required to educate consumers as to their options, or to find them expert assistance, but these costs can be large. As a result, EE programs

that prescreen efficiency options for consumers and give them hands-on assistance choosing measures that work for their specific needs have proven to be valuable.

Capital availability. Every entity has a cost of borrowing money, whether from a bank loan, new equity, or rich Uncle Harry. As borrowers approach their credit limits, their borrowing costs rapidly reach a point where investments simply can’t be financed. This is particularly harmful to EE because 100%of the cost of efficiency is paid before any savings are realized; it is by definition an all-capital option.

Even where businesses or consumers can borrow enough to finance efficiency they often hesitate to use up their borrowing power for this purpose. EE measures can take years to repay themselves. If circumstances change during that period—the home or business relocates, energy prices change, or other changes occur—that borrowing capacity might be needed for something else. When asked why they did not adopt an EE measure that will repay itself within a few years, many a businessperson has said roughly this, “I am in the business of making and selling (fill in the blank). That’s what my investors invest in and that’s what I am good at. I am not in the business of saving energy. Why should I devote my scarce capital to EE investments, which I don’t understand and can’t measure, when I am more confident I can make profits using my capital to do something I know I am good at?”

Transaction costs. Transactions costs are a technical name for what might be better called the hassle factor. Unlike buying more supply, which involves minimal intrusion into our daily routines, EE measures require construction and/or operational changes in homes or businesses.

One has to be prepared to deal with contractors, engineers, occupancy delays, and so on.

Anyone who has ever managed a construction project knows that all sorts of things can go on, delaying or damaging equipment or property. One of my consulting partners once tried to convince a Las Vegas casino owner to install EE measures in a new building under construction.

He and the local utility had arranged it so that the EE measures would be added as part of the overall construction project, but the measures would extend the construction schedule by five days. In exchange for the five-day delay, the casino owner would recoup the efficiency investment within one year and save millions on the power bill for years afterward. But the casino owner said no—fearing that it interfered with the carefully planned construction and opening schedule; even this minimal delay was not acceptable.

Inaccurate price signals. Many energy decisions are made by a builder or landlord who will not pay electric bills for the equipment or building at hand. Two thirds of all water heaters, half of all furnaces, and a quarter to a third of all refrigerators are purchased this way.9 In this case there is no direct payback to the builder or landlord who pays more for a more efficient technology. Even where there is no problem of this sort electric prices almost always understate the true cost of providing electricity. Electric regulators have generally resisted setting prices that reflect either the true cost of production or the unpriced externalities of power use. Higher, more accurate prices naturally encourage more conservation by increasing the value of the savings in the

calculations we have been talking about. This is why dynamic pricing, discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, is so important.

Using the term barriers to discuss these four factors conjures up visions of some artificial boundaries that policymakers have mistakenly erected to prevent the EE we would naturally adopt otherwise. This isn’t quite right. Apart from lousy price signals, policymakers have done nothing to prevent Americans from investing in EE—we just make our own private, selfinterested choice to use what capital we have in other ways. The more accurate way to refer to barriers is to treat them as hidden, unmeasured costs that don’t enter into economists’ official figures. Along with behavioral inertia, these hidden and usually unmeasured costs account for the difference between the investments made by energy users and the investments that would be in society’s best interest.

However we choose to view them, if we want to harvest more of our EE potential we need policies and business models that address the barriers directly, that is, intervene to lower hidden costs. When, for example, someone offers homeowners free energy audits by expert auditors, many homeowners take advantage of the offer. These auditors have the expertise needed and apply it to the individual homeowner’s unique structure and preferences. Sometimes they provide installation advice or assistance as well. By doing all this, the hidden costs are reduced to practically nothing, and many more customers take advantage of efficiency measures that are cost-effective.

Sales Information Sheet Public Produce Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas, and Streets for Healthier Cities

Fall 2014 Discount: Trade Pub Date: 9/29/2014

Darrin Nordahl Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-549-6 978-1-61091-550-2

$19.99 $19.99

GARDENING / Urban POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy/Environmental Policy HEALTH & FITNESS / Healthy Living Trim Size: 5.5 X 8.25 Pages: 216 33 photographs Author Residence: Berkeley, California Comparative Titles: • Seven Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them, Mark Jerome Walters. ISBN: 978-1-61091-465-9, Paperback, Feb. 2014, $19.99, Island Press. Bookscan: 25, Warehouse: 591.

• Food and the City: Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution, Jennifer Cockrall-King. ISBN: 978-1-61614-458-6, Paperback, Feb. 2012, $21.00, Prometheus. Bookscan: 1262.

• Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet, Sarah Elton. ISBN: 978-0-226-09362-8, Hardcover, Oct. 2013, $25.00, University of Chicago. Bookscan: 285.

Previous Works: • Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture, Darrin Nordahl. ISBN: 978-1-59726-588-1, Paperback, Sept. 2009, $30.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 1094, Warehouse: 2388.

• My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation, Darrin Nordahl. ISBN: 978-1-930066-88-5, Hardcover, April 2009, $35.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 464, Warehouse: 1053.

• Making Transit Fun!: How to Entice Motorists from Their Cars (and onto their feet, a bike, or bus), Darrin Nordahl. ISBN: 978-1-61091-044-6, E-Book, April 2012, $3.99, Island Press. Warehouse: 335.

Sales Handle An updated look at the advantages and possibilities of urban agriculture in public spaces.

Description Why plant trees that only provide shade when they could yield fruit as well? Why not take advantage of sunny patches at the outskirts of parking lots to grow carrots and strawberries, free for the harvesting? The idea that public land could be used creatively to grow fresh food for local citizens was beginning to gain traction when Public Produce was first published in 2009, but there were few concrete examples of action. Today, things are different: fruits and vegetables are thriving in parks, plazas, along our streets, and around our civic buildings. This revised edition profiles numerous communities and community officials that are rethinking the role of public space in cities, and how our most revered urban gathering spots might nourish both body and soul. Taking readers from inspiration to implementation, Public Produce is chock full of tantalizing images and hearty lessons for bringing agriculture back into our cities.

Selling Points • This substantially revised edition highlights successes and lessons learned over the past five years. Interest in growing food in public places has only gained momentum since the original book was published in 2009.

• Nordahl provides both inspirational examples from across the United States and Canada, as well as practical guidance to those seeking to implement public produce initiatives.The book gives particular emphasis to solutions to many of the obstacles and objections to projects: funding, maintenance effort, questions about aesthetics, and managing public outreach and education.

• Not just a book about growing food, Public Produce looks at the many benefits of this creative approach to public space: revitalizing unused land, connecting residents with their neighborhoods, and promoting healthier lifestyles

Author Bio Darrin Nordahl is an award-winning writer on issues of food and city design. He completed his bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture at the University of California at Davis and his master’s degree in urban design at Cal-Berkeley. From 2006 to 2012, he was the City Designer at the Davenport Design Center, in Davenport, Iowa. He currently lives and writes in Berkeley, California and is the author of Making Transit Fun!, My Kind of Transit, and a forthcoming book on local food traditions in Appalachia.

Table of Contents Flashback: Notes on the Updated Edition Introduction: A Guerilla on Strawberry Street Chapter 1. Food Security Chapter 2. The Cost of Healthy Calories Chapter 3. Public Space, Public Officials, Public Policy Chapter 4. To Glean and Forage in the City Chapter 5. Maintenance and Aesthetics Chapter 6. Food Literacy Conclusion: Community Health and Prosperity Acknowledgements Notes Selected Bibliography Index

INTRODUCTION Food is the problem, and it is the solution.

This is the salient message Ron Finley shares during his popular TED talk as he details the woes of South Central Los Angeles. It is a neighborhood racked by poverty, racial riots, and turf wars. South Central is home to the Bloods and the Crips, two rival gangs with a penchant for drugs and violence. The infamy of South Central is legendary, spawning Hollywood films such as Boyz n the Hood and Colors, two flicks which unveiled to the world the brutal, abject conditions within this supposed City of Angels. South Central became so notorious, that the City of Los Angeles struck its name from the record. South Central is no more, at least according to official city maps. It is now South Los Angeles, a bureaucratic strategy to improve the image of this stigmatized part of town.

But Finley doesn’t buy it. To him, it’s still the same old South Central, a place dominated in the public eye by vacant lots, liquor stores, and fast food. Early demise is imminent in the South Central population. But not because of reasons you might expect. Drugs and bullets aren’t killing folks in South Central. Food is.

“The drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys,” notes Finley. “People are dying from curable diseases in South Central.” Like 26.5 million other Americans, Finley lives in a food desert, a place where fresh, healthy, and affordable food is as scarce as water in the Sahara. Obesity rates in South Central are five times what they are in neighboring Beverly Hills.

Finley has to drive 45 minutes round-trip just to buy organic apples. The lack of access to cheap and nutritious food is literally crippling South Central “I see wheel chairs bought and sold like 1

used cars,” laments Finley. “I see dialysis centers popping up like Starbucks. And this has to stop.”

In 2010 Finley had had enough. The lack of fresh fruits and vegetables in his neighborhood compelled him to do something radical. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures. Finley became a guerilla gardener.

Finley commandeered the parkway, a strip of landscape about 150 feet long and 10 feet wide between the sidewalk and curb, outside his house. He and his volunteer group planted what Finley calls a food forest: “fruit trees, vegetables, the whole nine.” What makes Finley’s tactics extreme is that he planted his garden on public land without permission from the City. But here’s the rub. Even though Finley does not have exclusive rights to this strip of land, he is the one responsible for its upkeep and maintenance. The way Finley sees it, “I can do whatever the Hell I want! Since it’s my responsibility and I gotta maintain it.” And the way Finley decided to maintain it was through fresh produce. “It was beautiful,” gushed Finley. But he wasn’t speaking about the aesthetics of the garden particularly (though the arrangement was visually stunning).

The real beauty was the reason for the fruit and vegetables in the first place. Finley didn’t plant produce just for himself, but for anyone passing by; a gift from a concerned individual to his community.

For his incredibly heartfelt display of goodwill, Finley was rewarded by the City of Los Angeles with a citation. Someone complained about the garden, and the City came down on Finley, ordering him to remove his plants. Finley refused. Next came a warrant. Finley was dumbfounded. “C’mon really? A warrant for planting food on a piece of land [the City] could care less about?”

2

Finley had a valid point, made more logical when you learn that Los Angeles leads the nation in the amount of vacant parcels owned by a municipality, some 26 square miles of land. It is the equivalent of twenty Central Parks, or “enough space to plant 725 million tomato plants,” Finley quipped. Yet the City does nothing with this land.

Finley fought back. He drafted a petition and received over 900 signatures in support of his public produce garden. The L.A. Times ran a story, and contacted Finley’s councilman. The councilman then called Finley and declared support for Finley’s efforts. “But really, why wouldn’t you support this?” Finley asked rhetorically. His food forest didn’t just provide his neighbors with fresh food. Finley’s fruits had financial value as well. “This is my gospel,” Finley preaches. “I’m telling people to grow their own food. Growing your own food is like printing your own money.” He’s right. One dollar of seed could generate $75 of fresh produce. And in a community where many are out of work and have no idea where their next meal may come from, planting produce in public spaces enriches both body and bank account.

But there’s more. Finley has witnessed the transformative effects his garden has had on the neighborhood. “To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil,” Finley wisely reflects. “And we are the soil. You’d be surprised how kids are affected by this.

Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the inner city. Plus, you get strawberries.”

The amount of good this street-side garden gives South Central—and Finley himself—is obvious. Finley spends a lot of time in his garden, but he enjoys it. He calls himself a street artist, and gardening is Finley’s graffiti. His canvas is made of dirt and his palette is mixed with sunflower yellow, collard green, and strawberry red. It is a masterpiece Finley and the

3

community are quite proud of. But colleagues often ask him, “Fin, aren’t you afraid people are going to steal your food?”

Finley just shakes his head. “Hell no, I ain’t afraid they’re gonna steal it. That’s why it’s on the street. That’s the whole idea.”

This book advocates for more Ron Finleys in the world. More specifically, this book examines the great community good that can result simply from planting fruits and vegetables in our public spaces. …[material removed to reduce excerpt length] Now, as the twenty-first century is well underway, a cresting wave is readying the backlash against large-scale corporate agriculture on fields hundreds—if not thousands—of miles from where we live; against mass-produced, chemically grown produce; against the rising costs of food and the declining health of the American people. The organic movement is ceding to the “buy-local” movement; fast food is now a pejorative term, while “slow food” seems to be the choice of the future. Farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture groups (CSAs), and small produce stands are part of a burgeoning system of local agriculture that is enjoying a popularity not witnessed in more than half a century. And the time is ripe to explore how we can expand this network of local food options to meet the growing demand of consumers by bringing agriculture back into our cities.

This book explores how to make agriculture the apple in the public eye once again, by giving city dwellers a bounty of options for gathering food from the urban environment. Of course, I’m not suggesting we banish our current system of agriculture; at least not entirely. It is unrealistic to believe Americans will want to return to subsistence agriculture. It is equally absurd to assume we will desire to eat only locally grown, seasonally available produce. We will still want bananas, oranges, and avocados even if we live in Wisconsin, or tomatoes, peppers, 4

and corn in February, regardless of where we live. This book is about providing food choices within the city—where the majority of the U.S. population lives today, and with continued urbanization projected, and about how to achieve healthful, low-cost supplements to our diet. Public Produce examines local food options through the lens of social equity: closing the food gap between the inner-city poor (and increasingly the lower-middle and middle class) and the high prices of supermarket organic and farmers’ market produce; improving the health of the American population, especially our children, who increasingly lack everyday accessibility to fresh produce; providing a sense of self-sufficiency to even the well-to-do by giving them an opportunity to forage for ripe fruits and vegetables; and recognizing the social relationships and prosperous citizenry that could result if city spaces could help provide food for all.

Toward the goal of food justice, this book is specifically about fresh produce grown on public land, and thus available to all members of the public—for gathering or gleaning, for purchase or trade. And, because this food is grown on public land, this book examines the efforts, programs, and policies that are being ushered and implemented by local governments. If a network of locally available, publicly accessible produce is to be successful, the largest single land-owner within the city—the municipality itself—will have to be engaged.

At the heart of these pleas for a more equitable system of food production is food security: daily access to an adequate supply of nutritious, affordable, and safe food. The frequent outbreaks of Escherichia coli (E. coli) infecting spinach from California and clover sprouts from Jimmy John’s, along with Salmonella contaminating peppers packed in Texas, peanuts in Georgia, and pistachios in California, reveal that our fresh-produce farms and distribution centers may not be as safe and sterile as we thought. Climate change that is producing drought in California, freezing temperatures in Florida, and floods in Iowa is reducing crop yields. Pest 5

infestations are reducing crop yields as well. Florida Department of Agriculture spokesman Terence McElroy notes, “Our office is getting reports of at least one new pest or disease of significant economic concern per month.” Ordinarily, a pest outbreak in Florida (or Iowa or California) shouldn’t be cause for too much concern for the rest of the country. But when only a couple of states provide the overwhelming bulk of our fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains, a local infestation can have national consequences. It is unfortunate that relatively isolated agricultural problems in a couple of states are felt nationwide, but such is the nature of our current food-supply system. As a measure of insurance, this is perhaps reason enough to employ a more local, public system of food production.

Weather anomalies, pest infestations, and bacterial contaminations obviously limit the food supply, which in turn drives up prices. But there is another, more pervasive reason for the recent spike in the cost of fresh produce: oil. The large-scale, specialized agribusinesses that furnish much of the food in the United States rely heavily on oil. Idaho produces much of the nation’s potatoes; Washington our apples; Michigan our blueberries; California our broccoli; and Iowa our corn and soybeans (the bulk of which is consumed by livestock, or processed into corn syrup, ethanol, and partially-hydrogenated oils or transfats). The soaring cost of oil affects these large-scale agricultural endeavors in many interconnected ways: from the fuel used to power the tractors and combine harvesters, to the petroleum-based herbicides and pesticides liberally sprayed on the fields, and back to the fuel used to power the diesel trucks that deliver the produce hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to our urban markets.

That increasing distance to market—measured in “food miles”—is of great concern in the face of a shrinking oil supply and its ever-rising cost. If our produce only came from within our nation’s boundaries, perhaps those food miles could be manageable. We now import 6

considerable produce from large, multinational food conglomerates in countries like Canada, Mexico, Chile, and, increasingly, New Zealand and China. As it is, the average produce item in our supermarkets comes from more than 1,500 miles away. As food producers become bigger and more specialized, their distances away from cities become greater and energy consumption increases. Reduce the distance an apple travels from the tree to your hand, and a reduction in price could result. ‌[material removed to reduce excerpt length] The best place to realize the environmental, economic, and equitable benefits of a more local system of agriculture may not be in some rural or exurban location, but in and among the places we pass by daily on our way to work, home, school, commerce, and recreation. It may not seem so to the casual observer, but when the sum of all the public spaces in a typical city is figured, the municipality itself is the largest single landlord. The sheer abundance of land within public control necessitates a hard look at how it can best serve the needs of its shareholders. This could mean the land needs to be as productive as biologically possible, that every square foot has value to those who use it or pass by. Plazas, parks, town squares, city streets, and the grounds around our parking lots, libraries, schools, city halls, and courthouses are prime locations to consider when rethinking the role of public space in our cities—and how to add value to those spaces if they are currently underutilized. Hence, the efforts profiled in this book go beyond the mere greening of our city spaces; they illustrate how public space can produce a commodity that can be consumed by the human end user, namely, food.

More than just providing places for the occasional community garden, the intent of this book is to examine how the intricate web of public space within cities can be used for more prolific food production. This is a critical examination of all the plants in all the public spaces 7

within the city: fruit trees and shrubs along streets and in medians; orchards in parks; herbs and vegetables in planters located on plazas and sidewalks in our commercial areas; and roof-top agriculture, to name a few. Most notably, this book scrutinizes the dense, multi-stranded network of food-growing opportunities accessible to the public that could be realized with the active support and involvement of city government.

Some government officials already recognize the dire need for municipalities to engage in food-producing alternatives. Susan Anderson, former Chief of Horticulture for the City of Davenport, Iowa, argues that one responsibility of local government “falls in the area of dedication of land and management of it for the common good. In an urban environment how do we provide the opportunity for people to access land they can use for food?” Anderson uses her home city of Davenport as an example: “We are an urban community. Preserving agricultural land as a resource is important but in an urban setting commercial, large-scale farming operations of the Midwest variety aren’t going to help someone downtown.”

Anderson believes local government should set aside public land expressly for the purpose of urban gardening. She further contends that such land dedication and management “becomes a wellness issue for the community. Actually, it is very attractive to those of us who are concerned with the quality of our soils, depletion of minerals and nutrients essential to healthy people and plants, to see a community that provides access to locally grown, fresh food sources and/or the ability to create our own.” …[material removed to reduce excerpt length] Of course, many hurdles lie in the way of providing a healthier, more equitable urban landscape. One of the tallest may be our newly gained ignorance of food. We as a nation will have to reeducate ourselves about food, what it looks like, where it grows, and when it is ready to harvest. In short, we need to get back to our 8

agrarian roots. I have witnessed adults convinced that pineapples grow on trees. A very young, very naĂŻve vegan acquaintance once explained she could not have coconut milk because she gave up meat and dairy in her diet. I have been a member of a well-intentioned CSA that did not know the proper time to harvest okra. What were delivered were large pods the size of Anaheim chili peppers. (When okra pods are allowed to grow large their flesh becomes woody, rendering them inedible.)

If public produce is to succeed in our cities, educational programs are needed to reacquaint us with food, to help us recognize which plants are edible and which are ornamental, and to teach us how to plant, how to care for, and how to harvest food. We have much to relearn about food and agriculture as we explore opportunities for them in our urban settings.

Thankfully, we can learn from the various bits of municipally organized urban agriculture on public land that are already happening across the country. This book highlights a few of those efforts. Many of these efforts are, admittedly, small in scope. Collectively, they indicate a budding shift in public policy taking root throughout the country. Urban agriculture on public land, though currently in an embryonic state, is certainly real. The collection of assorted, independent examples underway throughout North American cities big and small offers a glimpse of a trend driven not by a central government policy, but by a local one, and the communities’ desire for more economically viable, environmentally sustainable, locally available, and healthful choices in food production. These efforts are varied: restaurateurs seeking to reduce overhead costs by foraging for their own produce, or willing to trade for it; city officials, both hired and elected, using public space under their management for the production of food; school grounds being replanted with edible gardens to help teach children about where food comes from and how to grow it (and to entice them to eat healthier); neighborhood groups 9

gleaning from urban fruit trees and promoting usufruct laws (the legal right to harvest fruit belonging to a private party if it overhangs, or is accessible from, public property); and the rise of guerilla gardeners like Ron Finley—vigilantes who take over vacant or blighted land in the city and return it to productivity and beauty through the planting and management of gardens.

Though their work is benign and their mission inspirational, there is reason for their “guerrilla” moniker: their tactics border on extremism. Regardless, their actions and the others mentioned point out the lengths to which citizens are going to increase accessibility of fresh produce.

It is time for municipal government to recognize these urban food-producing endeavors, embrace them, help manage, and even build upon them. Indeed, many of the grassroots efforts are initiated by government employees themselves—dedicated civil servants bent on improving the quality of the city and the quality of life of the city’s inhabitants. Their efforts illustrate both a need and a desire to supplement our existing food-production methods outside the city with opportunities within the city itself. Working in concert, each venture—regardless of size or scope—contributes to making fresh produce more available to the public. And, in so doing, each can help reinforce a sense of place and build community; nourish the needy; provide economic assistance to entrepreneurs; promote food literacy and good health to all;; and return a bit of agrarianism back into our urbanism.

10

Sales Information Sheet Urban Acupuncture

Fall 2014 Discount: Trade Pub Date: 9/16/2014

Jaime Lerner Hardcover: E-Book:

978-1-61091-583-0 978-1-61091-584-7

$19.99 $19.99

ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning ARCHITECTURE / Sustainability & Green Design TRANSPORTATION / Public Transportation Trim Size: 5.25 X 8.125 Pages: 156 45 color photographs and illustrations Author Residence: Curitiba, Brazil Comparative Titles: • Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space, Jan Gehl. ISBN: 978-1-59726-827-1, Paperback, Jan. 2011, $40.00, Island Press.

Bookscan: 730, Warehouse: 4031.

• Design for an Empathic World: Reconnecting People, Nature, and Self, Sim Van der Ryn. ISBN: 978-1-61091-426-0, Hardcover, Oct. 2013, $35.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 368, Warehouse: 1004.

Previous Works: No previous books Sales Handle A visionary of sustainable urbanism reflects on the innovative projects that uplift cities in this meditative journey through vibrant communities around the world.

Description During his three terms as mayor of Curitiba, Brazil in the 1970s and ‘80s, architect and urbanist Jaime Lerner transformed his city into a global model of the sustainable and livable community. Through his pioneering work, Lerner has learned that changes to a community don’t need to be large-scale and expensive to have a transformative impact—in fact, one block, park, or a single person can have an outsized effect on life in the surrounding city. In Urban Acupuncture, his first work published in English, Lerner celebrates these “pinpricks” of urbanism—projects, people, and initiatives from around the world that ripple through their communities to uplift city life. With meditative and descriptive prose, Lerner brings readers around the world to streets and neighborhoods where urban acupuncture has been practiced best, from the bustling La Boqueria market in Barcelona to the revitalization of the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea. Through this journey, Lerner invites us to re-examine the true building blocks of vibrant communities—the tree-lined avenues, night vendors, and songs and traditions that connect us to our cities and to one another.

Selling Points • Jaime Lerner is a leader in sustainability in cities and a forerunner of contemporary well-known urbanists • Urban Acupuncture is the only work by Lerner available in English • It is a beautifully-illustrated meditation on the elements that uplift cities and improve communities around the world

Author Bio Jaime Lerner is a renowned architect and urban planner who served three terms as mayor of the city of Curitiba, Brazil and two terms as governor of the State of Paranå. During his time in office, Lerner led initiatives to improve sustainability, transportation, and quality of life that made Curitiba a model of urbanism. He has won numerous international awards, including the United Nations Environmental Award (1990), and was nominated as one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential thinkers in the world in 2010. Lerner is Founder of the consulting firm Jaime Lerner Associated Architects, served as President of the International Union of Architects (2002-2005), and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the World Resources Institute.

Table of Contents Preface Foreword by Jan Gehl Introduction Urban Acupuncture

Urban Acupuncture Jaime Lerner

Introduction I have always nurtured the dream—and the hope—that with the prick of a needle, diseases may be cured. The notion of restoring the vital signs of an ailing spot with a simple healing touch has everything to do with revitalizing not only that specific place but also the entire area that surrounds it.

I believe that some of the magic of medicine can and should be applied to cities, for many of them are ailing and some are almost terminal. Just as good medicine depends on the interaction between doctor and patient, successful urban planning means triggering healthy responses within the city, probing here and there to stimulate improvements and positive chain reactions. Intervention is all about revitalization, an indispensable way of making an organism function and change.

I often ask myself why it is that some cities manage to make important and positive changes. There are scores of answers, but one seems to me to be common to all innovative cities: every city that succeeds has undergone an awakening, a new beginning. This is what makes a city respond.

Everyone knows that planning is a process. Yet no matter how good it may be, a plan cannot by itself bring about immediate transformation. Almost always it is a spark that sets off a current that begins to spread. This is what I call good acupuncture—true urban acupuncture.

Where can we see examples of good urban acupuncture? San Francisco’s revitalized Cannery district is one; another is Parc Guell, in Barcelona. Sometimes a pinpoint urban project leads to broader cultural changes, such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, or even the restoration of Grand Central Station in New York.

Then again, urban acupuncture may also come in a single stroke of genius, such as the pyramid at the Louvre, the recovery of Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero, or Oscar Niemeyer’s Pampulha in Belo Horizonte. You can feel it at work in the smallest venues, like Paley Park, in

New York, or in grand structures like Jean Nouvel’s Institute of the Arab World, in Paris or Daniel Libeskind’s Holocaust Museum, in Berlin.

In some cases, interventions are made more out of dire necessity than of desire for improvement, and are meant to heal wounds that man has inflicted upon nature—the open wound of a rock quarry, for instance. In time, these urban scars may be transformed into a new landscape. Making the best of these new landscapes and repairing man’s blunders requires nothing less than the best sort of acupuncture. One striking example is the Ópera de Arame, in Curitiba. Another is the removal of San Francisco’s freeway.

Urban transit systems have administered admirable doses of urban acupuncture the world over. Consider the splendid gates of the centennial Metro stations in Paris; Norman Foster’s metro stations in Bilbao; and Curitiba’s Express-Bus tube stations.

Continuity is life Many major urban problems arise from a lack of continuity. A city pocked with lifeless suburbs or tracts of homeless urban real estate is just as skewed as one strewn with abandoned lots and tumbledown buildings. Filling up these many urban “voids” can be the first step to sound acupuncture.

An important step is to add ingredients that may be missing from a given area. If there is plenty of commerce or industry but no people, then housing development could be encouraged.

If another district is all homes and apartment blocks, why not boost services? And if a building is crumbling or a shop closes its doors, something new must be raised in its place, even if it’s only temporary. Some years ago, after watching some of Curitiba’s traditional coffee houses—true meeting points in the city—go out of business, we built a provisional café in a pedestrian mall that served as new hub of activity.

The quicker an abandoned lot is occupied, the better, and preferably with something even more attractive or lively than before. I am even for creating temporary structures to rescue failing services or establishments—say a flower market or a concert hall—until new projects take hold. You could call this jerrybuilt acupuncture: putting up portable structures here and there to shore up threatened neighborhoods or city addresses that need revitalizing or a new burst of energy.

The key is to add the urban function that is missing. It could be building homes or else creating a provisional recreation center; the goal is to promote a healthy mix of urban activities.

Whatever structures are raised, any initiative must be undertaken quickly so as not to break the continuity of urban life. Continuity is life.

Good Recycling Each city has its history, its own points of reference. I am not just referring to all those landmark buildings that are part of any nation’s heritage. I mean the places that belong to the city’s collective memory and that are vital to its identity—the intangible bond that forges a sense of belonging. It might be a particular factory, an old tram station, or one of those bygone general stores with their wares scattered unpretentiously over creaky shelves.

But since many of these once familiar urban icons are gone forever or changed beyond recognition, we have to come up with new ones and new activities to bring our dormant city spaces back to life. There is nothing that flatters a neighborhood – indeed, an entire community – more than the revival of such “lost” spaces.

San Francisco led the way in the late 1960s when it transformed the old Ghirardelli chocolate factory and the long shuttered Del Monte cannery into Ghirardelli Square and The Cannery, which blossomed into vibrant public arcades. Both are now key attractions of San Francisco’s storied Fisherman’s Wharf.

Beginning in the 1970s, urban recycling began to sweep the globe, with brilliant projects like São Paulo’s SESC theatre complex, London’s train stations, and so many other restored treasures across Europe.

In 1971 Curitiba converted its old powder house into a small theater, the Teatro Paiol.

Soon after, an old glue factory was reincarnated as the Creativity Center, a civic recreational arts center.

And who could deny the charms of Puerto Madero, the old Buenos Aires docks transformed into a stylish riverside arcade and office complex or São Paulo’s Julio Prestes Station, which was reinvented as a splendid concert hall.

There are good and bad examples of urban recycling, of course. What matters is that the worldwide wave of revitalization has rescued our cities by turning blighted urban zones into vital new civic spaces. This is great acupuncture.

Now even grave injuries inflicted by man on the urban landscape – abandoned quarries and craters created by sandblasting – have been refashioned into handsome parks and amphitheaters. Once again, Curitiba led the way with its Opera de Arame (an opera house made of glass and lightweight steel), and the Pedreira Paulo Leminski (an open-air amphitheater built for 80.000 spectators), and scores of other parks built in honor of the myriad ethnic groups and immigrants who forged the city’s cultural life.

Even the Iguaçu River valley, with its ring of surrounding ponds, helped salvage the whole state from a terrible ecological disaster. Once an oil spill in the Iguaçu River threatened to blight the landscape, but the necklace of small connecting lakes saved the day, serving as a natural filter. The oil slick overran the first pond and then another and another; but finally the tenth sandy bottomed pond did the job, halting the damage and allowing rescue workers to begin an intensive clean up. Divine intervention? Hardly. These ponds were nothing but the wounds man had inflicted upon the landscape while quarrying for sand.

Here, injury became a solution. Thanks to these unintended ponds man designed a new life for the Iguaçu River.

People in the Streets Sometimes, I stop to watch how a drop of molasses draws a swarm of ants. Or how a bar, or a general store in a poor neighborhood—with their blazing lights and animation—attract people. In fact, it’s mainly people who attract people. Man is both a protagonist and a spectator in the drama of everyday life unfolding on the city stage.

Good acupuncture is about drawing people out to the streets and creating meeting places.

Mainly, it is about helping the city become a catalyst of people. A mass transit hub, for example, doesn’t have to be just a bus station. It can also be a gathering place.

In Strasbourg the inviting design of the tram stops makes for pleasant points of rendezvous and leisure. In Seoul, I saw a metro station that harbors an infant recreation area and a small planetarium. In Curitiba, buzzing bus terminals, where some 500-800 thousand passengers come and go each day, have become agreeable public malls.

The more that cities are comprehended as the integration of functions - bring together rich and poor, the elderly and the young - the more meeting places it will create and the livelier it will become. The design of public space is important. Place de la Bourse in Lyon; Barcelona’s Plaza del Sol; the Gammeltorv of Copenhagen; Tokyo’s Tsukuba Centre Square; and the Pioneer Courthouse Square, in Portland, Oregon are magnificent examples of how to transform the city by creating dynamic and inviting public spaces.

Getting students into the streets is also hugely important. In too many cities around the world students are physically severed from the heartbeat of urban life, confined to distant islands that are conventionally known as campuses.

Sometimes, the space is so barren that it is more like a desert. It’s just the opposite of what students really need - to be integrated with the city in order to develop a more generous view of society. Otherwise, all they’ll get are fragments of information about a world they know only from a distance instead of through daily experience. After all, can you imagine the Sorbonne far from Paris, or Columbia University in some New York exurb, or Berkeley severed from San Francisco? What would the University of Heidelberg or Sao Paulo School of Law be if they were somehow uprooted and plunked down far away from their vibrant cities?

And if universities seem remote and self-contained, why not bring the campus to town by sponsoring public seminars or arts and cultural events for the broader community? In the same way, the university campus can return the favor and open its gates to the city. One way or another, town and gown work best not as rivals but as partners.

Commitment to Solidarity Is it possible to practice sound urban acupuncture and still be committed to social solidarity? For decades we have lived with the consequences of social inequality, which ends up by marginalizing a considerable part of low-income people in the cities. Just the paperwork churned out by countless seminars, symposiums, and consultancies on the urban underclasses would be enough to cover up a large part of the world’s slums.

Most of the world’s poor make their homes on hillsides or in the lowlands. It was the best they could do in societies that left them little alternative. But what now? How to take urban infrastructure to these inhospitable areas? What is to be done with the garbage that piles up into polluting mountains and occasionally collapses, burying whole communities? Can we find a way to provide honest work for the jobless and the underemployed? Most important, how can we stop the twin modern urban epidemics of drugs and violence?

Some cities are showing the way. Curitiba, for example, solved its waste problem in deprived areas by encouraging residents to exchange their garbage for bus tokens. The system was founded over 13 years ago and has been working ever since.

About 25 years ago, I came up with a plan for taking infrastructure to hillside favelas.

The idea called for using the handrails of the paths and stairs that usually wind their way up through the slums as conduits for water pipes and electrical cables, branching off to feed individual homes through the rooftops or windows.

Sewer pipes, meantime, would be channeled along the base of the stairway. It was a simple and practical solution, but came with one major caveat: no digging into hillside was allowed.

And there’s more. The level areas of hillside districts could be equipped with recreational facilities, commerce, and community services, just like any other area of the city. Jobs could be created by turning the favelas into duty free zones, with tax breaks for manufacturing and service industries operating in the slums. Such tax-free zones would attract investments and services from other neighborhoods, so helping to integrate the favelas with the rest of the city. In this

way, enterprise in the hills and the lowlands would radiate out to the entire city, creating opportunities and, undoubtedly, helping to reduce violence and crime.

The best way to bring safety to the slums is to generate business opportunities in the most densely populated districts and the flatlands. Restaurants, shops, service centers, streetlights, and other urban facilities are all beacons of integration. Forget all the elaborate diagnostics and endless urban study groups. Taking social integration up the hillsides is a good and expedient kind of urban acupuncture.

Sales Information Sheet Unnatural Selection How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene

Fall 2014 Discount: Trade Pub Date: 10/28/2014

Emily Monosson Hardcover: E-Book:

978-1-61091-498-7 978-1-61091-500-7

$30.00 $29.99

SCIENCE / Life Sciences/Evolution SCIENCE / Environmental Science SCIENCE / Life Sciences/Genetics & Genomics HEALTH & FITNESS / Diseases/General Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 232 No illustrations Author Residence: Montague, Massachusetts Comparative Titles: • Seven Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them, Mark Jerome Walters. ISBN: 978-1-61091-465-9, Paperback, Feb. 2014, $19.99, Island Press. Bookscan: 25, Warehouse: 591.

• The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, Nathan Wolffe. ISBN: 978-1250012210, Paperback, Oct. 2012, $15.99, St. Martin’s Press. Bookscan: 3156.

• Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. ISBN: 978-0-14-312357-6, Paperback, June 2013, $16.00, Penguin. Bookscan: 6288.

Previous Works: • Evolution in a Toxic World: How Life Responds to Chemical Threats, Emily Monosson. ISBN: 978-1-59726-976-6, Hardcover, March 2012, $35.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 116, Warehouse: 798.

• Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory: Women Scientists Speak Out, Emily Monosson. ISBN: 978-0-8014-7669-3, Paperback, July 2010, $17.95, ILR. Bookscan: 216.

Sales Handle In a narrative style, Emily Monosson explains how humans are driving rapid contemporary evolution through the use of toxic chemicals—and what we can do about it.

Description Gonorrhea. Bed bugs. Weeds. Salamanders. Polar Bears. People. All are evolving, some surprisingly rapidly, in response to our chemical age. In Unnatural Selection, Emily Monosson shows how our drugs, pesticides, and pollution are exerting intense selection pressure on all manner of species. And we humans might not like the result.

Monosson reveals that the very code of life is more fluid than once imagined. When our powerful chemicals put the pressure on to evolve or die, beneficial traits can sweep rapidly through a population. Species with explosive population growth—the bugs, bacteria, and weeds—tend to thrive, while bigger, slower-to-reproduce creatures, like ourselves, are more likely to succumb.

Unnatural Selection is eye-opening and more than a little disquieting. But it also suggests how we might lesson our impact: manage pests without creating super bugs; protect individuals from disease without inviting epidemics; and benefit from technology without threatening the health of our children.

Selling Points • One of the first books on rapid evolution for a general audience • Includes cutting-edge information in the burgeoning field of epigenetics • Makes critical issues in health and environmental science accessible and relatable

Author Bio Emily Monosson is an independent biochemical toxicologist, writer, consultant, and college instructor. She is an adjunct Professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and teaches as a visiting faculty at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Evolution in a Toxic World and editor of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory (Cornell, 2008).

Table of Contents Chapter 1. Life-changing Chemicals PART I. Unnatural Selection in a Natural World Chapter 2. The Elegance of Bacteria Chapter 3. An Ounce of Prevention Chapter 4. Evolution and the Single Cell Chapter 5. Engineering Denial Chapter 6. Beating Them Back with a Shoe PART II. Natural Selection in an Unnatural World Chapter 7. The Evolution of Wild Things Chapter 8. Evolution: It’s Humanly Possible PART III. Beyond Selection Chapter 9. Epigenetics: Epilogue or Prologue

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Chapter 6 Beating them back with a shoe?

“I was so sleep deprived from worrying and from the itching, I was literally going crazy,” recalls Abby of her bout with bed-bugs. “The bites were in rows: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

They were terrible bites that itched like nothing before.” Desperate for relief, Abby took to sleeping on an air mattress in the middle of the kitchen floor. She’d hoped the problem was fleas, perhaps brought in by the cats. Fleas at least are easy to kill. But that wasn’t the problem. It was bed bugs which, says Abby, are endemic in town. As a physician and director of a local community health center, she ought to know. She’s since seen plenty of bed bug bites and plenty of denial. Abby suspects that for year patients with oozy welts caused by bed bugs were misdiagnosed by physicians and nurse practitioners as scabies or flea bites: both easier problems to remedy. The real cause was overlooked for good reason. Like once common diseases, bed bugs had become part of our history, banished from our homes and apartments decades ago. But now they are back with a vengeance. Pest Management Professionals like Orkin and Terminix publish an annual list of top bed-bug cities. In 2012 Philly topped the Terminix list while Chicago topped Orkin’s. Over the last two decades reported infestations have risen dramatically.

In their 2013 survey Bugs without Borders, the National Pest Management Association reports that nearly 100% of the pest management companies surveyed had been called upon to deal with the bugs, 1 up a few percentage points from previous years and far more than a decade ago. And there is no end in sight.

The bugs and their bites are not life-threatening but an infestation can be crazy-making.

And their life-history combined with evolved pesticide resistance makes extermination notoriously difficult. No exterminator can guarantee permanent eradication; nor can everyone afford the cost of elimination, which can run as high as several thousand dollars. Abby tells of one couple who, upon finding bed bugs in their apartment, tossed their mattress from the second floor window in disgust. But that only adds to the problem by spreading bugs around the neighborhood. And should we be tempted to pin infestations on socio-economic class, nationality, or any other “otherness,” bed bugs, like fleas and lice, are not afraid to jump cultural barriers. While poorer communities are often hit hardest, largely because they may not be able to afford pricey exterminations, bed bugs have been known to climb to the highest rungs of the

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financial ladder. If you sit in a movie theater, go to the doctor’s office, buy clothes, attend school, work in an office, stay in a hotel -- even New York’s upscale Ritz-Carlton 2 -- or take public transportation, you just might carry one home clinging to the seat of your pants or the sole of your shoe. “I knew I slept with bed bugs when I woke up and saw an engorged female running away once I turned on the light,” says urban entomologist Alvaro Romero of his first encounter with Cimex lectularius, in a Kansas City hotel. 3 “Fortunately,” says Romero, one of the few next generation scientists now focused on the bed bugs, “I didn’t bring them home but that experience told me that everybody is susceptible to bed bugs.” The scientist had seen thousands of bed bugs in natural infestations and in the lab but seeing bed bugs his own bed was another thing.

According to the online bedbug registry4 a disturbing number of rentals around my son’s university apartment have been infested at one time or other. No surprise there. Look up any college town or city and the registry map will surely light up as students travelling from near and far bring the “gift” that keeps on giving. Some colleges combat infestation by prohibiting students from furnishing their own rooms. Abby suspects that bed bugs entered her home by way of a guest’s futon. Just one gravid female, tracked into the home on a shoe, piece of clothing, or suitcase is enough to set off an infestation. Laying a few eggs a day and as many as five hundred throughout her lifetime, the female produces offspring that breed with one another, all the while feeding upon their slumbering human host. Of the rising tide of infestation, one scientist now writes, “until recently most householders and a whole generation of entomologists and pest control professionals have never seen a bedbug…” 5 The bugs had become so rare in the United States that few scientists bothered to study them. How the bugs slipped back into our high tech, pest and pathogen averse, low tolerance for anything creepy-crawly society is no real mystery. It is the expected outcome of ever increasing world-travel, demographics [poverty], and evolution.

Sleep tight don’t let the bed bugs bite The relationship between bed bugs and humans is as old, if not older, than our relationship with beds. The bugs are thought to have jumped to humans from bats by way of shared cave dwellings. 6 As humans built homes and cities grew large, swaths of the population became infested as a matter of course. Poor, crowded population centers may have been more susceptible, but those living in towns and villages too hosted their share. Bedbugs became an unavoidable part of life; tucking away in bedding, furniture, and walls. Full grown bed bugs are

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about the size of a grain of rice and can squeeze their flat grenade shaped bodies into cracks, crevices, and seams, hiding by day and feasting by night. Their lifecycle spans weeks or months.

Once an egg hatches the young nymph strikes out in search of blood, attracted by our scent, temperature, and other cues. ATP molecules (life’s storehouse of chemical energy) in our blood encourage the bugs to engorge themselves. 7 To the bugs, our blood is like an addicting cocktail.

As the insects grow, they shed their skin, increasing in size with each molt. Over a period of months, a characteristic crumble of skin builds up in the corners of a nightstand drawer or along the seam of a mattress. By the time a bug reaches adulthood it will have molted and fed upon a human host at least five times. If slumbering humans aren’t available they can wait for weeks or months, surviving without breakfast lunch or dinner. If you have had the pleasure of ridding a child of lice, which feed daily or hourly, you know that bagging infested bedding for a week or two is enough to starve the pests to death. The bed bugs’ ability to persist without food makes them particularly difficult to control. With mature females laying several eggs a day the number of active bugs can add up before we even know what bit us, making them a particularly insidious house guest.

By the late nineteenth century, the United States Department of Agriculture urged vigilance, particularly for city dwellers: checking the “crevices and joints” of beds every few days and general cleanliness would help keep the bugs under control. 8 Clearing bugs from the home was part of the March tradition for one turn-of-the-century Arkansas farm family: “To slow the bed bugs down and thin them out we took down and outside the beds and all the bedding, emptied the old straw ticks and burned the straw. We washed and boiled anything that was washable and scalded the bed slats and springs and poured boiling water in all the cracks and crevasses that the water would not ruin.” Even after all the burning and boiling, and despite precautions like setting the bedposts in cans of coal oil and removing them from contact with the wall, any respite was short-lived. The bugs returned within weeks. 9 Most likely our grandparents or great-grandparents were well versed in keeping those “wallpaper flounders” at bay. So how and when did spring cleaning transform from bed bug control to clearing closets and dressers of outdated clothing?

“A Miraculous Insecticide”

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Desperate for a good night’s sleep as chemical treatments became increasingly available, early twentieth century homeowners welcomed the highly toxicant products into their homes.

Mercuric chloride, benzene, cyanide gas, sulfur fumes, and even Zyklon B pellets (subsequently used in Nazi gas chambers) promised some respite even if at the risk of home and health. Then entomologists finally hit upon a chemical that worked and was relatively nontoxic to humans -DDT. It was nothing short of a miracle. Just after World War II, bed bugs virtually disappeared from the developed world. Although the chlorine, hydrogen, and carbon chemical was first synthesized in 1874, its insecticidal tendencies weren’t discovered until 1939.

Seeking a cheap effective agricultural pesticide, Swiss chemist Paul Mueller rediscovered DDT only after testing hundreds of other chemicals. DDT was so lethal that shortly after contact with treated surfaces flies dropped dead in their experimental cages. The residues were so persistent that the cages had to be aired for a month before they could be used again. 10 In an age with few options for preventing or treating insect-borne diseases like typhus and malaria, DDT was a godsend. It targets the insect’s nervous system by effectively propping open protein channels, allowing an endless flow of biochemical signals. Repeated and spontaneous firing of neurons ensues, followed by death. The chemical became the go-to treatment for lice, fleas, mosquitoes, and eventually bed bugs. Mueller won the Nobel Prize.

In World War II military camps, typhus carried by lice was rampant, as was malaria, depending on the region. Controlling these insect vectors was critical. Not only could DDT could do that, but the concentrations necessary to kill insects caused little observable toxicity to humans. Even better, DDT was persistent, sticking around for weeks or months so the killing continued even as insects hatched out over time. Plus, it worked on contact rather than orally.

This was particularly good for targeting pests that fed exclusively on blood. These were the post-World War II years of living better “through chemistry.” Some even suggested that with DDT humans may someday banish “…all insect-borne disease from the earth.” 11 By 1972 well over one billion pounds of the chemical had been applied to homes, gardens, wetlands, and millions of acres of US cropland. 12 Of course the story of DDT didn’t end well. One of the chemical’s most favorable characteristics, persistence, combined with its tendency to accumulate in the fatty tissues of insects, birds, fish, and mammals, made it the scourge of the twentieth century. In 1972 its

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registration for domestic use was cancelled. Eventually, residues of DDT and its metabolites, detectable in both humans and wildlife for decades, subsided. Yet DDT continues to haunt us today in a most unexpected way.

Return of the bed bug For nearly five decades after the discovery of DDT (followed by other pesticides no longer sold here in the U.S.) we enjoyed relief from bed bugs. But those days are over. There isn’t any one reason for the resurgence. Increased world travel and immigration, particularly from parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe where bed bugs were never really controlled; our own complacency; even demographics played a role. Because bed bugs breed stigma, infestation is a sensitive issue which can make dealing with it all the more difficult. “Reservoirs of bed bugs have been created especially in poor segments of populations,” says Romero. “They cannot afford bed bug treatments, many live in low income housing where resources for pest control is limited, many are undocumented and do not want to call attention with bed bugs issues. These vulnerable segments of the population can leave bed bugs behind in public places where other people can get infested.” The bugs are so omnipresent that in-home health care workers are now trained to detect infestation and avoid tracking the bugs back to their own homes and offices. 13 Even as many of us remained blissfully ignorant, bed bugs were never fully eradicated from the U.S. or Western Europe, and pockets remained throughout the 80’s and 90s. Romero says though there were few cases, they were around. How did they slip through the DDT era and beyond? DDT was applied to sheets, pillows, and bedding to fend off bed bugs. By the 1950’s, primarily because of DDT, they had become so scarce that researchers turned to other problems. 14 But in response to massive spraying, bed bugs, along with house flies and mosquitos, did what bacteria, plants, and other animals have been doing since life began. They evolved—in this case, under selection pressure from a toxic chemical. And they evolved rapidly, aided by their short generation time and ability to go forth and multiply. Like penicillin, DDT was a short-lived miracle with the first signs of resistance bubbling up in house flies as early as 1946. But still the chemical continued to be used, and overused. A few years after DDT was marketed for bed bugs, they too evolved resistance. By 1957 bed bugs in locations around the world were resistant. 15

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Currently over 570 insect species, from bed bugs to house flies, mosquitos, and fleas, are resistant to at least one insecticide; as with weeds and bacteria, by the time you read this chapter there will be more. Evolution has rendered some 338 different insecticides useless in one species or another. And, like antibiotics, chemotherapy and herbicides, resistance to more than one insecticide is all too common. 16 The traits responsible for resistance are by now familiar. No matter the species, a limited number of options are available for surviving toxic threats: exclude, excrete, detoxify, sequester. While some bed bugs transform pesticides into harmless byproducts others acquire a mutation at the intended target. Enhanced capacity to metabolize and excrete DDT renders the chemical ineffective. So too does a mutation in neuronal ion channels. And like other species, insects draw upon both standing genetic variation and novel mutations for resistance.

As DDT’s efficacy declined, pyrethroids filled the void. These synthetic versions of pyrethrin, a natural insecticide produced by plants in the Chrysanthemum genus (often used for organic gardening), are now a common household insecticide. Like DDT, pyrethrin derails the conduction of nerve cell signals; unlike DDT the pesticide quickly degrades and so is shortlived. 17 Marketed in the 1800s as “Persian Insect Powder,” pyrethrin offered a safer way to kill bed bugs. Pyrethroids are tweaked so that they stick around longer than their natural counterpart, enhancing their effectiveness. Today there are over 3000 commercial pyrethroid-containing products for home and garden. But bed bugs are no longer sensitive to the insecticide. In 2007 Alvaro Romero and colleagues designed a study to better understand the causes of the bed bug resurgence and resistance. “We initially thought that resistance to pyrethroids was created by overuse and inappropriate use of these products in the last ten years,” says Romero. The scientists found that of eight different bed bug populations collected from apartments across the country, most were resistant to pyrethroids. One population found thriving in Cincinnati, Ohio, could withstand more than 12,000 times the usual killing dose of the insecticide. 18 Of those eight “wild” populations tested, only one, collected in Los Angeles, California was sensitive to pyrethroids; as were two long-time “captive” populations. One of which was derived from a population sustained on the blood of retired military entomologist Harold Harlan for more than forty years. Harlan’s colony – famous amongst bed bug researchers - is one of a very few maintained throughout the bed-bug free decades. That resistance might have evolved in response to pyrethroids wouldn’t be surprising. Only that didn’t appear to be the case.

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As it turns out, ancestral resistance to DDT appears to have equipped today’s bugs with resistance to pyrethroids as well; one mutation in the target site that confers resistance to two classes of pesticides. “We speculate that bed bugs could have maintained resistant genes for many decades,” says Romero, who reminds me that DDT is still used in some African and Asiatic countries which may have aided retention. The most popular hypothesis for the resurgence of DDT resistant bugs and for pyrethroid resistance, suggests Romero, is importation of resistant bugs from other countries where DDT is still used.

In addition to those target site mutations, some resistant bugs ramp up defense by producing multiple copies of genes involved in chemical metabolism. Transported in the bug’s outer shell, the genes effectively create a pumped-up futuristic suit of detoxifying armor and block the chemical from even reaching its target. An elegant evolutionary solution. 19 Biting Back?

Reluctant to fumigate her home with toxic pesticides, Abby took the advice of an herbalist friend and tried pennyroyal oil (a good example of how natural does not equate with nontoxic – in large enough doses the oil causes liver and kidney toxicity). It didn’t work. Despite Abby’s penchant for a relatively low impact, organic lifestyle, the bed bug situation required a more toxic solution. Her husband Andy called the exterminator. There are a few insecticide formulations with different active ingredients, including some botanicals that are labeled for use against bed bugs. Abby’s house was treated with a combination of the old standby pyrethroid and a newer pesticide called Phantom (chlorfenapyr is the active ingredient). Rather than targeting the nervous system Phantom starves the insect to death even in times of plenty. The radically different mechanism provides it some protection from cross-resistance conferred by DDT. Still, it took four treatments, and cost nearly $1,500. “Each time the pesticide treatment didn’t work,” says Abby, “I felt like I was going to hell.” Bed bugs leave us few options. Fortunately the bugs that had invaded Abby’s home had not yet evolved beyond the exterminator’s reach. Phantom is now widely used for insect control. But, says Romero, the possibility of resistance certainly exists and populations of insects other than bed bugs have already evolved resistance. So what are “we,” the victims and exterminators alike, to do?

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Just as we must reconsider how, when, or in what combination to use antibiotics, chemotherapy, or herbicides, we would do well to rethink insect control all together. Otherwise we will find ourselves inundated not only with bed bugs, but with lice, fleas, and agricultural pests. Just as is has on the farm field, integrated-pest management, including non-chemical treatments, is working its way into our homes. Some approaches are modernized versions of ancient remedies. Only, rather than pouring boiling water onto our bed frames an exterminator might seal up a room and raise the temperature. Bed bugs begin to die when temperatures reach around 115 F. Steaming or heating works well in small spaces or easily sealed rooms. But in Abby’s airy Victorian home, heat treatment wasn’t an option. Nor was the opposite solution: freezing bed bugs with a carbon dioxide “snow” – although that too may work in a smaller space.

And then there are the bean leaves. Before toxic pesticides, Europeans staved off bed bugs by scattering bean leaves on the bedroom floor; the leaves’ coating of dagger-like hairs skewered the bugs’ legs. An elegant and nonchemical solution that inspired researchers including Mike Potter and others to emulate, creating a synthetic version of the hairy landscape. The polymer replicas snagged bugs, but only temporarily; yet with some improvement we may one day rest a bit more easily after scattering synthetic versions of bean leaves about our rooms. 20 Even so, though a physical approach might stymie the process of rapid evolution should bean leaves become all the rage, how long before a bean-leaf resistant bedbug population arises?

Vigilance provides some respite. Just as tick checks are part of the daily routine for those of us living in deer-tick infested areas, if you travel a lot, you may want to lift the hotel sheets, examine the mattress, and check your suitcase before settling in at home. Perhaps we’ll think twice before picking up that roadside couch or at the very least, give it the once-over before we do. “We don't let people bring their own futon into our house anymore,” says Andy. “No more renters in our house; no used upholstered furniture; we avoid cheap hotels; and assume that people who pick up used furniture on the side of the street are adopting bedbugs – this includes most of our friends. It's a bit emotional, but that is a central aspect of the BB experience. They really mess with your head.” While we won’t be placing the legs of our bed in coal oil there are now plastic bed bug “interceptors” that at the very least may help with bed bug detection; we might also declutter our bedrooms, vacuum the mattress, use an impermeable mattress cover, and seal cracks and crevices around the bed. The other day, I returned some bedding to the local department store and asked the cashier how they can be sure I wasn’t returning it with a few

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hitch-hikers attached: “We don’t reshelve if the package has been opened,” she said, “we send them back to headquarters.” Lest we forget, we are all in this together. “Everybody is susceptible to bed bugs,” says Romero, “even entomologists.”

The story of bed bugs is little different than antibiotics, antivirals, herbicides, and any other human versus pathogen or pest conflict, except in this case we almost had them beat—only to face a pest that managed to regroup and return with better defenses. While the worst thing bed bugs may do is keep us up at night and drive us nuts, they are emblematic. Mosquitos, bollworms, ticks, beetles, mites, lice, and many others have all evolved pesticide resistance; some carry lethal disease while others cause billions of damage. Life is resilient. Yet even as those species we wish to eradicate persist, too many others never slated for destruction—the damsel flies, panda bears, condors, and tigers—face extinction. If our experience with pests like bed bugs teaches us one thing, it is that we do not have the power to pick and choose. We might provide the pressure but nature does the selection.

1

Michael Potter, Jim Fredericks and Missy Henrikson, “2013 Bugs Without Borders Survey,” Pestworld.org, accessed April 1, 2014, http://www.pestworld.org/news-and-views/pest-articles/articles/2013-bugs-withoutborders-survey-executive-summary.

2 For news stories on bedbug infestations see: Joe Pompeo, “Where’s Roscoe? Bedbugs Infest Wall Street,” Capital New York, accessed April 1 2014, http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2013/01/7174682/wheresroscoe-bedbugs-infest-wall-street-journal-headquarters and Joseph Berger, “Bedbugs and Worried Workers at Anything But Fleabag Hotel,” New York Times, January 25, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/nyregion/bedbug-at-ritz-carlton-alarms-hotelworker.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&.

3 Alvaro Romero (Assistant Professor of Urban Entomology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico) in discussion with the author, August 2013.

4 “Bed bug registry,” accessed April 1 2014, bedbugregistry.com.

5 T.G. E. Davies, L.M. Field, M.S. Williamson, “The Re-emergence of the Bed Bug as Nuisance Pest: Implications of Resistance to the Pyrethroid Insecticides,” Medical and Veterinary Entomology 26(2012):242. Harlan Davies, however, is a notable exception. Davies has fed the bugs on his own blood for decades and his bugs are now sought after by researchers seeking non-resistant populations, for more see “Let the Bed Bugs Bite,” Science News, accessed April 1 2014, http://www.sciencenewsdigital.org/sciencenews/20130907?pg=34#pg34.

6 Michael Potter, “The History of Bed Bug Management – With Lessons from the Past,” American Entomologist, (Spring 2011):14-25.

7 Coby Schal, “Importance of Basic and Translational Approaches to Bed Bug Management,” Bed Bug 2011 Summit presentation, accessed April 1 2014, http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/ppdc/bedbug-summit/2011/21-scha-bb.pdf.

8 Michael Potter, “The History.”

9 Ibid, 18.

10 Paul Mueller, “Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane and New Insecticides,” Nobel Prize Lecture, accessed April 1, 2014, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1948/muller-lecture.pdf.

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11

Thomas Dunlap, DDT: Scientists, Citizens, and Public Policy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 37.

“DDT Regulatory History: A Brief Survey (to 1975),” from DDT, A Review of Scientific and Economic Aspects of the Decision To Ban Its Use as a Pesticide, prepared for the Committee on Appropriations of the U.S. House of Representatives by EPA, July 1975, EPA-540/1-75-022 accessed April 1 2014 http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/ddtregulatory-history-brief-survey-1975.

13 Dini Miller and Stephen Kells, “Bed Bug Action Plan for Home Health Care and Social Workers,” Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, accessed April 1 2014, http://www.vdacs.virginia.gov/pesticides/pdffiles/bb-healthcare1.pdf.

14 Michael Potter, “The History” 22.

15 James Busvine, “Insecticide-Resistance in Bed Bugs,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 19(1958):10411052.

16 th Gary Thompson, “MSU Resistance Database,” 46 meeting of International Resistance Action Committee International, accessed April 1 2014, http://www.irac-online.org/documents/resistance-database-team-update2011/?ext=pdf.

17 Some formulations include a metabolic inhibitor, extending the chemical’s efficacy.

18 Fang Zhu, Evolved Unique Adaptive Strategy to Resist Pyrethroid Insecticides,” Scientific Reports 3(March 2013): doi 10.1038/srep01456; Alvaro Romero, Michael Potter, Daniel Potter and Kenneth Haynes, “Insecticide Resistance in the Bed Bug: A Factor in the Pest’s Sudden Resurgence?” Journal of Medical Entomology 44(2007):175-178.

19 Fang Zhu, Hemant Gujar, Jennifer Gordon, Kenneth Haynes, Michael Potter and Subba Palli, “Bed Bugs...”

20 Megan Szyndler, Kenneth Haynes, Michael Potter, Robert Corn and Catherine Louden, “Entrapment of Bed Bugs

by Leaf Trichomes Inspires Microfabrication of Biomimetic Surfaces,” Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 10(April 2013): 1-9, accessed April 1 2014, DOI 10.1098/rsif.2013.0174; Felicity Barringer, “How a Leafy Folk Remedy Stopped Bedbugs in their Tracks,” New York Times, April 9, 2013 A16.

12

Sales Information Sheet Future Arctic Field Notes from a World on the Edge

Fall 2014 Discount: Trade Pub Date: 2/3/2015

Edward Struzik Hardcover: E-Book:

978-1-61091-440-6 978-1-61091-592-2

$27.00 $26.99

NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection TRAVEL / Polar Regions POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy/Environmental Policy Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 256 15 b/w photographs Author Residence: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Comparative Titles: • The Kingdom of Rarities, Eric Dinerstein. ISBN: 978-1-61091-195-5, Hardcover, Jan. 2013, $29.95, Island Press. Bookscan: 866, Warehouse: 3660.

• Tibet Wild: A Naturalist’s Journeys on the Roof of the World, George B. Schaller. ISBN: 978-1-61091-172-6, Hardcover, Oct. 2012, $29.95, Island Press. Bookscan: 1802, Warehouse: 3318.

• The Future History of the Arctic, Charles Emmerson. ISBN: 978-1-58648-636-5, Hardcover, March 2010, $28.95, Public Affairs. Bookscan: 969.

Previous Works: • The Big Thaw: Adventures in the Vanishing Arctic, Edward Struzik. ISBN: 978-0-470-93216-2, Paperback, Feb. 2011, Wiley.

Bookscan: 18.

• Arctic Icons: How the Town of Churchill Learned to Love Its Polar Bears, Edward Struzik. ISBN: 978-1-55455-322-8, Paperback, April 2014, $32.95, Fitzhenry & Whiteside.

Sales Handle A veteran journalist explores the changing Arctic and why it should matter to the rest of the world.

Description In one hundred years, or even fifty, the Arctic will look dramatically different than it does today. As polar ice retreats and animals and plants migrate northward, the arctic landscape is morphing into something new and very different from what it once was. While these changes may seem remote, they will have a profound impact on a host of global issues, from international politics to animal migrations. In Future Arctic, journalist and explorer Edward Struzik offers a cleareyed look at the rapidly shifting dynamics in the Arctic region, a harbinger of changes that will reverberate throughout our entire world. A unique combination of extensive on-the-ground research, compelling storytelling, and policy analysis, Future Arctic offers a new look at the changes occurring in this remote, mysterious region and their far-reaching effects.

Selling Points • Struzik is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the Arctic for over 35 years • A combination of storytelling in the tradition of Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and hard-hitting reportage befitting the geopolitical tensions increasing in the Arctic • An engaging look at the myriad forces shaping changes in the Arctic, from shifting ocean currents to resource extraction to concerns of climate refugees

Author Bio Edward Struzik has been writing about the Arctic for more than thirty-five years. In 1996 he was awarded the prestigious Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and spent a year at Harvard and MIT researching polar issues. In 2008, he was awarded the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy. In 2009, Wiley published his book, The Big Thaw: Travels in the Melting North, focused on the effects of climate change on the Canadian Arctic. He is an active speaker and lecturer, and is frequently interviewed as an expert on Arctic issues. He was recently invited to be part of a six-person expert Arctic Advisory panel by the World Wildlife Fund.

Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Eight Foot Tall Beavers, Scimitar Cats, and Three Toed Horses: What the Past Tells Us about the Future Arctic Chapter 2: Tar Sands, Dams, and Deltas Chapter 3: Ocean Currents Chapter 4: Polar Bears and Killer Whales Chapter 5: The End of Migration Chapter 6: Caribou, Muskox, and Bison: Prey, Tell Us what the Future of the Arctic will be?

Chapter 7: Hybridization and the Rise of New Animals in the Arctic Chapter 8: Falling into the Sea: Erosion, Receding Ice, and Vulnerable Shorelines Chapter 9: Oil and Ice, “Drill Baby Drill�

Chapter 10: Redrawing the Map of the Arctic: Shifting Territorial Boundaries and an Arctic Treaty Conclusion

Eight-Foot Tall Beavers, Scimitar Cats and Three Toed Horses.

Aug 26, 1852: “The land is white; last night snow fell, six inches deep, early this morning, the ice was three-quarters of an inch thick. From the highest mountain, 900 feet ice only, and not a drop of water can be seen in the (Arctic) sea. The captain, Mr. Cresswell and I were out hunting, and saw nothing living. In the afternoon fourteen men, hunters, went out: they came back at 11 p.m. with a bag of two ptarmigan; Mr. Kennedy had the misfortune through mishandling his gun to give himself a dangerous wound in the abdomen.

From the diary of Moravian missionary Johann Miertsching, who was aboard the Investigator, a British ship that had been trapped in ice at the north end of Banks Island for more than two years while searching for the lost Franklin expedition. Franklin and all 128 of his men died in an attempt to find a Northwest Passage through the Arctic.

In the summer of 1967, geologist Len Hills was hiking along the north coast of Banks Island at Ballast Brook in the High Arctic when he spotted a large fossilized bone protruding from the surface of the tundra. It was cold, wet and snowing at the time. Hills picked up the specimen, put it in his bag and carried on without really knowing what he had found that day.

Being a palynologist, he was more interested in finding the spores and pollen of ancient plants than what might have walked on four legs.

Hills never gave the discovery any more thought until Dale Russell, a paleontologist with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, phoned him up some ten years later and asked whether he had ever come across some Cretaceous-era bones during his explorations in the High Arctic.

Hills thought it an odd request. At the time, very few scientists seriously considered the possibility that T-Rex and other dinosaurs had ever ventured anywhere near the polar world. It never occurred to him that one, or more of the unidentified fossils he had picked up during his many research expeditions to the Arctic could be that of a “terrible lizard.”

The call, however, reminded Hills of a journal article, which reported the apparent discovery of dinosaur footprints in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in 1976. As Hills remembered it, the discovery was made in the same area where dinosaur footprints were supposedly found in 1960. Back in his lab, Hills searched for, and found the fossil he had picked up at Ballast Brook that day. He gave it a wash and then had a good laugh when he and his colleagues finally figured out what it was. The fossil was not that of a dinosaur, but the shinbone

of a woolly mammoth, a giant elephant-like animal that once lived in the Arctic.

For some time, no one knew what to make of this 22,000 year-old specimen, and another similarly aged mammoth fossil that was found on Melville Island to the northeast. These big hairy elephants, they knew, lived in the Arctic at one time. But no one thought that any of these creatures had lived beyond the north coast of the Yukon and Alaska.

In time, paleontologist Dick Harington, the man who dated the fossil, came up with an explanation that seemed to satisfy most everyone. He suggested that Banks Island and parts of southwestern Melville Island were once part of the northeastern limit of Beringia - a verdant mass of lowland that periodically connected Arctic Russia to Arctic North America when sea levels were much lower than they are today because most of the Earth’s water was locked up in glaciers.

Over a period of thousands of years, most of those wooly mammoths would have slowly migrated southwest until a massive sheet of ice that was expanding northwestward from the Hudson Bay region stopped them. But some of them, Harington suggested, may have stayed behind or retreated north across the ice sheets that connected the mainland to Banks Island when sea levels were so low.

Even today, most scientists assume that much of Banks Island and other parts of the western Arctic Archipelago were largely ice-free through the last period of glaciation, and at least partially ice-free for hundreds of thousands of years before that.

You can almost see it in the soft, verdant look of this treeless tundra on a warmish summer day. In places such as the Thomsen River valley, the terrain looks as if it was never scoured by the sharp edges and heavy weight of ice that expanded to its Ice Age maximum 18,000 years ago before petering out 11,000 years later.

For most of his 40-year-long career conducting research in the Arctic, scientist John England also thought that Banks Island was a relatively undisturbed relic of an ancient world.

But some time in the 1990s, he and a handful of colleagues in the paleoenvironmental community saw something in the accumulation of geological evidence that suggested this theory might be flawed.

England and I were standing on the tundra at Ballast Brook when he described to me how he saw it all unfold. It was cold and bleak that day in August, just as it might have been when Hills was there more than four decades ago. England was waving his arms, much like a sketch

artist might do in a courtroom, drawing a picture of a monstrous sheet of ice moving north from the mainland in super slow motion, churning up granite and gravel, sand and stone and possibly the bones of animals that may have died in its path.

Banks Island may have been home to woolly mammoths and other Ice Age animals at one point in time, he told me. But, if it was, the animals were eventually displaced by this big sheet of ice.

“If there was such a population, it is surprising that no additional evidence has been found of any other animals like it,” he said. “One bone on Melville, one on Banks? And the Melville sample was found below marine limit, the height of the postglacial sea level that inundated the land after ice retreat.”

“That mammoth bone could have been rafted in by sea ice long after the animal from which it was derived, lived,” he added. “How far away is anyone’s guess?”

England didn’t arrive at this theory lightly.

The truth about how Banks Island and other parts of the Arctic have been shaped by climate, glaciers and ice sheets, has been germinating, evolving, and constantly changing as a result of the research that he and other scientists have been doing in the circumpolar world.

No one In Hills’ day, however, expected it to unfold as it has done since 1973 when Mary Dawson and Robert West, vertebrate paleontologists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Milwaukee Public Museum respectively, excavated a rich vein of varied life forms at Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island. In among the rocks, gravel and peat along the icy shores, they found fossil fragments of alligators, giant tortoises, snakes, lizards, tapirs, hippo and rhinolike animals that lived 55 million years ago in a climate that was similar to what is experienced today in Georgia and the Florida Everglades.

The thinking at the time, and for some time after, was that this warm, verdant Arctic world, which was first hinted at in 1875 when a British expedition found fossilized tree leaves at the north end of Ellesmere Island, couldn’t have lasted for long. But then in the summer of 1985, helicopter pilot Paul Tudge discovered tree trunks sticking out of the ground on Axel Heiberg Island in the High Arctic. The trunks he found turned out to be more than 10 million years younger than the creatures Dawson and West had unearthed. Some of the dawn redwoods that paleobotanists James Basinger and Jane Francis found were more than 16 feet long and eight feet wide. The various nuts, seeds and cones they collected were so perfectly preserved, they looked

as if they had recently fallen to the ground. Several specimens still held the sap they oozed before a catastrophic flood buried and preserved them in an anaerobic tomb of sand. A single tooth found by Joanne Eberle and John Storer some time later indicated that this was a world that was lush enough to sustain bronotheres, a massive rhino-like animal that was found in large number across Asia and North America.

In the years that followed, a picture of an enduringly warm Arctic came into sharper focus. We know now from fossils unearthed on Devon Island that brontotheres continued to thrive in a mixed conifer forest in the Arctic 39 million years ago and that there were camels in the region 10 million years later. Back at Strathcona Fiord, Dick Harington has solid evidence of miniature beavers and three-toed horses living in an upland environment in which they were constantly on the look out for ancestral bears, weasel-like carnivores and Eurasian badgers that lurked in the adjoining forests 4.5 million years ago .

We also know that between 160,000 and 11,000 years ago, there were at various times giant ground sloths, eight foot tall beavers, scimitar cats and American lions living in the Yukon and Alaska along with the woolly mammoths. And we now have indisputable proof that T-Rex and other dinosaurs lived in the Arctic from about 100 million to 65 million years ago.

If the past tells us anything about the future Arctic, it’s that climate change happens often, and when it does, it happens relatively quickly and often catastrophically before a new biosphere takes over.

Warm and verdant as the Arctic was for most of the past 100 million years, a trend to cooling began to take place shortly after large mammals replaced the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The build-up of glaciers and ice sheets that followed 20 million years later, signaled the beginning of the end of the brontotheres, and then the camels. By the time miniatures beavers had staked their claim at the north end of Ellesmere Island 4.5 million years ago, a vicious cycling of advancing and retreating glaciers took hold, killing off vast swaths of forests throughout the Arctic archipelago and northern mainland.

Even wooly mammoths, animals that were superbly adapted to survive in the Arctic world, had tremendous difficulty adapting to the rapidfire cycles of cooling and warming that took place. What may have done them in though were humans who migrated across the Bering Land Bridge in sufficient numbers to kill off what was left of them in North America.

Mammoths were not the only victims of climate change. Among the 13 species of mammals that Harington unearthed at Gold Run Creek in the north central part of the Yukon Territory in the 1970s, eight of them – the giant short-faced bear, American lion, American mastodon, wooly mammoth, Yukon horse, helmeted muskox, Alaska bison and Steppe bison – are extinct. Another two – the American badger and kiang (wild ass), are no longer found in the Arctic.

What we have today are the survivors - a mere eleven Arctic bird species, 357 types of vascular plants, 12 terrestrial mammals, three Arctic whales and a handful of other marine mammals that have found a way to live in the Arctic year-round.

The big difference between now and then, of course, is that there are a lot more people living in, or working in the Arctic. And they are not just hunting. Today, humans are building roads to mine sites, drilling for oil and gas on land and offshore, shipping resources in and out of the region, setting up military bases, and growing their populations.

Hiking along the tundra later that day, England and I saw yet another sign of what how the future of the Arctic might be shaped. There in the side of a gravelly hill was the partially excavated den of a grizzly bear, an animal that was almost never seen on the Arctic islands two decades ago. This was the fourth sighting of a grizzly on Banks that summer and the 20th reported in the past five years. Not only are these brown bears fighting with, and in some cases killing polar bears, there is now evidence of them mating and producing hybrids.

Grizzlies are not the only animals that are taking advantage of this warming world.

Throughout the circumpolar world, red fox, white-tailed deer, Pacific salmon and killer whales are migrating north and competing with Arctic fox, barren ground caribou, Arctic char, narwhal and beluga whales. In some cases, these southern animals are carrying diseases for which many of the Arctic specialists have no immunity.

Understanding the history of the Arctic could help decision-makers chart a future in which catastrophic change can be mitigated. The problem, as American historian Ernest R. May once pointed out, is that “policy makers ordinarily use history badly,” it they use it all.

This is especially true for the Arctic. For centuries, decision-makers in high office seeking solutions to the challenges their countries faced in the circumpolar world have been fundamentally flawed. Mistakes were repeated over and over again, not necessarily because

decision makers and entrepreneurs didn’t know any better, but because they chose to see only the facts that conformed to their existing images, beliefs and goals.

The search for the northwest or northern passage to the Orient was a case in point. From the time the Italian explorer John Cabot first set sail from Bristol in 1497 in the small bark Matthew with a northwest or northern passage in mind, to the moment almost 350 years later when all 129 crew members of John Franklin’s expedition disappeared, more than 140 ships from Italy, Portugal, Britain and the United States tried and failed to find an Arctic shortcut to the Orient. Not until Norwegian Roald Amundsen small square-sterned sloop Gjoa sailed into Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait in 1903 and rounded Point Barrow in Alaska three years later was the Northwest Passage successfully navigated.

The most enduring of the beliefs that drove this monumentally flawed and fabulously expensive effort to find a short cut to the Orient was one of an open polar sea at the North Pole.

Almost without exception, Arctic explorers assumed that if they plowed far enough through the Arctic ice, they would reach a place where the effects of 24 hours of sunlight and other phenomena would be more than enough to make the region ice-free.

The idea of an open polar sea is a wonderful story. It has its origins in a Greek myth that describes open water beyond the Rhipean Mountains where Boreas, the purple-winged god of North Wind, lived in a land of eternal spring and 24 hours of day light. Many people at the time thought it was Boreas’ icy breath that brought winter to southern Europe.

Strange as it may sound today, people at the time believed in these kinds of myths.

What’s more, explorations to the edge of the Arctic by the Greek sailor Pytheas and by Venetian sailors Antonio and Nicolo Zeno appeared to lend credence to this open water concept. Gerhard Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, two of Europe’s most accomplished sixteenth century cartographers were so influenced by the Zeno Map that was drawn in 1380, then lost and found nearly two hundred years later, they prominently displayed the Zenos’ open polar sea on their own maps of the world.

By the late 19th century, historians had figured out that the Zenos were frauds who never made the journey to the Arctic and the new world they claimed lay there. As best as anyone could tell, the voyage and the map were part of an elaborate hoax to prove that Christopher Columbus was not the first to discover the new world.

No one, however, knew that up until then. To the day of his death in 1848, John Barrow, Secretary to the British Admiralty and the main organizer of British polar exploration from 1818 to 1845, believed that the Arctic region harboured an open polar sea. American explorer Elisha Kent Kane was so convinced of its existence when he sailed to the Arctic in 1853-1855 that he announced its discovery in an official report to the U.S. Navy. In the map that he and a colleague drew, the words "Open Sea" are spelled out in bold letters over the North Pole.

Kane never got another chance to prove that you could actually sail to the Orient through the open water he no doubt saw. Isaac Hayes, his surgeon, later did and failed miserably (the book he wrote about the journey was called “The Open Polar Sea”). Still, that didn’t stop George Washington de Long from attempting the feat. De Long never lived to regret it. He and most of his crew died after the ship they were sailing in was crushed by ice off the coast of Alaska long before they got anywhere near the High Arctic.

When science and first hand discovery finally led decision-makers to concede that there was nothing beyond the ice pack in the Arctic but more ice, an image of the Arctic as a wasteland of interest only to missionaries, Mounties, military strategists and a handful of adventurers began to emerge.

And that’s when the next series of colossal mistakes were made.

Decision-makers saw so little value in this icy real estate that they sold huge chunks of it off for a song. After a single night of wrangling in 1867, Russia turned over what is now the state of Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million, or about 2 cents per acre. A steal as this has turned out to be, the purchase was dubbed “Seward’s Folly” at the time because critics felt that Secretary of State William H. Steward bargained badly.

In 1930, Norway gave up its claim to the Sverdrup Islands in the Arctic archipelago of North America for “thirteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty seven pounds, two shillings and one penny,” along with Great Britain’s willingness to recognize Norwegian sovereignty over two islands along the northeast passage.

By 1949, the Arctic was seemingly so worthless that a “top secret” plan was hatched to detonate twelve Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs along the west coast of Hudson Bay Had the plan been approved, the bombs would have laid waste to a huge stretch of tundra in northern Canada. The blasts, and the fallout, would have also killed most of the 1,000 polar

bears that are forced to spend the summer and fall on land waiting for cold weather to bring the ice back to the region.

“The Technical Feasibility of Establishing an Atomic-Weapons Proving Ground in the Churchill Area” 1was the work of C.P. McNamara of Canada's Defense Research Board and William George (later Lord) Penney, the scientist who had participated in the Manhattan Project before moving on to direct Great Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment. They, and other high-ranking decision-makers, decided on Churchill over several other similarly remote places in Canada because they considered it a “waste land suitable only for hunting and trapping." Only the “occasional hunter or trapper," would be affected, they reasoned in a proposal that would have had the highest level of attention in the two governments.

The Churchill plan, of course, was never approved; the winning proposal went to Australia, 2 but only because the British felt that northern Canada would be too cold and uncomfortable for their scientists.

Like the open polar sea, this image of the Arctic as a frigid wasteland of little value to anyone proved to be enduring even as scientific research began to paint a picture of a biologically productive world that harboured two million caribou and reindeer, 150,000 beluga whales, 80,000 narwhal, 100,000 muskoxen, 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears, and nesting grounds for millions of the world’s birds.

No one knew or seemed to care that several distinct human cultures were tied to the movement of these birds and animals. Throughout the 1950s, the Soviet Union rounded up thousands of nomadic Arctic people and forcibly moved them to labour camps. The Soviets weren’t the only ones doing this. In 1953, the Danish government relocated the entire village of Thule in Greenland to a site 60 miles to the north to make room for a U.S. military base. That same year, the Canadian government shipped several families from northern Quebec 1,500 miles north to two virtually uninhabitable parts of the High Arctic as part of a plan to assert sovereignty in the region.

1

The Technical Feasibility of Establishing an Atomic-Weapons Proving Ground in the Churchill Area, C.P. McNamara of Canada's Defense Research Board and William George Penny, Ministry of Supply, London, England. 1949 (labeled Top Secret)

2

Britain detonated its first nuclear test device, "Hurricane," on October 3, 1952, in the waters off the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Australia

This pattern of decision-making that emerged in those years continued for decades.

Whenever sovereignty, security and economic priorities came into play, environmental integrity and the cultural interests of indigenous northerners invariably suffered as it did in the most dramatic of ways when the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska in 1989.

In many ways, nothing has changed . Few of the lessons learned from Valdez were learned in the management of the Deepwater Horizon well site in the Gulf of Mexico. And in spite of what was supposedly learned from Deepwater - that oil spills are incredibly difficult to clean up even when there are roads, seaports, helicopters and ships, and good weather to help in the cleanup – decision-makers and entrepreneurs continue to assure the public that drilling in the Arctic, where there are no roads, seaports, helicopters and ships readily on hand – is manageable in a region where weather is often wild and unpredictable.

These are critical times for charting the course of the future Arctic. With rapidly melting sea ice resurrecting the image of an open polar sea, decision-makers are once again looking at a short cut through the Arctic and an economical way of shipping this frontier oil and gas and various mining minerals to southern markets.

The Russians are well ahead head of this race, having built as they have done, several icebreakers and ten Arctic ports to facilitate shipping through the northeast passage. China and Korea, which have ambitious Arctic aspirations, are not far behind. The United States and Canada are trying hard to catch up even though both countries have an aging fleet of icebreakers, and no Arctic ports to facilitate shipping, search and rescue and oil spill cleanups If current plans tell us anything about the future, it’s that we are poised yet again to make some very serious mistakes.

I was reminded of that possibility in the summer of 2010 when I was invited to participate on a Philosopher’s Cruise on the Canadian icebreaker Louis St. Laurent as it sailed through the Northwest Passage. With me on that voyage were scientists, philosophers, decisionmakers, senior policy advisors from Canada, the United States, and Great Britain as well as representatives of the Inuit and Dene in Canada.

Each one of us was asked to talk about steps that might be taken to ensure that the environmental and cultural integrity of the Arctic can withstand the climatic and political transformations that are opening up a number of economic opportunities in the region.

The most insightful presentation, I thought, came from scientist Buzz Holling, an Emeritus Eminent Scholar and Professor in Ecological Sciences at the University of Florida, The Arctic, Holling told us, is no different from any system of life. Every living system, at some stage, grows until it reaches a stage of maturity; the front loop of this cycle tends to be incremental, gradual and predictable. During the back loop, disorganization reigns, constraints are removed and probabilistic events, be it fire, flood, disease, climate change etc, can begin to emerge and set a course for the beginning of a new pathway. This back loop is faster in natural ecological systems than the front loop. It is a time when the individual – species or person - has the greatest potential influence. Learning can be dramatic, but it is chaotic and there are extensive unknowns.

One example Holling used to illustrate this concept was Cathedral Hill, an 800 year-old stand of temperate forest on Vancouver Island. For all its simplicity and its ability to delight those who visit, Cathedral Grove, is as Hollings pointed out, an accident waiting to happen.

Having grown as much as they can, the trees here are no longer as resilient as they once were. At some point in time, something - be it fire, flood, disease or the big wind storm that felled many of the giants in 1997 – is going to destroy them.

With the climate warming up the polar world faster than any other place on earth, the Arctic might also be viewed as an accident waiting to happen. Like Cathedral Grove, it is a mature ecosystem in which natural variability has been limited by climatic extremes. Ice and cold temperatures have done a good job of keeping southern animals from moving in and competing. Life that thrives in this Arctic world needs climatic extremes to keep it stable.

This stability, however, is unravelling. In this back loop cycle - rising air and seawater temperatures, decreasing seasonal ice cover, and a freshening of the Arctic ocean—are triggering a series of biological changes that will likely result in irreversible effects on the animals that live there and on the people who depend on them for their livelihoods.

This is already happening in the north Bering Sea region where large populations of sea ducks, gray whales, bearded seals and walruses depend on small bottom-dwelling creatures for sustenance. Because the cold-water habitat of small bottom-dwelling creatures is warming, the habitat that they depend on is shifting north. Most of the sea ducks and marine mammals are following them.

If the past and the present circumstances tell us anything about the future of the Arctic in this part of the world, it’s that there may be no more Arctic left some day for these creatures to move into.

Left to their own devices, some forms of life in this Arctic world will adapt and recover, as the polar bear, Peary caribou, narwhal and other Arctic specialists have done in the past. We saw this happen most recently on Banks Island. A little over 160 years ago, there were virtually no muskoxen to be found here. We know that because the crew of the Investigator, a British ship that was sent out to search for the lost Franklin between 1850 and 1853 had to go hunting almost daily for nearly two years when they got hopelessly trapped in ice not far from Ballast Brook.

According to the ship’s logs, they managed to kill 110 caribou, 169 hares, 186 grouse, 198 ducks, 29 geese, four polar bears and two wolves. Only four muskoxen were seen during that time and none of them were shot. Fifty years later, the Inuit told American explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson that evil spirits had chased all of the animals away, and that is why he saw none.

When biologists Andrew Macpherson and Tom Manning explored the island in 1954, they thought they saw one muskox in the distance, but couldn’t confirm it because the animal was too far afield.

No one knows what it was that kept muskoxen numbers on Banks Island and other parts of the Arctic so low for such a long period of time. What we do know is that today, we have 84,000, or two thirds of the world’s population, thriving in this one place.

One again, the difference between now and what happened in the past is that humans are undermining the resiliency of these animals and their ability to recover. Their ability to respond to, or adapt to change will be further weakened by Arctic shipping, the drilling for oil and gas, the mining for minerals and the pollution that will inevitably result from oil spills or mining accidents.

We could, of course, let nature takes its course and hope that a vibrant new biosphere will emerge as it did for muskoxen on Banks Island.

Or we could pay heed to the lessons learned from the past, recognize that we may be part of the problem, and throw a lifeline to the Arctic as was done in Cathedral Grove. Those 800 year-old trees are still with us today because logging, the lighting campfires, and even the smoking of cigarettes on site are prohibited.

Not everything in the Arctic can or should be preserved. There is little we can do, for example, to stop the treeline from moving north, Arctic waters from warming up and freshening or southern animals from moving in. Even if we found a way of severely reducing the emission of greenhouse gases that are causing these things to happen, the Arctic is going to warm for decades to come before it can shake off the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

We could, however, put things into play that will provide some forms of Arctic life with the stability they need to get through this warming event.

For any of this to happen, competitive national agendas that are currently driving economic and geopolitical interests in the Arctic, need to be set aside so that a more cooperative form of governance can be put in place. The Inuit and other Arctic people must also have a role to play in the charting of a future. Learning the lessons of the past to help shape the future will be dramatic, likely chaotic and there will be extensive unknowns as John England and other scientists working in the Arctic continues to discover.

What concerns England is that as much as he and others have learned about what the Arctic was like over different time scales, they have found nothing in the driftwood, the whalebones, fossils and shells that they’ve collected along the raised beaches to suggest that there is an analogue in the past 10,000 years that is anything like the seasonally ice free future we are heading towards.

“It is going to be a very different world,” England predicted on the last day of our monthlong research expedition. “Understanding the past should help us better predict the future. But it’s not going to do us much good if we continue to ignore what we have learned.”

Sales Information Sheet The Ecological Design and Planning Reader

Fall 2014 Discount: Text Pub Date: 11/11/2014

Forster O. Ndubisi Hardcover: Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-490-1 978-1-61091-489-5 978-1-61091-491-8

$90.00 $45.00 $44.99

ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning Trim Size: 8 X 10 Pages: 550 77 photographs and line drawings Author Residence: College Station, Texas Comparative Titles: • The Urban Design Reader, Second Edition, Edited by Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald. ISBN: 978-0-415-66808-8, Paperback, Dec. 2012, $74.95, Routledge. Bookscan: 155.

• The City Reader, Second Edition, Edited by Richard LeGates and Frederic Stout. ISBN: 978-0-415-55664-4, Hardcover, Feb. 2011, $183.37, Routledge. Bookscan: 24.

Previous Works: • Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis, Forster O. Ndubisi. ISBN: 978-0-8018-6801-6, Hardcover, May 2002, $50.00, Johns Hopkins University. Bookscan: 174.

Sales Handle An invaluable resource for design and planning students to understand how to create resilient, regenerative, and beautiful places.

Description From Henry David Thoreau to Rachel Carson, writers have long examined the effects of industrialization and its potential to permanently alter the world around them. Today, as we experience rapid global urbanization, pressures on the natural environment to accommodate our daily needs for food, work, shelter, and recreation are greatly intensified. Concerted efforts to balance human use with ecological concerns are needed now more than ever.

In The Ecological Design and Planning Reader Professor Ndubisi offers refreshing insights into key themes that shape the theory and practice of ecological design and planning. He has assembled, synthesized, and framed selected seminal published scholarly works in the field from the past one hundred and fifty years, ending with a suggested agenda for future research and analysis in ecological design and planning.

This is the first volume to bring together classic and contemporary writings on the history, evolution, theory, methods, and exemplary practice of ecological design and planning. The collection provides students, scholars, researchers, and practitioners of landscape architecture, urban design, land use planning, and related fields with a solid foundation for understanding the relationship between human systems and our natural environment.

Selling Points • For the first time, important classic and contemporary published works in ecological design and planning in one volume • The essays and Ndubisi's framework offer a critical analysis and synthesis of key issues • Offers historic and contemporary case studies of exemplary practice as well as emerging frameworks for intervention • Provides an agenda for issues to be addressed by scholars and researchers in balancing human use with ecological concerns

Author Bio Dr. Forster Ndubisi is a Professor and head of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A & M University. A former President of Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), he is the current Vice President for Research and Information for the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) Board.

Table of Contents Introduction PART I. Historical Precedents Introduction Chapter 1. Walden 1854 \ Henry D. Thoreau.

Chapter 2. Excerpts from Man and Nature \ George P. Marsh.

Chapter 3. “The Three Magnets and Town-Country Magnet.” In Garden Cities of To-morrow. \ Ebenezer Howard.

Chapter 4. Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to The Town Planning Movement and to The Study of Civics. \ Patrick Geddes.

Chapter 5. “Regional Planning and Ecology.” \ B. MacKaye.

Chapter 6. “Ecological Planning: Retrospect and Prospect.” \ Frederick Steiner, Gerald Young, and Ervin Zube.

PART II. Ethical Foundations Introduction Chapter 7. “Man and the Environment.” \ Ian L. McHarg.

Chapter 8. “The land ethic.” \ Aldo Leopold.

Chapter 9. “The obligation to Endure.” In Silent Spring with Introduction by Vice President Al Gore. \ Rachel Carson.

Chapter 10. Ethical Land Use: Principles of Policy and Planning. \ Timothy Beatley.

Chapter 11. Beyond the Land Ethic: More Essays in Environmental Philosophy. \ J. Baird Callicott.

PART III. Substantive Theory Introduction Chapter 12. “Systems, Signs, Sensibilities: Sources for A New Landscape Aesthetic.” \ Catherine Howett.

Chapter 13. “Open Space from Natural Processes.” In To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg. \ Ian L. McHarg and Frederick Steiner.

Chapter 14. “Introduction to Ecological Design.” In Ecological Design. \ Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan.

Chapter 15. “The Strategy for Ecosystem Development.” \ Eugene P. Odum.

Chapter 16. “Foundations.” In Land Mosaics: the Ecology of Landscapes and Regions. \ Richard T.T. Forman.

PART IV. Procedural Theory Introduction Chapter 17. “First Landscape-Suitability Approach.” In Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis. \ Forster Ndubisi.

Chapter 18. “How Human Ecosystems Work.” In Design for Human Ecosystems: Landscape, Land Use, and Natural Resources. \ John T. Lyle.

Chapter 19. “Ecological Principles and Guidelines for Managing The Use of Land 1.” \ Virginia H. Dale, Sandra Brown, R. A. Haeuber, N. T. Hobbs, Nancy Huntley, R. J. Naiman, W. E. Riebsame, M. G. Turner, and T. J. Valone.

Chapter 20. “Basic Principles for Molding Land Mosaics.” In Urban Regions: Ecology and Planning Beyond The City. \ Richard T.T. Forman.

Chapter 21. “Introduction.” In Biodiversity Planning and Design: Sustainable Practices. \ Jack Ahern, Elizabeth Leduc, and Mary L. York.

PART V. Methods and Processes Introduction Chapter 22. “An Ecological Method for Landscape Architecture.” \ Ian L. McHarg.

Chapter 23. “Methods for Generating Land Suitability Maps: A Com-

parative Evaluation.” \ Lewis Hopkins.

Chapter 24. “The Art of Site Planning.” In Site Planning. \ Kevin Lynch and Gary Hack.

Chapter 25. “Process.” In Urban Ecological Design: A Process for Regenerative Places. \ Danilo Palazzo and Frederick Steiner.

Chapter 26. “On Teaching Ecological Principles to Designers.”

In Ecology and Design. \ Carl Steinitz.

Chapter 27. “Framing Land Use: A System Approach.” In Landscape Planning: Environmental Applications. \ William M. Marsh.

Chapter 28. “A Synthesis of Approaches to Ecological Planning.” In Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis. \ Forster Ndubisi.

PART VI. Dimensions of Practice Introduction Chapter 29. “A Case Study in Ecological Planning: The Woodlands, TX.” In Planning the Uses and Management of Land. \ Arthur Johnson and Jonathan Berger.

Chapter 30. “Project Discussion: Aguas Claras, Belo Horinzonte.” In Toward Legacy: Design Workshop’s Pursuit of Ideals in Landscape Architecture, Planning, and Urban Design. \ Design Workshop, Inc. Chapter 31. “Foreword.” In Thesen Islands. \ Chris Mulder.

Chapter 32. Alternative Futures for Changing Landscapes: The Upper San Pedro River Basin in Arizona and Sonora. \ Carl Steinitz, Hector Arias, Scott Bassett, Michael Flaxman, Tomas Goode, Thomas Maddock, David Mouat, Richard Peiser, and Allan Shearer.

Chapter 33. “Reinvent the Good Earth: National Ecological Security Pattern, China.” In Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu. \ William S. Sanders, ed.

Chapter 33. “From Regional Planning to Site Design: The Application of Shan-Shui City Concept in Multi-Scale Landscape Planning of New Cities in China.” In International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) World Congress. \ Jie Hu. Chapter 34. “Site Building Through Ecological Planning.” In Toward A New Regionalism: Environmental Architecture in The Pacific Northwest. \ David E. Miller.

PART VII. Emerging Frameworks Introduction Chapter 35. “What is an Ecological Footprint.” In Our Ecological Footprint. \ Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees.

Chapter 36. “The Region.” In The New Urbanism: Toward Architecture of Community. \ Peter Calthorpe. Edited by P. Katz, V. J. Scully and T. W. Bressi.

Chapter 36. “Smart Growth: Why We Discuss It More Than We Do It.” In Journal of the American Planning Association 71. \ Anthony Downs.

Chapter 37. “Landscape Ecological Urbanism: Origins and Trajectories.” In Landscape and Urban Planning. \ Frederick Steiner.

Chapter 38. “Ecological Resilience as a Foundation for Urban Design and Sustainability.” In Resiliency in Ecology and Urban Design: Linking Theory and Practice for Sustainable Cities. \ Jianguo Wu and Tong Wu. Edited by S. Pickett, M. Cadenasso, and B. McGrath.

Chapter 39. “Ecological Urbanism: A Framework for the Design of Resilient Cities.” Working paper. \ Anne Whiston Spirn.

Conclusion Notes References Illustration Credits

Introduction

Concerted efforts to balance human use with ecological concerns sustainably in the twenty-first century continue to be necessary. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, visionary giants like George Catlin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Perkin Marsh, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Ebenezer Howard, alerted us to the negative impacts of human actions on the landscape. Today, almost two hundred years later, human impacts are greater and more complex, making solutions increasingly difficult to achieve. Landscapes serve as life support systems for people and other organisms, but continue to gradually degrade, even as promising solutions are offered. An urgent need, thus, exists to continue to search for ways to effectively balance human use with ecological concerns.

The landscape is the geographical template in which human activities take place. It lies at the interface between natural and cultural processes. It implies the totality of the natural and cultural features on, over, and in the land. 1 Put simply, the landscape “is that portion of land that the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all its natural and cultural characteristics.” 2 As such, “landscapes are dynamic entities defined by their interactive parts and integrative whole.” 3 Landscapes change over time as humans mold natural processes, sometimes in harmony with the processes, and at other times, altering them. When altered in adverse ways, ecological problems arise and are expressed in different ways at varied spatial and temporal scales—global, national, regional, local, and site.

In the past few decades, the type, scope, magnitude, and complexity of ecological issues and problems have expanded and intensified in response to changing demographic, social, economic, and technological forces. These forces are the key drivers of change in the

landscape. 4 We are currently witnessing rapid population growth worldwide. For instance, the world population grew more than ten-fold, from 22 million in 1900, to about 2.9 billion in 1999.5 In 2012, 7.2 billion people inhabited the earth. The United Nations (UN) estimates that this population will reach 8.2 billion in 2030, and 9.2 billion in 2050, of which more than 70 percent will reside in metropolitan areas. 6 Increased population growth in metropolitan areas has intensified pressures on landscapes to accommodate our daily needs for food, work, shelter, and recreation. Variability in the nature and intensity of these needs across communities and regions is directly related to consumption patterns and practices, resulting in varying levels of demand on the natural, social, and economic resources required to satisfy these needs. These demands are translated directly onto the landscape, either altering it positively, or more often, negatively (See Figure 0-1) [Insert Figure 0-1] The term nature is used widely throughout this book, thus clarification is essential.

Nature is a very complex social construct. The concept of nature has a long history with diverse interpretations. 7 Nature is sometimes used synonymously with the terms environment or landscape. Nature is commonly thought of as a part of the physical world other than humanity and its constructions. The natural usually implies phenomena occurring without human involvement. Yet, it is difficult to find an environment that is not impacted by humans, either directly or indirectly. As a result, discussions about nature must embrace humanity. Neil Everton asserted: “Once we accept, through the study of Nature, that all life is organically related, organically the same through the linkage of evolution, then humanity is literally a part of nature. Not figuratively, not poetically, but literally an object like other natural objects.� 8

I concur with Everton and many others that nature is a social construct that reveals how people interpret their interactions with the natural world. As such, it should embrace humanity.

But nature embraces humanity at different levels of intensity. These intensities span from nature as the natural, wild, and undisturbed environment with little human influence, to nature as the fully humanized world. I use the term nature to imply the “natural” as well as those aspects of people’s interactions with the environment that are “harmonious” rather than “destructive.” 9

Effects of Landscape Change One type of land use conversion—sprawl—results from the haphazard distribution of land uses and infrastructure, often on greenfields beyond the urban center. It has been linked to dramatic consumption of resources, expensive infrastructure expansion, declining quality of life, and intense financial burdens to communities. Sprawl degrades the environment, accelerates the conversion of large amounts of agriculturally productive soils into urban uses, and may cause visual pollution.10 Between 2005 and 2007, about 4.1 million acres (1.7 million ha.) of agricultural lands were converted into urban uses in the United States. 11 This trend continues.

The need to accommodate metropolitan growth has led to the fragmentation or division of land into smaller parcels, which in turn, leads to land conversions and changes in land use type and intensity. The development of metropolitan areas influences ecological conditions through alterations in the physical condition of the landscape mosaic. 12 The term “mosaic” emphasizes that landscapes are spatially heterogeneous geographical units characterized by diverse interacting ecosystems in which human actions occur. Landscape fragmentation isolates, degrades and homogenizes habitats 13; which in turn, affects biogeochemical cycling and leads to the erosion of biodiversity. 14 Alterations to the landscape may also modify the operation of

hydrological systems, and tend to create soils with high concentrations of heavy and inorganic materials. The modifications may also decrease soil permeability and overflow, increasing pollution runoff. In short, the development of metropolitan landscapes disrupts ecological function—the flow of energy, minerals, and species across the landscape. Sprawl exacerbates the negative ecological effects of urban development. Land use alterations are further linked to rapidly changing climate regimes and urban heat island effects, intensified by the growing concentrations of energy consumption for transportation, industry and domestic use.

Population and economic growth in metropolitan areas in the United States have had positive effects such as increased wealth, economic prosperity, and job creation for many people. 15 The economic prosperity, however, has not been distributed equitably. For instance, central cities lost population from the 1950s to the 1980s as a result of the suburbanization of jobs and income, rapid mechanization of agriculture, and the search for a better quality of life by the city’s prosperous residents. 16 Consequently, the population of central cities became poorer.

Neighborhoods that were once socially and economically viable have witnessed substantial social dislocation. Fortunately, inner cities have grown modestly since the 1980s. 17 This trend has become a catalyst for re-investment in inner city areas, creating a demand for the rehabilitation and restoration of derelict urban landscapes. 18 Contemporary social, demographic, and economic changes have further shaped the character of urban and rural landscapes.

Accelerated advances in communications, transportation, and information technology coupled with globalization have intensified decentralization by increasing the capacity for social interaction at a distance, especially when social and economic forces favor it. 19 The interactions among these demographic, social, and technological forces are dynamic, and some of the effects are not yet understood.

Interventions Ecological planning and design provides a promising way to balance human actions and ecological concerns. Put simply, it is a way of managing change in the landscape so that human actions are more in tune with natural processes. 20 It is a form of intervention that enables us to anticipate the nature and dynamics of landscape change and to plan effectively how to manage both the desirable and undesirable effects. Ecology deals with the “reciprocal relationship of all living things to each other (including humans) and to their biological and physical environments.� 21 Of all the natural and social sciences, ecology arguably provides the best understanding of the relationships between our physical and social worlds. The essence of ecology is, therefore, to know and understand reality in terms of relationships. This in turn, is the rationale, among many, for its use in design and planning.

Ecological planning is the application of the knowledge of the relationships in decision making about how to achieve the sustained use of the landscape, while also accommodating human needs. A related term, ecological design, relies on this knowledge to create objects and spaces with skill and artistry across the landscape mosaic. 22 Ecological design and ecological planning are closely intertwined. The objects and spaces created through design, in turn, are employed in facilitating decision making at multiple spatial and temporal scales to create and sustain places. It is difficult to find any decision related to the organization of the physical environments that does not contain an ecological aspect at some level. The development of modern ecology as both a theoretical and applied science, however, has dramatically heightened interest in employing ecological ideas in a systemic way in design and planning. Although the

level of ecological awareness in balancing human actions with ecological concerns has increased over the past five decades, ecological design and planning is not new.

When visionary thinkers such as Thoreau, Marsh, Olmsted, Howard, and Geddes alerted us to human abuses of the landscape, many of them offered solutions as well (see Part One, essay 1). George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) put forth a persuasive argument that efforts by people to transform the landscape should be accompanied by a sense of social responsibility and he proposed an approach for restoring degraded landscapes (see Part One, essays 2 and 3).

Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. (1822-1903) advocated understanding the landscape from ecological and aesthetic perspectives. He was successful in translating his ideas into practice, as evident in the numerous landscapes he designed, such as Central Park and Prospect Park in New York, and the plan for the Yosemite Valley Park in California.

Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928), the English proponent of the garden-city concept, advocated new communities that fused the beneficial quality-of-life attributes of cities with the naturalness of the countryside (see Part One, essay 4). Like Olmsted, he implemented his ideas in the development of the new towns of Letchworth (1904) and Welwyne (1917) in England.

Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), the Scottish botanist and planner, proposed a regional survey method grounded on “folk-work-place� attributes (see Part One, essay 5). The solutions proposed by these visionaries have been modified, refined, and expanded by others to adapt to the twentieth and twenty-first century social, economic, political, and technological realities.

Notable contributions include the works of Lorien Eisley, Jens Jenson, Benton MacKaye, Lewis Mumford, Rachael Carson, Ian McHarg, Philip Lewis, Eugene Odum, Carl Steinitz, Richard Forman, and Frederick Steiner (see Part One, essays 6 and 7).

Since the 1960s, legislation in the areas of environmental protection and resource management has increased dramatically worldwide, and at varied spatial scales. These legislation and policies address a wide spectrum of ecological concerns, from natural resource and habitat conservation, to the protection of clean air and water quality, to the reduction of landscape fragmentation, and collectively, to the prevention and correction of the degradation of landscape resources. Examples of federal legislation include the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), as amended in 1977 and 1990; Clean Water Act (1972), as amended in 1977 and 1987; and the National Endangered Species Act (1973), as amended in 1978, 1979, and 1982). Many states and communities have ordinances in place to balance human use with ecological concerns as well.

Increased interest in ecological design and planning has resulted in a proliferation of theoretical concepts and methodological innovations for understanding and evaluating landscapes to ensure a better “fit� between human actions and ecological systems. This has manifested in movements or sub disciplines such as eco-design, green design and architecture, green infrastructure, low-impact development, sustainable development, smart growth, sustainable regionalism, ecological urbanism, and landscape urbanism. Although we now have an impressive array of approaches for balancing ecological concerns with human actions, it is important to understand the foundational ideas and approaches to understanding and solving the ecological degradation of the landscape. The historical and contemporary approaches are brought together in this book.

Map of the Book In this book I bring together classic and important contemporary published works on the history, theory, methods, and practice of ecological design and planning in one volume. In

the new material, I provide a critical analysis and synthesis of the key issues and discuss the similarities and differences of complementary approaches, with the intent to find a common base of understanding. The readings include seminal contributions from landscape architecture, planning, geography, ecology, environmental science, and green architecture.

This book contains an introduction, seven parts, and a conclusion looking at future thinking and practice. The parts are historical precedents, ethical foundations, substantive theory, procedural theory, methods and processes, dimensions of practice, and emerging frameworks. In Part One, Historical Foundations, I introduce key writings on the history of ecological planning with the acknowledgement that ecological problems remain evident at all spatial scales, despite promising interventions. Planners and designers are beginning to acknowledge the significance of ecology as a guiding principle in decision making about the optimal uses of the landscape.

In Part Two, Ethical Foundations, I examine the ethical foundation for ecological design and planning, emphasizing contributions from Ian McHarg, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Timothy Beatley, and Baird Callicot. A consistent theme in the readings is that people are intricately interdependent with their biological and physical environments. A disturbance in one part of the system affects the behavior of other parts, suggesting specific ethical positions on how we ought to behave toward the land. I conclude that various ethical positions co-exist today and that establishing priorities in reconciling them will become increasingly important.

In Part Three, Substantive Theory, I point out that a feature of the continued development of ecological design and planning is the emergence of methodological directives for translating ecological ideas into practice. I draw a distinction between substantive and

procedural theories—the former deals with content theory while the latter emphasizes the processes for balancing human uses with ecological concerns.

Part Four, Procedural Theory, highlights the contributions of many designers, planners, and ecologists including Ian McHarg, John Tillman Lyle, and ecologist Richard Forman. A consistent theme found in the readings is a search for optimal uses of the landscape, with each author offering ideas about how this may best be achieved, thereby contributing to the richness and diversity of approaches. I conclude that each of the readings has something to offer for the continued advancement of the theoretical-methodological base in ecological design and planning.

In Part Five, Methods and Processes, I review selected ecological design and planning methods to illustrate the diversity of approaches. Each method strives to ascertain the fitness of a tract of land for a particular use, but does so in varied and complementary ways. The suitability method associated with Ian McHarg, for instance, was widely cited by the other authors, especially for its novelty in pulling together an ethical framework, working theories, and ideas for putting theory into practice. I conclude that no single approach can address every ecological problem. Rather, designers and planners should draw upon the strengths of each approach and ignore their less desirable aspects.

I examine case studies of exemplary practice in Part Six, Dimensions of Practice. Each of these represents a wide spectrum of global ecological design and planning practices. They span from those that originate from the research environment, such as professor Carl Steiner’s San Pedro River Basin study in the United States; to others that stem from private practice, for instance, the Design Workshop’s Aguas Claras mining reclamation and satellite community scheme in Brazil. The type of ecological problems addressed range new community and

restoration schemes, to biodiversity and resource conservation proposals at spatial scales from national to local, from many parts of the world including Africa, China, South America and the United States. The studies reveal, to varying degrees, a skillful blending of aesthetic form, functional utility, and ecological health and process in the proposed design and planning solutions. I conclude that each case study makes a unique contribution to the continued development of ecological design and planning practice.

In Part Seven, Emerging Frameworks, the essays reflect that the world is becoming increasingly urban and that the problems associated with this are becoming progressively complex. Because urban landscapes are complex, heterogeneous, and interacting ecological systems, comprehending them and proposing sustainable solutions to their problems necessitate an interdisciplinary and holistic perspective. Each author offered solutions or provided insights for ways to understand or even resolve these concerns. Ethical framework, resilience, adaptation, regeneration, sustainability, ecosystem services, regional thinking, evidence-based solutions, aesthetic appreciation of landscapes, and collaboration, are the major themes embedded in the solutions. These will continue to be important as we seek to effectively balance human use with ecological concerns (Figure 0-2).

[Insert Figure 0-2] In the Conclusion, I provide a critical analysis and synthesis of the themes covered in the essays to illuminate issues that scholars and researchers need to address in the continued advancement of the theory, methods, and future practice of ecological design and planning. I argue that new ideas on how to effectively balance human use with ecological concerns are necessary due to the increasing diversity, magnitude, timing, and complexity of ecological problems arising from changing societal forces.

I offer principles built upon the rich foundations laid by others. At the core of the principles is the quest for creating and maintaining adaptive regenerative places that are beautiful. I explore supportive principles for creating such places.

Future solutions will embrace the creation of places that move beyond the promise of sustainability, to those that are beautiful, adaptable to change, and yet conserve, repair, restore, and regenerate the flow of energy, materials, and species across the landscape mosaic. I conclude that new research and knowledge that has been drawn from reflective practice will be needed, and will enrich our understanding and make us more effective in creating and maintaining viable adaptive and regenerative places.

1

Aldo Leopold, “The land ethic,” In A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and

There.(New York: Oxford University Press, 1949); Forster Ndubisi, Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 4.

2

Frederick Steiner, “Landscape,” in Human Ecology: Following Nature’s Lead. (Washington,

D.C: Island Press, 2002), 77.

3

Ibid., 86.

4

Frederick Steiner. Design for A Vulnerable Planet (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press,

2011): Landscape Architecture Foundation [LAF], 2000.

5

Mariana Alberti, “The Effects of Urban Patterns on Ecosystem Function”. International

Regional Science review 28, no. 2 (2005): 168.

6

The United Nation. accessed September 10, 2013 and January 25, 2014. http://www.un.org.

Demographic change and dynamics in the United States follows a similar trend. Between 1960

and 2010, the population of United States grew from 179.3 million to 308.7 million, representing a 72.2 percent increase. It is estimated that by the year 2050, the population of the United States will be approximately 410 million and 86 percent of this growth will be located in metropolitan areas.6 7

Neil Everton, “The Fragile Division,” in The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1992). Two distinct viewpoints about people’s relations to nature emerged that are still evident today. The first is that nature has an order, a pattern that humans have to understand, conserve, and manage with wisdom. The other is that nature is a resource to be used by people for their exclusive use (Worster 1979). Different people, in different ways, and for different reasons have aligned themselves on either side of the duality. Those who subscribe to the first viewpoint believe that nature has an order that has an intrinsic value, that is, a value that exists independent of humans, that needs to be nurtured and preserved. On the contrary, adherents of the second viewpoint look to nature as a storehouse of resources to be organized and used by people. The scientific historian, Donald Worster commented on the ramifications of this duality for understanding the history of ecology. “… In any case, one might cast the history of ecology as a struggle between rival views of the relationship between humans and nature: one view devoted to the discovery of intrinsic value and its preservation, the other to the creation of an instrumentalized world and it exploration.” In David Worster, Nature’s Economy: The Roots of Ecology (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1979), xi.

8

Everton, “The Fragile Division,” 93.

9

Spirn, “The Authority of Nature: Conflict, Confusion, and Renewal in Design, Planning, and

Ecology,”

32. Landscape Architect Anne Whiston Spirn’s views on this topic are equally instructive. She pointed out that “Nature is mirror of and for culture. Ideas about nature reveal as much or more about human society as they do about non-human processes and features”. Yet, people’s interactions with the environment may be harmonious or destructive.

10

Forster Ndubisi, "Sustainable Regionalism Evolutionary Framework and Prospects for

Managing Metropolitan Landscapes," Landscape Journal 27, no. 1 (2008): 51-68.

11

American Farmland Trust. accessed February 16, 2011. http:/www.farmland.org/resources;

Steiner, Design for A Vulnerable Planet.

12 13

Alberti, “The Effects of Urban Patterns on Ecosystem Function.”

Ndubisi, “Sustainable Regionalism Evolutionary Framework and Prospects.”; Alberti, “The

Effects of Urban Patterns on Ecosystem Function.”; Mark McDonnell et al. "Ecosystem Processes along An Urban-to-Rural Gradient," Urban Ecosystems 1, no. 1 (1997): 21-36.

14

Bruce Wilcox and Dennis D. Murphy, "Conservation Strategy: The Effects of Fragmentation

on Extinction," The American Naturalist 125, no. 6 (1985): 879.

15

Ndubisi, “Sustainable Regionalism Evolutionary Framework and Prospects,” 51.

16

John M. Levy, Contemporary Urban Planning (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988).

17

U.S Bureau of the Census, 2010

18

The resurgence of population into the inner city has some costs. For instance, it is creating

inequality in urban areas. Those who have more access to resources and power benefit substantially from inner city investments while the underprivileged and economically challenged miss out on the emerging opportunities; for instance, see http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobsand-economy/2014/02/why-income-inquality-so-much-worse-atlanta-omaha/8451/ 19

Levy, Contemporary Urban Planning.

20

Ndubisi, Ecological Planning: A Historical and Comparative Synthesis.

21

Frederick Steiner. The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning (Washington, D.C: Island Press, 2008), 4.

22

Steiner, Human Ecology: Following Nature’s Lead; Ndubisi, Ecological Planning: A

Historical and Comparative Synthesis.

Sales Information Sheet Planning for Community Resilience

Fall 2014 Discount: Short Pub Date: 11/11/2014

A Handbook for Reducing Vulnerability to Disasters Jaimie Hicks Masterson, Walter Gillis Peacock, Shannon S. Van Zandt, Himanshu Grover, Lori Feild Schwarz, and John Cooper, Jr. Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-585-4 978-1-61091-586-1

$35.00 $34.99

ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning Trim Size: 7 X 10 Pages: 304 8 photographs and 30 illustrations Author Residence: Buffalo, New York (Grover) Plano, Texas (Schwarz) College Station, Texas, for the remaining authors Comparative Titles: • Sustainable and Resilient Communities: A Comprehensive Action Plan for Towns, Cities, and Regions, Stephen Coyle. ISBN: 978-0-470-53647-6, Hardcover, April 2014, $90.00, Wiley. Bookscan: 412.

• Cities, Disaster Risk and Adaptation, Christine Wamsler. ISBN: 978-0-415-59103-4, Paperback, Nov. 2013, $41.95, Routledge. Bookscan: 22.

Previous Works: No previous books Sales Handle This timely handbook brings together the fields of planning, disaster response, and hazards management to provide a field-tested process on how to make communities disaster-resilient.

Description How can we plan and design stronger communities? From New Orleans to Galveston to the Jersey Shore, communities struck by natural disasters struggle to recover long after the first responders have left. Globally, the average annual number of natural disasters has more than doubled since 1980. These catastrophes are increasing in number as well as in magnitude, causing greater damage as we experience rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

Communities can reduce their vulnerability to disaster by becoming more resilient—to not only bounce back more readily from disasters but to grow stronger, more socially cohesive, and more environmentally responsible. To be truly resilient, disaster preparation and recovery must consider all populations in the community. By bringing together natural hazards planning and community planning to consider vulnerabilities, more resilient and equitable communities are achievable.

In Planning for Community Resilience the authors describe an inclusive process for creating disaster-resilient communities.

This handbook guides any community through the process of determining their level of hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability with the goal of determining the best planning strategy. This will be an invaluable tool for professionals working to protect their community from disturbance.

Selling Points • Integrates natural hazards planning with the city and regional planning processes • Will help professionals to understand the land-use tools that can decrease vulnerabilities • Will aid in engaging the public in the hazards-planning process • Easy-to-understand guide to measuring the level of vulnerability in your community with steps for becoming more disaster resilient

Author Bio Jaimie Hicks Masterson is the Program Coordinator of Texas Target Cities at Texas A&M University. Walter Gillis Peacock, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Director of the Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. Shannon S. Van Zandt, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and the Director of the Center for Housing and Urban Development at Texas A&M University. Himanshu Grover, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Regional Planning at the University of Buffalo. Lori Feild Schwarz is the Comprehensive Planning Manager for the City of Plano, Texas. John Cooper, Jr., is Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University.

Table of Contents Introduction Chapter 1. The New Era of Catastrophes Chapter 2. Increasing Community Resilience Chapter 3. The Disaster Impacts Model Chapter 4. Determining the Level of Hazard Exposure Chapter 5. Physical Vulnerability Chapter 6. Social Vulnerability Chapter 7. Injecting Resiliency through Planning Chapter 8. Planning Strategies Chapter 9. Striving for Consistency Chapter 10. The Galveston Experience Chapter 11. Conclusion: We Need an Inclusive Effort

Part 1. Community Resilience What does it mean to be resilient? Can a person or a family be resilient? What about a community? The 1900 storm that struck Galveston, Texas, killed more than 6,000 people. The next day, reports say, survivors began to plan how they would reconstruct the city, which indeed they did. Is this resilience? Following Hurricane Katrina, a Vietnamese American community faired far better than surrounding communities in similar situations. Is this resilience? What makes a community resilient and how do we get there?

Community resilience describes the ability of a community or its constituent parts to bounce back from the harmful impacts of disasters. Recent years have seen a proliferation of work utilizing the word resilience in conjunction with natural hazards and disasters. Knowing that keeping development completely out of hazardous areas is not realistic, researchers have suggested building a disaster-resilient community as a more effective approach to dealing with natural disasters 1. The concept of resilience has been borrowed and adapted by disaster researchers from the field of ecology, linking resilience to hazard vulnerability and defined resilience as the measure of a system’s or sub-system’s capacity to absorb and recover from a hazardous event 2. There are many common elements shared between ecological and hazard/disaster perspectives. Primary among them are notions of the ability of a system to absolve, deflect or resist potential disaster impacts and the ability to bounce back after being impacted. For some, the system is explicitly human or social 3. For others, while social systems might be the primary focus, they also implicitly include the built environments (buildings, infrastructure, etc.) created by social systems 4 as well as the ecological systems upon which they depend or operate within 5.

1

Hurricane Katrina, and later, Hurricanes Ike and Sandy, made visible what many in the broader social science and planning communities have long argued: natural disasters are far from natural phenomena. Disasters result from the interaction of biophysical systems, human systems, and the built environment. Further, they are largely a function of human action or, more often inaction. Despite increasing knowledge on natural hazard agents and their potential impacts, disaster losses increase in part because of where and how we design and construct our communities. Many communities continue to develop and expand into high hazard areas, contributing to increased hazard exposure and often resulting in the destruction of environmental resources such as wetlands that can reduce losses. Short-term technological fixes such as levees, sea walls, and beach re-nourishment programs may also have detrimental environmental consequences and promote increased development. When major disasters occur, recovery requires massive infusions of external public and private resources, is highly uneven, and is likely to reproduce many preexisting inequities in exposure and vulnerabilities. Who can forget the images of the Superdome filled with people, roof-tops and overpasses destroyed, following Hurricane Katrina? In Katrina, there were early failures to ensure a broad-based evacuation of highly vulnerable neighborhoods. We then saw large scale evacuation of the Houston area for Hurricane Rita which caused traffic gridlocks for over 24 hours, leaving those who needed to evacuate trapped along miles of concrete. These natural disasters have focused attention on the need for forethought and planning in mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. Most importantly, these events have focused attention on the interaction between biophysical systems, human social systems, and their built environment.

2

The number and severity of natural disasters is expected to accelerate over the next hundred years due to a changing climate. At the same time, our world’s population continues to expand, and development in high hazard areas increases. Responding to these changes that are both happening and expected, requires communities to become more resilient—better able to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the impacts of such disasters. To do so, community stakeholders and leaders must understand the interactions between hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability occurring in their own communities. In short, many of our communities are becoming ever more vulnerable to natural hazards while simultaneously becoming less disaster resilient.

Chapter 1: The New Era of Catastrophes In recent years we have seen the terrifying impacts of natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, the Wenchuan and Kobe earthquakes, the Fukushima tsunami and nuclear disaster, and most recently, 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. Globally, the average annual number of natural disasters reported has more than doubled since 1980. 6 These catastrophes are increasing in the number of meteorological events -- tropical storms, severe weather, winter storms, hail, tornados, and local storms; hydrological events-- flash floods, river floods, storm surge, and landslides; and climatological events-- heatwaves, freezes, wildfires, and drought (Figure 1-1). 7 Although geophysical events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions have remained relatively stable, there has been catastrophic damage to structures and lives, most notably seen in the Kobe earthquake, Wenchuan earthquake, and more recently, earthquakes in Haiti in 2010 and Japan in 2011. We are not only experiencing an increased number of events, but an increase in their magnitude or severity. The number of ‘devastating’ catastrophes—with more than 500 fatalities

3

or more than $650 million USD in overall losses—and ‘great’ catastrophes—those with more than 2,000 fatalities, 200,000 homeless, severe hits to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or the country being dependent upon international support—continues to climb globally. 8 Such catastrophic loss of human life and billions of dollars in structures destroyed each year continues to increase (see figure 1-1). 9

[Figure 1-1 here]

Disasters are still considered a part of weather systems and as such are treated as singular events (“acts of God”) rather than symptoms of a larger trend. Because disasters are treated as extraordinary, the focus of many efforts has been on the response to such crises and the ways in which citizens and communities should prepare for disasters, rather than the ways in which disaster impacts can be mitigated and recovery can be shortened or made easier. It is important to recognize that hazards such as droughts, fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes, are natural occurrences; they only become disasters when they interact with human systems. In other words, if a forest fire consumes only forest, it is not a problem. It is when it interacts with homes and structures that it becomes a disaster. Same with hurricanes—if they strike unpopulated areas, they are not disasters. It is only when they strike populations that a disaster occurs. In this way, disasters are not singular, accidental events—they are symptoms of more chronic issues and are, in fact, social events.

If we understand disasters only as atypical events, then our focus tends to be on response and preparedness initiatives. These efforts, however, largely are a part of the field of emergency

4

management, not urban planning. Response and preparedness are only a part of an appropriate response to the increase and predictability of natural hazards. Mitigation and recovery are also important, and fall outside the purview of emergency management. Emergency managers and their allied professions typically have little if any ability to control where and how development occurs, standards to which new construction is held, enforcement of these standards, or longterm recovery activities after a disaster, which can take years. At the same time, municipalities typically do not consider disaster management or recovery to be part of their normal responsibilities. Relatively few comprehensive plans—even those in coastal areas—include elements specifically dedicated to planning for and responding to disasters. Even the city of Galveston—a barrier island among one of the most frequently affected coastlines in the world— did not have a recovery plan in place at the time that Hurricane Ike struck in 2008. With the relatively slow onset of climate change impacts, the incorporation of mitigation strategies within comprehensive plans becomes all the more meaningful for coastal communities.

After a disaster, a window of opportunity opens during which rapid changes take place.

Communities are rebuilding, meaning that changes in population, land use, density, or industrial composition are taking place at a pace that is not normal. Further, there may be an influx of financial resources as well as speculators (i.e., outsiders) looking to take advantage of the changes that are occurring. Cities that do not have a plan in place are ill-equipped to guide these changes. Without a vision for the future, goals for development, and policies in place to guide it, cities or communities may find themselves changing in ways that are out of their control, including permanent changes to the composition of the population, rapid changes in land uses,

5

redevelopment, and changes in the economy. Some of these changes may be positive, while others are negative.

Fortunately, communities have many tools available to them that have proven not only to be efficient but also more economical than traditional structural mitigation techniques, like dams, levees, etc. Guiding land development, strengthening building codes, and protecting natural resources are all techniques that are best accomplished with thoughtful and comprehensive city and regional planning. Hazard mitigation and creating resilient communities must be at the forefront of hazards planning, and, when done effectively, will save lives and loss of property, making the work of emergency managers more effective.

Two Sides of Increasing Exposure Natural disasters are an outcome of an interaction between the biophysical systems, our human systems, and the built environment we create. Indeed, we are creating “disasters by design,” meaning that as communities grow and develop into hazardous areas—be it along hurricaneprone coastal lines, within floodplains, atop unstable slopes, along fault lines, etc.—we create scenarios that magnify the loss of life and property. 10 As we develop in hazardous areas we significantly affect and diminish the biophysical systems upon which we depend and those that can help protect and reduce the impacts of disasters—such as wetlands, barrier islands, tree stands, etc. If we, as a society, are creating disasters by design, then we have the capability to create communities that are resilient to disaster. How we plan our communities, the patterns of development that occur, and specifically the location of physically vulnerable structures and

6

socially vulnerable populations significantly affect the ability of communities to withstand and even prosper in the face of disaster.

Human action and inaction are damaging our ecological systems and increasing vulnerability to disaster by continuing to develop and expand into high hazard areas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census data, the United States is most dense along coastlines. This data also shows that there have been population losses in the middle of America and population growth along the coastlines. 11 It is no surprise then, that we are seeing an increase in damage from hurricanes and floods each year.

Population growth along the coast has compromised ecosystems and reduced their ability to protect us through the provision of ecosystem services. Ecosystems protect and benefit us by providing services such as cleaning drinking water, decomposing waste, cleaning air, or by absorbing and redirecting water that would otherwise cause flooding. In this way, ecosystem preservation and restoration are inextricably related to hazards. The destruction and compromising of ecosystems, such as wetlands, can increase the severity of hazard impacts through increasing exposure to hazards such as surge and flooding.

If vulnerabilities are addressed, solutions more often focus on short-term technological fixes such as levees, sea walls, and beach re-nourishment programs. These programs themselves can also have detrimental environmental consequences and even promote increased development.

Permits acquired for altering wetlands and subsequent development that occurs in these environmentally sensitive areas is far too easy to come by. Wetlands provide valuable ecosystem services, particularly in hurricane prone and surge zone areas. Wetlands act as a sponge for surge waters and have been shown to reduce total damage 12. When wetlands are 7

altered or destroyed along with high surge risk, the result yields much higher exposure and risk of new infrastructure, housing, and people to hurricane impacts. Preservation and restoration of ecosystems can and should be an important element of hazard mitigation planning.

Unfortunately, the protection of these natural resources is often neglected within hazard mitigation planning. 13 Instead, structural mitigation—the construction of engineered solutions— is still the most popular approach. While these structural solutions may protect certain areas, they often shift water elsewhere, causing unintended consequences for other communities. Further, they can be very expensive, and are often not the most cost-effective method of mitigating disasters. Finally, they often encourage further development, which can ultimately place more people and property in harm’s way14.

Case Study: Galveston, Texas, a ‘Living Laboratory’ Many of the national trends, such as coastal population growth, are being actively carried out in Texas 15. It is one of the most rapidly growing states in the nation, and one that experiences both frequent and varied disasters (see Box 1-1). Texas is known for a more laissez faire development approach, with economic development being the driving force behind population growth. It is is a property-rights state, meaning that the political will in Texas is in favor of individual property owners, rather than progressive planning. Consequently, Texas is a very challenging place to implement planning interventions, causing Texas planners to be creative and to find solutions that will withstand legal challenge. We like to say that if you can plan in Texas, you can plan anywhere. All this makes Texas a fascinating case study and a ‘living laboratory’ for hazards planning.

8

[Box 1-1 here]

The 18 counties along the Texas coast are in the top 20 most populated counties in Texas. These 18 counties only represent 5.8% of the landmass in Texas, but make up 24.3% of the state’s 2010 population, roughly 6.1 million people (an increase from 5.2 million in 2000). The five northern coastal counties hold only 2.1% of the state’s landmass, but 20% of the state’s population and nearly 21% of the state’s housing. These five northern coastal counties were among the hardest hit by tropical storm Allison and hurricanes Rita and Ike. Hurricane Ike impacted the Texas coast at levels that had not been seen since the 1900 storm, which caused more than 6,000 deaths and remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston Island—nearly 108 years to the day after the 1900 storm—at the mouth of the Houston ship channel, early on September 13, 2008. On September 9th, predictions had its path headed toward the Texas coastline, but not predicted to hit Galveston. It wasn’t until September 11th that mandatory evacuations were called for Galveston. The storm surge began more than 24 hours before it made landfall. The historic seawall of Galveston, which was first constructed in 1904, helped protect the east end of the gulf side of the island, believed to be the most exposed.

However, due to the path of the storm, the surge actually came from the bay side of the island. A surge of 17′ came across the island from Galveston Bay, where the seawall was not there to protect residents or structures. Hurricane Ike was a Category 2 hurricane based on wind speed, but was a Category 4 storm based on storm surge. Because of the nature of this storm, storm prediction has been modified to include separate predictions for wind and surge. Hurricane Ike resulted in: •

Damage to 75% of all buildings in Galveston;

9

•

A loss of 17% of the Island’s population;

•

The loss of 47% of the century-old tree canopy due to saltwater intrusion; and

•

The 3rd most costly natural disaster in US History.

As of 2014, Galveston is still recovering and rebuilding. Recovery of the Island has been uneven. The most affected populations have been much slower to recover, and even now, more than 500 units of public housing have not been rebuilt, permanently displacing this vulnerable population.

[Figure 1-16]

Our Research on Community Resilience Over the past ten or so years, researchers from Texas A&M University’s Hazard Reduction & Recovery Center have been actively engaged in coastal communities along the Texas Gulf Coast (and beyond). As urban planning faculty members, our research has focused on how communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural disasters, including coastal hazards such as the hurricanes that are frequent in this area, as well as inland flooding, fire, drought, tornados, and even technological disasters. In September of 2008, the Texas Coast experienced what we call a “focusing event.” Hurricane Ike followed other hurricanes that struck earlier in the summer, causing flooding in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. While tragic, these events not only provided the opportunity to conduct research on resiliency, they also catalyzed planning activity to act on the sometimes temporary political will to make positive changes in the aftermath of a storm. Our belief is that the research, described below, will be valuable to anyone working to create a more resilient community.

1. A fact basis should be developed through mapping 10

Prior to Hurricane Ike, the Texas Coastal Communities Planning Atlas (http://coastalatlas.arch.tamu.edu/), a web-based, user-friendly, GIS mapping interface that covers coastal communities along the Texas coast, documented the physical, environmental, regulatory, and social development patterns present. In the months that followed Hurricane Ike, data that was collected provided immediate insight on impact, dislocation, and early repair and rebuilding decisions. The combination of research data and previously mapped data in the tool have allowed us to understand how predicted responses compared to actual responses, and further, have allowed us to gauge community recovery at multiple scales over several years. Identifying and mapping such data in a community is the foundational fact basis for sound decision-making. Identifying and mapping specific components and characteristics is described in Part II, Knowing Your Community.

2. Land use practices and policies can be applied to disaster planning A survey of all Texas coastal jurisdictions on land use practices undertaken in 2010 has allowed us to better understand the tools that are available to planners to mitigate hazards through a variety of techniques, including limiting development, strengthening building codes, protecting natural resources, and educating residents about the impacts of disasters.

This survey helped us understand the extent to which these tools were being utilized and make recommendations about which may be most effective as well as feasible. Further, through participatory observation analysis, qualitative interviews, and documentary analysis, we have tracked policy changes by county and city governments to assess adaptive management and social learning. These results inform Part III of this handbook.

11

The combination of the research findings on community recovery and land use practices along with the mapping tool, available to planners and others working in communities along the Texas coast, have provided a means to help planners and stakeholders visualize and assess hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability to a variety of hazards. It has also provided a means to train planners across the country. In 2012, our team was asked to develop a curriculum on building resiliency for the American Planning Association’s Planners Training Service (PTS). The PTS provides in-depth training in two-day workshops around the country.

Drawing from the research described above, we developed 14 hours of training materials, and brought on Lori Field Schwarz, at that time Senior Planner for the City of Galveston, who had lived through Hurricane Ike and with whom we had been collaborating throughout the recovery period. Her direct experience facing, recovering from, and learning from such an event provided incredible insight and ground-truthing to our research. She shares examples and stories throughout to help readers understand the applications of our research and see how it did or did not make a difference along the Texas coast. Here, we capture these efforts in a user-friendly guide aimed at bringing our collective research and knowledge to a wider audience.

Purpose of the Book As the impact of natural disasters continues to increase in severity, particularly in coastal areas experiencing rapid urbanization, it is ever more critical to better understand how communities recover following an event in an effort to build more resilient communities over the long term.

As our country’s coasts continue to develop rapidly, these communities are exposing potentially millions more people to the adverse impacts of meteorologically-based disasters. The purpose of this guide is to educate communities and citizens on approaches to becoming more resilient to 12

natural disasters. It is meant to encourage and facilitate community learning that is interactive, collaborative, and participatory. We hope that the reader leaves this guide understanding that hazards must be a part of city and regional planning processes, able to explain the components that make communities vulnerable, understanding which land use tools can decrease vulnerabilities, knowing the elements of good plan quality, and able to find ways to engage the public in the hazard planning process.

Who is this book for?

While resiliency can be addressed at multiple scales, including the individual, neighborhood, community, city, region, state, and even nation, this handbook focuses on processes at the neighborhood, community, and city scale. All these scales are interconnected, but here we address those that can be dealt with within a single community. Since community resilience is a product of processes going on both at the individual as well as higher levels, our efforts have focused on identification of the key decisions made by public authorities regarding disaster preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation planning and policy development.

This handbook is intended for city planners, elected officials, appointed officials, neighborhood leaders, and non-governmental organizations. It is intended for business people, adults, retired individuals, young adults, and even youth. This handbook is intended to enable local communities and professionals involved in the design, regulation, and management of the built and natural environments to construct communities that are more socially and physically resilient.

While most of the examples from this book come from the authors’ work along the Texas coast, the lessons learned are not exclusive to Texas, nor is it exclusively for coastal hazards. The

13

lessons we’ve learned from our work are broadly applicable and focus on building a fact-basis for decision making, assessing the utility of planning tools available for building resilience, and engaging community members in planning for their own futures. While some strategies may change based on the hazard, the various exercises in this handbook are applicable to all communities.

How to use the Handbook This handbook is intended to be used as a participatory approach to hazards planning. It is intended to guide a community—which may include professional planners, stakeholders, community groups, or a combination thereof—through the steps in developing an inclusive hazard mitigation strategy, and ultimately become more resilient. These steps are further explained throughout the book and are as follows: 1. Organize Gather together a core team of stakeholders who are likely to have the most capacity, whether in time, interest, ability, resources, or networks.

2. Connect Reach out and involve as many community members as possible in the strategizing and planning process 3. Assess Collect pertinent data to be used as the foundation of decisions going forward 4. Envision Interactively engage the public in setting goals to mitigate hazards 5. Prioritize Identify a range of promising policies and actions that align with other strategies 6. Implement Identify manageable tasks and responsible parties 7. Monitor, evaluate, and update Create feedback loops as a way to adaptively leanr to changing conditions

14

We believe this framework provides an inclusive effort to collaboratively and adaptively solve complex problems. The steps are woven throughout the book along with a series of examples, stories, tools, and exercises to help you learn by doing. The exercises are intended to be completed as you read through or alongside city officials, staff, or citizens. The book can be used to guide a course or a series of workshops engaging the public, or as a resource for city staff, businesses, or individual citizens. If there is limited knowledge on the topic, it is helpful to start at the beginning to gain insight in to the many concepts and principles throughout. In general, the guide should be used as a reference in policy decisions and implementation.

The book is broken into three parts. Part I describes resilience and peels back the many layers that make a community resilient. It describes the disaster phases and introduces the disaster impacts model, and provides details on steps 1) Organize and 2) Connect. Part II investigates how to assess your community’s hazard exposure, physical vulnerability, and social vulnerability. It explains steps 3) Assess and 4) Envision. Part III provides detailed information on effective and promising mitigation strategies and consistently incorporating policies throughout other plans and describes step 5) Prioritize, 6) Implement and 7) Monitor, evaluate and update.

In short, our nation and many of our communities are becoming more vulnerable and less resilient. If we are going to address this increasing vulnerability and become more sustainable, we must seek to enhance resilience. The following chapter will define resilience. This definition sheds light on the different ways to identify and measure the ability to respond and recover after a disaster. In this handbook, we will suggest strategies communities can use to increase

15

resilience. We have the ability to change. Disasters like Ike, Katrina, and Sandy are a matter of when, not if. Let’s plan for the expected and the unexpected.

1

(Mileti 1999) (Timmerman 1981) 3 (Mileti 1999) 4 (Bruneau, et al. 2003) (Tierney and Bruneau 2007) 5 (Berke and Campanella 2006) (Peacock, et al. 2008) 6 (EM-DAT 2009) 7 (Munich Reinsurance Company 2011) 8 (Munich Reinsurance Company 2011) 9 (Munich Reinsurance Company 2011) 10 (Mileti 1999) 11 (United States Census Bureau 2010) 12 (Costanza, et al. 2008) 13 For detailed discussions and analysis of wetland alteration, its consequences and an extensive focus on the Texas coast see: (Brody, Highfield and Kang, Rising Waters: The causes and consequences of flooding in the United States 2011); (Brody and Zahran, Estimating Flood Damage in Texas using GIS: Predictors, Consequences, and Policy Implications 2008); (Brody, Davis, et al. 2008), (S. D. Brody, S. Zahran, et al. 2007); (S. Brody, W. Highfield, et al.

2007); and (Zahran, et al. 2008).

14 (S. D. Brody, S. Zahran, et al. 2007) 15 (United States Census Bureau 2010) 2

16

Sales Information Sheet Vital Signs Volume 21 The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future

Fall 2014 Discount: Short Pub Date: 9/16/2014

The Worldwatch Institute Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-539-7 978-1-61091-540-3

$21.99 $21.99

SCIENCE / Environmental Science NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection Trim Size: 7 X 9.25 Pages: 136 110 photos, figures, and tables Author Residence: Washington, DC Comparative Titles: • The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet, Ron Nielsen. ISBN: 978-0-312-42581-4, Paperback, March 2006, $18.00, Picador. Bookscan: 3506.

Previous Works: • State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, The Worldwatch Institute. ISBN: 978-1-61091-037-8, Paperback, March 2012, $22.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 1288, Warehouse: 8427.

• Vital Signs 2012: The Trends that are Shaping Our Future, The Worldwatch Institute. ISBN: 978-1-61091-371-3, Paperback, March 2012, $18.99, Island Press. Bookscan: 229, Warehouse: 2905.

• State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, The Worldwatch Institute. ISBN: 978-1-61091-449-9, Paperback, April 2013, $22.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 2834, Warehouse: 11537.

• Vital Signs Volume 20: The Trends that are Shaping Our Future, The Worldwatch Institute. ISBN: 978-1-61091-456-7, Paperback, July 2013, $19.99, Island Press. Bookscan: 274, Warehouse: 2407.

• State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability, The Worldwatch Institute. ISBN: 978-1-61091-541-0, Paperback, April 2014, $23.00, Island Press.

Sales Handle The most up-to-date information on a diverse range of global trends.

Description Vital Signs Volume 21 is all about growth. From natural disasters to cars to organic farming, the two dozen trends examined here indicate both increasing pressure on natural resources and scaled up efforts to live more sustainably.

In 2012, world auto production set yet another record with passenger-car production rising to 66.7 million. That same year, the number of natural disasters climbed to 905, roughly one hundred more than the 10-year annual average, and 90 percent were weather related. Alongside these mounting pressures come investments in renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. The number of acres of land farmed organically has tripled since 1999, though it still makes up less than 1% of total farmland.

Not all the statistics are going up. Key measures of development aid have fallen, as have global commodity prices. Yet the overall trend is expansion, both for the good and ill of the planet. Vital Signs provides the latest data available, but its value goes beyond simple numbers. Through insightful analysis of global trends, it offers a starting point for those seeking solutions to the future’s intensifying challenges.

Selling Points • Includes the most up-to-date information on a diverse range of trends relating to the environment • The twenty-first volume in the successful Vital Signs series • Places data in a global context, tracking worldwide trends in transportation and energy, agriculture and food production, economics, and demography.

Author Bio Founded in 1974 by farmer and economist Lester Brown, Worldwatch was the first independent research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental concerns. Worldwatch quickly became recognized by opinion leaders around the world for its accessible, fact-based analysis of critical global issues. Now under the leadership of population expert and author Robert Engelman, Worldwatch develops innovative solutions to intractable problems, emphasizing a blend of government leadership, private sector enterprise, and citizen action that can make a sustainable future a reality.

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Overview Energy and Transportation Trends Growth of Global Solar and Wind Energy Continues to Outpace Other Technologies\ Matt Lucky, Michelle Ray, and Mark Konold Policy Support for Renewable Energy Continues to Grow and Evolve \ Evan Musolino Nuclear Power Recovers Slightly, But Global Future Uncertain \ Alexander Ochs and Michelle Ray Fossil Fuels Dominate Primary Energy Consumption \ Milena Gonzalez and Matt Lucky Energy/Electricity Subsidies \ Alexander Ochs and Philipp Tagwerker Record High for Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions \ Katie Auth Transportation Trends Automobile Production Sets New Record, But Alternative Vehicles Grow Slowly \ Michael Renner Air Transport Keeps Expanding \ Michael Renner Food and Agriculture Trends Global Food Prices Continue to Rise \Sophie Wenzlau Agriculture and Livestock Remain Major Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions \ Laura Reynolds Agricultural Populations \ Sophie Wenzlau Agricultural Subsidies \ Grant Potter Global Economy and Resources Trends More Businesses Pursue Triple Bottom Line for a Sustainable Economy \ Colleen Cordes Development Aid Falls Short, While Other Financial Flows Show Rising Volatility \ Michael Renner and Cameron Scherer Commodity Supercycle Slows Down in 2012 \ Mark Konold Global Economy: Looks Good from Afar But is Far from Good \ Mark Konold Marine Conservation \ Katie Auth Population and Society Trends Natural Catastrophes in 2012 Dominated by U.S. Weather Extremes \ Petra Lรถw Number of Displaced People Rises \ Michael Renner Military Expenditures Remain Near Peak \ Michael Renner World Population: Fertility Surprise Implies More Populous Future \ Robert Engelman Women in Politics \ Robert Engelman and Janice Pratt Mobile Phone Growth Slows as Mobile Devices Saturate the Market \ Grant Potter Notes The Vital Signs Series

Fossil Fuels Dominate Primary Energy Consumption Milena Gonzalez and Matt Lucky | October 22, 2013

oal, natural gas, and oil accounted for 87 percent of global primary energy consumption in 2012 as the growth of worldwide energy use continued to slow due to the economic downturn.1 The relative weight of these energy sources keeps shifting, although the change was ever so slight. Natural gas increased its share of global primary energy consumption from 23.8 to 23.9 percent during 2012, coal rose from 29.7 to 29.9 percent, and oil fell from 33.4 to 33.1 percent.2 The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2017 coal will replace oil as the dominant primary energy source worldwide.3

C

The shale revolution in the United States is reshaping global oil and gas markets. The United States produced oil at record levels in 2012 and is expected to overtake Russia as the world’s largest 4 producer of oil and natural gas combined in 2013. Consequently, the country is importing decreasing amounts of these two fossil fuels, while using rising levels of its natural gas for power generation. This has led to price discrepancies between the American and European natural gas markets that in turn

Figure 1 | Global Natural Gas Consumption and Production, 1970–2011 3500.0

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Figure 2 |Average Natural Gas Prices, Selected Indices, 1989–2012 $18 $16

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have prompted Europeans to increase their use of coal for power generation. Coal consumption, however, was dominated by China, which in 2012 for the first time accounted for more than half of the 5 world’s coal use.

Natural gas consumption grew by 2.2 percent to 2,987 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) in 2012— 6 more than triple the level in 1970. (See Figure 1.) The largest increases in 2012 took place in the 7 United States (an additional 27.6 mtoe), China (12.0 mtoe), and Japan (10.1 mtoe).

Global natural gas production grew by 1.9 percent in 2012; the United States (with 20.4 percent of the 8 total) and Russia (17.6 percent) are the dominant producers. Other countries accounted for less than 9 5 percent each of global output.

Estimated natural gas reserves grew by 0.7 percent in 2012 to 173,400 mtoe, principally due to 10 increases in Iran (485 mtoe) and China (434 mtoe). Reserves remain heavily concentrated in the Eurasia and Middle East regions; Iran, Russia, and Qatar alone account for 55 percent of the world’s 11 total. The global reserves-to-production ratio now stands at 63.6 years, the length of time that current 12 supplies would last if production were to continue at the same rate as in 2011.

13

Natural gas prices continued to diverge globally in 2012. (See Figure 2.) Prices have been on significantly different trajectories across the world since the economic meltdown in 2008 due to the U.S. shale gas revolution and increases in shale gas exports to Asian countries. While U.S. prices declined by 31 percent to $2.76 per million BTU (in current dollars), the prices increased by 5 percent 14 in Europe and 14 percent in Japan. Japan paid $16.75 per million BTU for liquefied natural gas vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

2

(LNG) imports in 2012—a staggering six times more than the rate paid by U.S. consumers—as it continues to rely on natural gas to make up for decommissioned nuclear 15 power plants. Japan is the dominant LNG importer, accounting for more than one third of all LNG flows in 16 2012.

China now accounts for a dominant

While global LNG trade increased significantly during the past decade—growing by 120 percent since 2002—it declined for the first time by about 1 percent this past 17 year. Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Qatar dominate the market, accounting for about two thirds of 18 global LNG exports between them.

47.5% of global coal

For the second consecutive year, natural gas consumption fell in the European Union (EU), down by 2.3 percent in 19 2012. This was the only region that experienced a decline. The causes include a struggling economy, increasingly larger coal imports from Colombia and the United States, cheaper global coal prices, natural gas supply disruptions due to political unrest in parts of northern Africa, and natural gas producers’ diversion of 20 supplies to China and Japan.

production

Figure 3 | Coal Consumption, World and Selected Regions, 1965– 2012 4000

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©Worldwatch Institute

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0 1965 vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

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Figure 4 | Coal Prices, 1990–2012 160 140

Northwest Europe marker price † U.S. dollars per ton

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©Worldwatch

2012

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Consumption trends in the United States, which accounts for 22 percent of global natural gas use, 21 have reflected recent price shifts among fossil fuels. The country increased its use of natural gas by 22 4 percent during 2012. Much of this growth occurred in the power sector, attributable to the declining price of natural gas relative to coal due to the U.S. shale gas revolution. In fact, electricity generation 23 from natural gas equaled that from coal for the first time ever in April 2012. But when the price of coal fell again, gas use in the power sector dropped by 14 percent during the first seven months of 2013 24 relative to the same period in 2012.

In 2012, coal remained the fastest-growing fossil fuel globally, even though at 2.5 percent the increase 25 in consumption was weak relative to the 4.4 percent average of the last decade. (See Figure 3.)

26 China increased its coal use by 6.1 percent. India also saw significant increases in its coal 27 consumption—9.9 percent in 2012. Coal use by members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) declined by 4.2 percent, as an 11.9 percent decline in U.S. 28 consumption outweighed increases of 3.4 percent in the EU and 5.4 percent in Japan.

29

Global coal production grew by 2 percent in 2012. A decline in U.S. output of 7.5 percent was more 30 than offset by an expansion of 3.5 percent in China’s production. China now accounts for a dominant 47.5 percent of global coal production, followed by the United States (13.4 percent) and India (6 31 percent). But the United States still holds the largest share of proved reserves, with 27.6 percent, followed by Russia with 18.2 percent, China with 13.3 percent, Australia with 8.9 percent, and India 32 with 7 percent.

33

Coal prices fell across all markets in 2012. (See Figure 4.) After a relatively steady increase from 34 early 2009 through mid-2011, European prices decreased from a peak $121.52 to $92.50 per ton.

Prices fell less drastically in other markets: from $87.38 to $72.06 in the United States and from 35 $136.21 to $133.61 in the Pacific Basin.

vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

4

Oil remains the most widely consumed fuel worldwide, but at a growth rate of 0.9 percent it is being 36 outpaced by gas and coal for the third consecutive year. The OECD’s share declined to 50.2 percent 37 of global consumption—the smallest share on record and the sixth decrease in seven years. This 38 reflects declines of 2.3 percent in U.S. consumption and of 4.6 percent in EU consumption. By 39 contrast, usage in China and Japan rose by 5.0 and 6.3 percent respectively.

Oil remains the most widely consumed fuel worldwide, but at a growth rate of

0.9 % it is being outpaced by gas and coal for the third consecutive year

vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

Conversely, global oil production grew by more than twice as much as consumption—2.2 percent or 100.1 40 million tons in 2012. (See Figure 5.) This was mainly due to a rise in U.S. output of 13.9 percent—the highest 41 rate ever. In comparison, Canada, China, and the former Soviet Union saw relatively small increases of 42 6.8, 2.0, and 0.4 percent respectively.

Conflicts in the Middle East and Africa disrupted oil supplies. Iran’s oil production decreased by 16.2 percent or 33.3 million tons due to international 43 sanctions. Sudan’s oil production declined by 81.9 percent, while Syria’s was cut in half, dropping by 49.9 44 percent. South Sudan, where most of the oil in the former Sudan is produced, gained independence from Sudan in mid-2011, but the new country still depends on Sudan for access to export pipelines and processing 45 facilities. A dispute over oil transit fees led South 46 Sudan to shut down oil production in early 2012. In April 2013, the country restarted production, yet several 47 issues remain unresolved between the two nations.

And in Syria, civil war and sanctions have had a dramatic impact on the oil industry. Damage to its energy infrastructure and uncertainty over the outcome of the continued violence threaten Syria’s energy sector 48 and regional energy markets.

These various disruptions were offset, however, by expanding output in many countries that belong to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Libya’s civil war had led to a collapse in 49 production of 71 percent in 2011. But in 2012 Libya saw an astonishing rebound of 215.1 percent, returning 50 output close to 2010 levels. In addition, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar produced at record levels, with increases of 3.7, 1.6, and 6.3 percent, 51 respectively. Together, these three countries 52 accounted for 19 percent of world output. Iraq and Kuwait also saw significant increases in production, raising their combined share of global production to 7.4 53 percent.

5

In 2012, crude oil prices peaked in March due to the reduction in Iranian oil exports, but they eased 54 later in the year due to rising output in the United States, Libya, and other OPEC countries. They also fell in the second quarter of 2012 due to concerns of global economic slowdown.

Global oil trade grew by 1.3 percent in 2012 to 2.7 billion tons, equivalent to 62 percent of worldwide 55 output. Declining exports from several regions were offset by larger shipments from Canada and 56 North Africa. U.S. net oil imports fell by 37.4 million tons—to 22 percent below their peak in 2007.

China’s net oil imports, on the other hand, grew by 30.4 million tons, accounting for 86 percent of the 57 global increase. According to projections by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, by 2014 58 China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest oil importer.

Consumption of all fossil fuels will likely grow in the future. With increasing shale gas fracking and many countries’ interest in displacing coal generation with natural gas due to the lower greenhouse gas emissions, natural gas use seems well poised to grow. Although some countries are trying to move away from coal use, the incredible coal consumption growth rates in China and India will likely make this the main energy resource in the next few years. Last, even if oil is eventually not the world’s dominant energy resource, its use is expected to grow unless there is a fundamental change in the way the world fuels the transportation sector.

Figure 5 | Oil Production, World and Selected Regions, 19652012

4500 4000

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million tons

3500 3000 2500 2000

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1000

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500 Former Soviet Union 0 1965

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1975

©Worldwatch Institute

vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

1980

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6

Milena Gonzalez is the MAP Sustainable Energy Fellow at Worldwatch Institute.

Matt Lucky is the Sustainable Energy Lead Researcher at the Institute.

Vital Signs Online provides business leaders, policymakers, and engaged citizens with the latest data and analysis they need to understand critical global trends. Subscribe now for full access to hard data and research-based insights on the sustainability trends that are shaping our future.

Worldwatch Institute th 1400 16 St., NW, Suite 430 Washington, DC 20036 Phone: 202.745.8092 vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

Notes 1 2 3

BP, Statistical Review of World Energy (London: June 2013).

Ibid.

International Energy Agency (IEA), “Coal’s Share of Global Energy Mix to Continue Rising, with Coal Closing In on Oil as World’s Top Energy Source by 2017,” press release (Paris: 17 December 2012).

4 Russell Gold and Daniel Gilbert, “U.S. Is Overtaking Russia as Largest Oil-and-Gas Producer,” Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2013.

5

BP, op. cit. note 1.

Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Energy Outlook 2013: Natural Gas (Washington, DC: July 2013).

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 BP, op. cit. note 1.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid 17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 EIA, “Multiple Factor Push Western Europe to Use Less Natural Gas and More Coal,” Today in Energy, 27 September 2013.

21 BP, op. cit. note 1.

22 Ibid.

23 EIA, “Monthly Coal- and Natural Gas-Fired Generation Equal for First Time in April 2012,” Today in Energy, 6 July 2012.

6

vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

7

24

EIA, “Natural Gas Generation Lower than Last Year Because of Differences in Relative Fuel Prices,” Today in Energy, 25 September 2013.

25 BP, op. cit. note 1.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 EIA, Analysis Briefs: Sudan and South Sudan, at www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=SU, updated 5 September 2013.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Shakuntala Makhijani, “Growth in Global Oil Market Slows,” in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs: Volume 20 (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2013), pp. 2–5.

50 BP, op. cit. note 1.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 EIA, Petroleum & Other Liquids: Prices, at www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=RWTC&f=D, viewed 8 October 2013.

55 BP, op. cit. note 1.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 EIA, “China Poised to Become the World’s Largest Net Oil Importer Later this Year,” Today in Energy, 9 August 2013.

vitalsigns.worldwatch.org

8

Fall 2014

Sales Information Sheet Chasing the Red Queen

Discount: Short Pub Date: 12/18/2014

The Coevolution of Pests and Poisons Andy Dyer Hardcover: Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-518-2 978-1-61091-519-9 978-1-61091-520-5

$60.00 $30.00 $29.99

SCIENCE / Environmental Science SCIENCE / Life Sciences/Ecology SCIENCE / Life Sciences/Evolution Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 216 18 boxes, 2 figures Author Residence: Aiken, South Carolina Comparative Titles: • Introduction to Restoration Ecology, Evelyn A. Howell, John A. Harrington, and Stephen B. Glass. ISBN: 978-1-59726189-0, Hardcover, Oct. 2011, $90.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 233, Warehouse: 1139.

• Water Resources, Shimon C. Anisfeld. ISBN: 978-1-59726-495-2, Paperback, Aug. 2010, $30.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 376, Warehouse: 1797.

Previous Works: No previous books Sales Handle Dyer presents key concepts for students to understand chemical resistance in agriculture and apply that knowledge to achieving global food security.

Description In the race to feed the world’s seven billion people, we are at a standstill. Over the past century, we have developed increasingly potent and sophisticated pesticides, yet in 2014, the average percentage of U.S. crops lost to agricultural pests was no less than in 1944. To use a metaphor the field of evolutionary biology borrowed from Alice in Wonderland, farmers must run ever faster to stay in the same place—i.e., produce the same yields.

With Chasing the Red Queen, Andy Dyer offers the first book to apply the Red Queen Hypothesis to agriculture. Dyer examines one of the world’s most pressing problems as a biological case study. He presents key concepts, from Darwin’s principles of natural selection to genetic variation and adaptive phenotypes. Understanding the fundamentals of ecology and biology is the first step to “playing the Red Queen,” and escaping her unwinnable race. The book’s novel frame will help students, researchers, and policy-makers alike apply that knowledge to the critical task of achieving food security.

Selling Points • The first book to apply The Red Queen Hypothesis to agriculture.

• Explains key concepts in biology and ecology, using the timely issue of food security as a case study.

• Presents solutions to address the pressing problem of chemical dependence and resistance in agriculture.

Author Bio Andy Dyer is Professor of Biology at the University of South Carolina, Aiken. He is the author or coauthor of thirty journal articles and book chapters in plant ecology. Dr. Dyer's research interests are in population and community ecology, invasive species ecology, and habitat restoration. His current research focuses on population biology of invasive grasses, including competitive ability and germination traits.

Table of Contents Prologue PART I. Introducing the Red Queen Chapter 1. Adaptations Are Responses to Environmental Stresses Chapter 2. The Evolution of Farming Chapter 3. Chasing the Red Queen Got Us Here PART II. Ignoring the Red Queen Chapter 4. Imaginary Efficiency: The Reductionist View of Pest Control Chapter 5. At Home on the Farm Chapter 6. Running Faster PART III. Trying to Beat the Red Queen Chapter 7. Exercises in Futility Chapter 8. The White King Versus The Red Queen Chapter 9. The Cornucopia of Maize Versus the Red Queen Chapter 10. The Red Queen Trumps Technology PART IV. Playing the Red Queen Chapter 11. Understanding the Chase to Escape the Cycle Chapter 12. Slowing the Response by Slowing the Attack Chapter 13. Ecosystem Farming: Letting Nature Do the Work Chapter 14. Integrated Systems and Long-term Stability Epilogue

Preface Our mental image of a farm is a peaceful setting with fields of wheat or corn gently waving in the afternoon breeze and a farmer driving a tractor, patiently tending the crops until they are ready for harvest. This tranquil scene comes not from personal contact with agricultural land, which most of us don’t have, but primarily through the imagination and exaggeration of Hollywood. In truth, a farm is often more like a battlefield, with the farmer spending much of his or her time and energy in a war with nature. The enemies are insects, mites, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and any number of microbes that chew, suck, tunnel, infect, and otherwise reduce the vitality of the crop plants. This battle began about 10,000 years ago with the dawn of agriculture and takes place, in some form, in every human culture. But today, farmers are losing their foothold—and the war is growing ever more expensive. It is increasingly difficult to farm economically on a small scale; feeding the world has become an enormous industrial enterprise, practiced intensively, with ever more advanced equipment and technology.

Part of the problem is that we have been remarkably successful at making our food crops desirable not just to us, but to many, many other species. We’ve ramped up the sweetness and juiciness of fruits, the quantity of starches in grains, the proportions of proteins and fats in seeds, the overall yield of crops. Today’s fruits and grains bear faint resemblance to their wild progenitors. Because we usually grow these tasty plants in vast and simple single-species stands and make every attempt to eliminate all other competing species in the fields, we find ourselves fending off the rest of nature. Like us, pests are eager to take advantage of these incredibly abundant, incredibly palatable, and incredibly self-defenseless resources.

To combat these pests, the weapons of agriculture have grown increasingly lethal, from hand-picking insects a century ago to potent herbicides and pesticides today. Yet modern farmers 1

have no more success against weeds and other invaders than their predecessors did 100 years ago. And they spend far more money and do far greater damage to their land. Each growing season, they use the latest chemicals and technology to control their crop pests, but they never seem to make headway. Instead, the pests simply adapt, becoming increasingly resilient.

This losing battle can be described in military terms, though perhaps an even better analogy comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass i. In Wonderland, the Red Queen explains to Alice, “it takes all of the running you can do to keep in the same place”—a metaphor biologists have applied to the process of evolution. The Red Queen Hypothesis describes how an organism adapts to an environmental stress, such as the actions of another organism, which then changes in response to the adaptation. The result is both sides are continuously adapting and counter-adapting to each other. In the long-term, there is no winner, only a never-ending race without a finish line.

This is the situation in which farmers currently find themselves. To break the cycle, we must first recognize the science behind it. This book will explore the central problem of modern agriculture—pest resistance—by applying the principles of evolutionary biology. We will use The Red Queen Hypothesis as a mental construct for understanding the way species and populations deal with stress.

Most of us have at least some familiarity with efforts to beat back the creatures who are trying relentlessly to eat our food before we can. Those efforts are the result of billions of dollars of research and development by agri-chemical companies to provide farmers and ranchers with the chemical tools they need to kill agricultural pests, including weeds, insects, and diseases. We can also appreciate that chemical companies, like any other business, are economic competitors and must produce better and different chemicals as part of their effort to maintain market share

2

and corporate earnings. What many may not realize is that evolutionary biology drives the entire process. This process, essentially the rules of war, will be described in this book.

The necessity for this conversation goes beyond protecting soil and farming sustainably to maintain our capacity to produce food into the future. In recent years, farm products have increasingly been grown not only as food, but as a form of renewable energy. Over the past 10 years, the conversion of corn into ethanol has expanded at a remarkable rate and now fuel is the largest ‘consumer’ of corn in America. While American agriculture has always been the backbone of the economy, it is now producing goods for a growing range of sectors of the economy. Any threat to the level of production has far-reaching consequences and the responsibility of protecting that production by any means possible has become a national priority. In this case, we aren’t worried about terrorism or trade barriers or market manipulation, but about multitudes of tiny organisms that are completely indifferent to economic status or national goals. And we have to be concerned because we have not been able to dictate the terms of this battle.

The concept of the Red Queen has not been applied to the no-win scenario of chemical pest control in agriculture even though chemical resistance is very well known and has been documented in everything from weeds and bacteria to mosquitoes and houseflies. The Red Queen Hypothesis offers a simple yet profound tool for helping us understand how nature works and how we can move from fighting it to benefiting from it.

The simplicity of this construct is its strength, but I want to acknowledge that the problem of pesticide resistance is complex. The scope of this book does not allow me to explore all the intricacies of the concepts discussed and I hope that my colleagues will excuse any simplifications. After asking several colleagues from very different disciplines in biology to

3

review the text of this book, I do know that my views may differ from some others’, but that’s part and parcel of the process of science. I would like to gratefully acknowledge those friends and colleagues for constructive comments on this book: Kevin Rice, Buz Kloot, Nathan Hancock, Michele Harmon, Hugh Hanlin, Garriet Smith and Derek Zelmer, as well as my students Alyssa Smith and Brandy Bossle.

i

Lewis Carroll. 1871. Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. MacMillan. See the quote at the top of Chapter 1.

4

Sales Information Sheet Collected Papers of Michael E. Soulé

Fall 2014 Discount: Short Pub Date: 10/21/2014

Early Years in Modern Conservation Biology Michael E. Soulé Hardcover: E-Book:

978-1-61091-574-8 978-1-61091-576-2

$35.00 $34.99

NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection SCIENCE / Environmental Science Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 288 14 figures; 19 tables Author Residence: Paonia, Colorado Comparative Titles: • Foundations of Ecological Resilience, Edited by Lance Gunderson, Craig R. Allen, and C.S. Holling. ISBN: 978-1-59726511-9, Paperback, Nov. 2009, $40.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 403, Warehouse: 1209.

Previous Works: • Continental Conservation: Scientific Foundations of Regional Reserve Networks, Michael E. Soulé and John Terborgh. ISBN: 978-1-55963-698-8, Paperback, May 1999, $26.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 521, Warehouse: 2961.

• Conservation Biology: An Evolutionary-Ecological Perspective, Michael E. Soulé and Bruce Wilcox. ISBN: 978-0-87893-8001, Paperback, Feb. 1980, Sinauer. Bookscan: 3.

• Conservation Biology: Research Priorities for the Next Decade, Edited by Michael E. Soulé and Gordon Orians. ISBN: 978-155963-869-2, Paperback, July 2001, $28.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 811, Warehouse: 3171.

Sales Handle This collection of seminal writings by an illuminary in the field of conservation biology will inspire and guide a new generation of young scientists as they face the current global biodiversity crisis.

Description In the early 1970s, the environmental movement was underway. Overpopulation was recognized as a threat to human well-being, and scientists like Michael Soulé believed there was a connection between anthropogenic pressures on natural resources and the loss of the planet’s biodiversity. Soulé recognized the importance of a healthy natural world and with other leaders of the day pushed for a new interdisciplinary approach to preserving biological diversity. Thirty years later, he is hailed by many as the single most important force in the development of the modern science of conservation biology.

This book is a select collection of seminal writings by Michael Soulé over a thirty-year time-span from 1980 through the present day. Intended for a new generation of students, it offers a fresh presentation of goals of conservation biology, and inspiration and guidance for the global biodiversity crises facing us today. Readers will come away with an understanding of the science, passion, idealism, and sense of urgency that drove early founders of conservation biology like Michael Soulé.

Selling Points • Dr. Michael Soulé is hailed as the single most important force in the development of the science of conservation biology.

• This volume is the first compilation of his selected papers.

• The work contains a new, original preface by the author, who also frames each selection within the historical and scientific context of its first publication.

• An in-depth introduction by Dr. James Estes examines Dr. Soulé’s contribution to this influential discipline and also considers how the science will evolve to meet current challenges.

Author Bio Michael Soulé is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. A founder and first president of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Network, Dr. Soulé has written and edited nine books on biology, conservation biology, and the social and policy context of conservation and has published more than 170 papers in journals. Soulé is a fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many honors, Dr. Soulé is the sixth recipient of the Archie Carr Medal and in the first class of recipients of The Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award.

Table of Contents Preface Introduction \ James A. Estes Chapter 1. Conservation Biology: Its Scope and Its Challenge Chapter 2. What Is Conservation Biology?

Chapter 3. The Millenium Ark: How Long a Voyage, How Many Staterooms, How Many Passengers?

Chapter 4. Conservation Biology and the “Real World” Chapter 5. Reconstructed Dynamics of Rapid Extinctions of Chaparral-Requiring Birds in Urban Habitat Islands Chapter 6. The Onslaught of Alien Species, and Other Challenges in the Coming Decades Chapter 7. Conservation: Tactics for a Constant Crisis Chapter 8. Conservation Genetics and Conservation Biology: A Troubled Marriage Chapter 9. The Social and Public Health Implications of Global Warming and the Onslaught of Alien Species Chapter 10. Complimentary Goals for Continental Conservation Chapter 11. Conserving Nature at Regional and Continental Scales: A Scientific Program for North America Chapter 12. Ecological Effectiveness: Conservation Goals for Interactive Species Chapter 13. Strongly Interacting Species: Conservation Policy, Management, and Ethics Chapter 14. Editorial: The “New Conservation”

Excerpt from Michael Soulé and the Evolution of Modern Conservation Biology

James A. Estes

Until recently, humans perceived wild nature as a vast unknown--something to be feared; something to be conquered; and something that was inexhaustible. There is nothing in our evolutionary history, and thus nothing in our genes, to make us feel and behave otherwise.

Despite the popular perception of primitive peoples as wise stewards of natural resources, most early cultures probably exploited natural resources to their maximum abilities. Then as now, the rates of resource exploitation and utilization were linked to survival, power and wealth, and overall quality of life. Although such claims are difficult to demonstrate in the absence of written language, accounts of collapsed civilizations (Diamond 2005) together with a growing weight of evidence for human-caused extinctions of many large vertebrates (Martin 2007, Koch and Barnosky 2006) makes me doubt that ancients lived with much in the way of a conservation ethic.

The same is true for the period of exploration and discovery by modern societies. Magellan, Columbus, Cook, Bering, Lewis and Clark, and even Darwin—none of the early explorers had reason to think about, much less worry over, conservation. After all, their charge was to conquer and transform the spoils of their conquests into profits, not to conserve. Thomas Huxley’s errant advice to cod fishers in the North Atlantic—continue trawling despite the fishermens’ own concern for stock collapse (Kurlansky 1997, Roberts 2007)--captures the prevailing view of nature and natural resources as well as any. The notion of conservation, defined as the measures needed to provide for a sustainable future, was simply not part of our early lexicon.

Soulé, 2

This all began to change as human numbers marched steadily upward. Recognition of nature’s limits in the face of growing populations can be traced back at least to the 18th century writings of Thomas Maltus. This principle of population biology--the notion of environmental carrying capacity--was formalized in the logistic growth equation [dN/dt = rN(1-N/K), where N = population size, r = the intrinsic rate of population increase, and K = environmental carring capacity. The logistic growth equation led to the famous Lotka-Volterra competition equations (a simple expansion of the logistic in which two species are limited by a common resource) and subsequently to the first serious efforts to conserve and manage exploited populations of wild plants and animals. Beverton and Holt’s (1957) treatise on the biology of exploited populations is a famous example directed primarily at fisheries management. Earth scientists recognized and had become concerned about the finite nature of geological resources even earlier, as evidenced by warnings from such well known people as John Wesley Powell, founding director of the US Geological Survey. Awareness of the need for conservation continued to build into the early 20th Century, no doubt influencing the landmark policies of Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.

My point is that a human recognition of the need to conserve natural resources, while thought of by many as something quite recent, in fact has been around for a while. But like most creative human endeavors, the growth of the conservation movement seems to be characterized by long periods of stasis followed by short periods of rapid change. These periods of rapid change are often pushed forward by men and women with two special qualities—the vision to see what is needed and the charisma and strength of character to draw others along with them. Through the first half of the 20th Century, people like John Muir, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold indelibly

Soulé, 3 influenced the pathway of conservation. History will no doubt add Michael Soulé to this list of influential conservationists.

The impacts of leaders in the conservation movement commonly arise through philosophical transformations that occur during their own lives. Aldo Leopold, arguably the most revered figure in the history of conservation, was a game manager by training who began his career with the US Forest Service during the era of predator control. Early in his professional life, he sought to enhance wildlife by regulating human exploitation while at the same time minimizing losses to predators. Later he came to realize the shortcomings of his early beliefs, embracing a more holistic view of ecology, management, and environmental ethics that was articulated in the poignant prose of his enduring classic, A Sand County Almanac (Leopold 1949).

Despite messages for conservation by the movement’s early visionaries, natural resource conservation turned in a different direction through the middle decades of the 20th Century— toward the objective of a maximum sustainable yield. A maximum sustainable yield is the ideal of taking as many as possible from an exploited population, while at the same time not so many as to cause that population to collapse. This ideal became the mantra of natural resource management, surfacing as the integrating principle in our efforts to conserve the three main elements of wild living nature—fish, wildlife, and forests. Programs in wildlife biology, fisheries science, and forestry emerged to conduct research and train the next generation of practitioners on how to achieve sustainable yields.

Soulé, 4 The practices and beliefs that grew out of wildlife, fisheries, and forestry science did not encompass much of what would eventually become conservation biology. Movement in that direction lay largely dormant from the time of Leopold’s death in 1948 through the 1960s. Even today, conservation and management conjure up different images, at least in my mind.

Management, as I think of it, involves the manipulation of species and habitats for direct and immediate human benefit whereas the chief goal of conservation is the maintenance of biodiversity. A tension between these views and philosophies can be seen almost everywhere as modern-day natural resource managers and conservationist struggle to define a way forward.

Through the mid decades of the 20th century, the key disciplinary elements of what would eventually coalesce into what was first called “Conservation Biology” and has more recently been termed “Conservation Science”—ecology, natural resource management, genetics, economics, and environmental ethics—developed mostly in isolation of one another.

As human populations have continued to grow, as technologies have continued to develop, and as the economic imperative of an increasingly democratic global society has ever more strongly pressed natural resources to fuel this imperative, limits to growth and the sustainable use of natural resources inevitably have resurfaced as questions of increasing concern. No rationale modern person could deny the fundamental truth in this vision of our planet’s future. But the devil is in the details. Just what are the limits to growth, and as we continue to proceed along that path how can we preserve the rest of the natural world for our own future and the generations to come? These are the questions that a small number of biologists, economists, philosophers and others began asking again in earnest a few decades ago. The result was the birth of modern

SoulĂŠ, 5 Conservation Biology. Michael SoulĂŠ had a strong hand in that endeavor and as a result is sometimes referred to as the father of Conservation Biology.

Excerpt from

2 What Is Conservation Biology?

A NEW SYNTHETIC DISCIPLINE ADDRESSES THE DYNAMICS AND PROBLEMS OF PERTURBED SPECIES, COMMUNITIES, AND ECOSYSTEMS Originally appeared in BioScience, Vol. 35, No. 11, Conservation biology, a new stage in the application of science to conservation problems, addresses the biology of species, communities, and ecosystems that are perturbed, either directly or indirectly, by human activities or other agents. Its goal is to provide principles and tools for preserving biological diversity. In this article I describe conservation biology, define its fundamental propositions, and note a few of its contributions. I also point out that ethical norms are a genuine part of conservation biology, as they are in all mission or crisis-oriented disciplines.

CRISIS DISCIPLINES Conservation biology differs from most other biological sciences in one important way: it is often a crisis discipline. Its relation to biology, particularly ecology, is analogous to that of surgery to physiology and war to political science. In crisis disciplines, one must act before knowing all the facts; crisis disciplines are thus a mixture of science and art, and their pursuit requires intuition as well as information. A conservation biologist may have to make decisions or recommendations about design and management before he or she is completely comfortable with the theoretical and empirical bases of the analysis (May 1984, SoulĂŠ and Wilcox 1980, chap. 1).Tolerating uncertainty is often necessary.

Conservation biologists are being asked for advice by government agencies and private organizations on such problems as the ecological and health consequences of chemical pollution, the introduction of exotic species and artificially produced strains of existing organisms, the sites and sizes of national parks, the definition of minimum conditions for viable populations of particular target species, the frequencies and kinds of management practices in

SoulĂŠ, 2

existing refuges and managed wildlands, and the ecological effects of development. For political reasons, such decisions must often be made in haste.

For example, the rapidity and irreversibility of logging and human resettlement in Western New Guinea (Irian Jaya) prompted the Indonesian government to establish a system of national parks. Two of the largest areas recommended had never been visited by biologists, but it appeared likely that these areas harbored endemic biotas.1 Reconnaissance later confirmed this. The park boundaries were established in 1981, and subsequent development has already precluded all but minor adjustments. Similar crises are now facing managers of endangered habitats and species in the United States-for example, grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region, black-footed ferrets in Wyoming, old-growth Douglas-fir forests in the Pacific Northwest, redcockaded woodpeckers in the Southeast, and condors in California.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF CONSERVATION BIOLOGY As illustrated in Figure 1, conservation biology shares certain characteristics with other crisisoriented disciplines. A comparison with cancer biology illustrates some of these characteristics, including conservation biology's synthetic, eclectic, multidisciplinary structure. Furthermore, both fields take many of their questions, techniques, and methods from a broad range of fields, not all biological. This illustration is also intended to show the artificiality of the dichotomy between pure and applied disciplines.

Finally, this figure illustrates the dependence of the biological sciences on social science disciplines. Today, for example, any recommendations about the location and size of national parks should consider the impact of the park on indigenous peoples and their cultures, on the local economy, and on opportunity costs such as forfeited logging profits.

Soulé, 3

Figure 2.1: Cancer biology and conservation biology are both synthetic, multidisciplinary sciences. The dashed line indicates the artificial nature of the borders between disciplines and between “basic” and “applied” research. See text.

There is much overlap between conservation biology and the natural resource fields, especially fisheries biology, forestry, and wildlife management. Nevertheless, two characteristics of these fields often distinguish them from conservation biology. The first is the dominance in the resource fields of utilitarian, economic objectives. Even though individual wildlife biologists honor Aldo Leopold's land ethic and the intrinsic value of nature, most of the financial resources for management must go to enhancing commercial and recreational values for humans. The emphasis is on our natural resources.

The second distinguishing characteristic is the nature of these resources. For the most part, they are a small number of particularly valuable target species (e.g., trees, fishes, deer, and waterfowl) -- a tiny fraction of the total biota. This distinction is beginning to disappear, however, as some natural resource agencies become more "ecological" and because conservation biologists frequently focus on individual endangered, critical, or keystone species.

Conservation biology tends to be holistic, in two senses of the word. First, many conservation biologists, including many wildlife specialists, assume that ecological and evolutionary processes must be studied at their own macroscopic levels and that reductionism alone cannot lead to explanations of community and ecosystem processes such as body-size differences among species in guilds (Cody and Diamond 1975), pollinator-plant coevolution (Gilbert and Raven 1975), succession, speciation, and species-area relationships. Even ecological reductionists, however, agree that the proper objective of conservation is the protection and continuity of entire communities and ecosystems. The holistic assumption of conservation biology should not be confused with romantic notions that one can grasp the functional

Soulé, 4

intricacies of complex systems without conducting scientific and technological studies of individual components (Levins and Lewontin 1985, chap. 6). Holism is not mysticism.

The second implication of the term holistic is the assumption that multidisciplinary approaches will ultimately be the most fruitful. Conservation biology is certainly holistic in this sense.

Modern biogeographic analysis is now being integrated into the conservation movement (Diamond 1975, Simberloff and Abele 1976, Terborgh 1974, Wilcox 1980). Population genetics, too, is now being applied to the technology of wildlife management (Frankel 1974, Frankel and Soulé 1981, Schonewald-Cox et al. 1983, Soulé and Wilcox 1980). Multidisciplinary research, involving government agencies and wildlife biologists, is also evident in recent efforts to illuminate the question of viable population size (Salwasser et al. 1984).

Another distinguishing characteristic of conservation biology is its time scale. Generally, its practitioners attach less weight to aesthetics, maximum yields, and profitability, and more to the long-range viability of whole systems and species, including their evolutionary potential.

Long term viability of natural communities usually implies the persistence of diversity, with little or no help from humans. But for the foreseeable future, such a passive role for managers is unrealistic, and virtually all conservation programs will need to be buttressed artificially. For example, even the largest nature reserves and national parks are affected by anthropogenic factors in the surrounding area (Janzen 1983, Kushlan 1979), and such refuges are usually too small to contain viable populations of large carnivores (Frankel and Soulé , 198 1, Shaffer and Samson 1985). In addition, poaching, habitat fragmentation, and the influx of feral animals and exotic plants require extraordinary practices such as culling, eradication, wildlife immunization, habitat protection, and artificial transfers. Until benign neglect is again a possibility, conservation biology can complement natural resource fields in providing some of the theoretical and empirical foundations for coping with such management conundrums.

Fall 2014

Sales Information Sheet Protecting the Wild Parks and Wilderness, the Foundation for Conservation

Discount: Short Pub Date: 2/19/2015

George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-548-9 978-1-61091-551-9

$24.95 $23.99

NATURE / Environmental Conservation & Protection NATURE / Essays Trim Size: 6 X 9 Pages: 248 Author Residence: Helena, Montana Blacksburg, Virginia Huntington, Vermont Comparative Titles: • Beyond Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Stewardship in an Era of Rapid Change, David N. Cole and Laurie Yung. ISBN: 978-1-59726-509-6, Paperback, March 2010, $35.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 407, Warehouse: 1785.

• To Conserve Unimpaired: The Evolution of the National Park Idea, Robert B. Keiter. ISBN: 978-1-59726-660-4, Paperback, April 2013, $35.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 332, Warehouse: 785.

Previous Works: • Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. ISBN: 978-1-61091-558-8, Paperback, May 2014, $24.95, The Foundation for Deep Ecology .

• The Wildfire Reader: A Century of Failed Forest Policy, George Wuerthner. ISBN: 978-1-59726-087-9, Paperback, Aug. 2006, $45.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 352, Warehouse: 2750.

• Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West, George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson. ISBN: 978-155963-943-9, Paperback, Aug. 2002, $45.00, The Foundation for Deep Ecology. Bookscan: 563, Warehouse: 2449.

Sales Handle A big, bold vision for protected areas and rewilding the Earth, this book presents a spirited argument on the future of conservation.

Description Protected natural areas have historically been the primary tool of conservationists to conserve land and wildlife. These parks and reserves are set apart to forever remain in contrast to those places where human activities, technologies, and developments prevail. But even as the biodiversity crisis accelerates, a growing number of voices are suggesting that protected areas are passé. Conservation, they argue, should instead focus on lands managed for human use—working landscapes—and abandon the goal of preventing human-caused extinctions in favor of maintaining ecosystem services to support people. If such arguments take hold, we risk losing support for the unique qualities and values of wild, undeveloped nature.

Protecting the Wild offers a spirited argument for the robust protection of the natural world. In it, experts from five continents reaffirm that parks, wilderness areas, and other reserves are an indispensable—albeit insufficient—means to sustain species, subspecies, key habitats, ecological processes, and evolutionary potential.

A companion volume to Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth, Protecting the Wild provides a necessary addition to the conversation about the future of conservation in the so-called Anthropocene, one that will be useful for academics, policymakers, and conservation practitioners at all levels, from local land trusts to international NGOs. Selling Points • This volume is a timely addition to the current debate about how best to manage land for conservation • The book includes case studies from around the world • The publisher is the Foundation for Deep Ecology, a leading advocate of wild nature

Author Bio George Wuerthner is the Ecological Projects Director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology, where he does research and writes about environmental issues. For many years he was a full-time freelance photographer and writer and has published thirty-five books on natural history, conservation history, ecology, and environmental issues. Eileen Crist teaches at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society, where she is advisor for the undergraduate program Humanities, Science, and Environment. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind and coeditor of Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis. Tom Butler, a Vermont-based conservation activist and writer, is the board president of the Northeast Wilderness Trust and the former longtime editor of Wild Earth journal. His books include Wildlands Philanthropy, Plundering Appalachia, and ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth.

Sales Information Sheet Restored Urban Streams Case Studies in Science and Practice

Fall 2014 Discount: Short Pub Date: 2/12/2015

Ann L. Riley Hardcover: Paperback: E-Book:

978-1-61091-354-6 978-1-61091-355-3 978-1-61091-356-0

$70.00 $35.00 $34.99

SCIENCE / Environmental Science Trim Size: 7 X 10 Pages: 240 79 black-and-white photographs, 11 tables, 41 black-and-white figures, 7 color photos Author Residence: Berkeley, California Comparative Titles: • Restoring Ecological Health to Your Land, Steven I. Apfelbaum and Alan Haney. ISBN: 978-1-59726-572-0, Paperback, April 2010, $32.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 545, Warehouse: 1590.

• Restoring Disturbed Landscapes: Putting Principles into Practice, David J. Tongway and John A. Ludwig. ISBN: 978-159726-581-2, Paperback, Nov. 2010, $35.00, Island Press. Bookscan: 121, Warehouse: 1117.

Previous Works: • Restoring Streams in Cities: A Guide for Planners, Policymakers, and Citizens, Ann L. Riley. ISBN: 978-1-55963-042-9, Paperback, March 1998, $57.50, Island Press. Bookscan: 739, Warehouse: 5366.

Sales Handle An essential tool for practitioners of urban stream restoration from a pioneer in the field.

Description Thirty years ago, urban streams were perceived as little more than flood control devices designed to hurry water through cities and neighborhoods with scant thought for aesthetics or ecological considerations. But stream restoration pioneers like hydrologist Ann Riley argued that by restoring ecological function and with careful management, streams and rivers could be a net benefit to cities instead of a net liability. Riley has since spearheaded numerous urban stream restoration projects and put to rest the long-held misconception that degraded urban streams are beyond help.

What has been missing, however, has been detailed guidance for restoration practitioners wanting to undertake similar urban stream restoration projects that worked with, rather than against, nature. This book presents the author’s thirty years of practical experience managing long-term stream and river restoration projects in heavily degraded urban environments. Although the case studies are local, the principles, methods, and tools are universal, and can be applied in almost any city in the world.

Selling Points • Ann Riley is a thirty-year veteran of stream and river restoration and widely known and respected for her pioneering work. Her reputation in the field will be the primary selling point.

• Provides information, guidance, and encouragement for practitioners seeking to undertake successful stream restoration projects.

• Written in a reader-friendly narrative style and illustrated with technical drawings and photos.

• Part of the Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration Series.

Author Bio Ann L. Riley is the Watershed and Stream Protection/Restoration Advisor for the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board. Previously, she was Executive Director of the Waterways Restoration Institute, where she worked on the design and installation of stream restoration projects. She has also been involved in the evaluation of national water policy for the National Research Council, the Institute for Water Resources, and federal task forces.

Table of Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Chapter 1. Is the Restoration of Urban Streams Possible?

Chapter 2. Defining Restoration Chapter 3. An Introduction to the Schools of Restoration Chapter 4. Evaluations of Watershed Hydrology, Geomorphology, and Hydraulics Schools Chapter 5. Evaluations of Applied Wildlife Biology Chapter 6. Neighborhood-Scale Restoration Projects Chapter 7. Regional Multiobjective Flood-Damage-Reduction Restoration Chapter 8. A View Across all the Cases References Cited

Chapter One Is The Restoration of Urban Streams Possible? “It’s just an urban stream,� said the engineering consultant, responding to my request to vegetate the channel rather than line the channel with plastic geogrid. We are taught that restoring ecologically functioning urban streams and rivers is not possible, based on the belief that urban watersheds are too degraded and their landscapes too altered to support naturally functioning systems. Restoring urban streams and rivers is also not possible, we are told, because it is prohibitively expensive to practice ecological restoration in a setting where land is expensive and other land uses are valued more highly than streams.

Restoration is not possible, the argument continues, because the public will not accept the flood and erosion hazards associated with uncontrolled dynamic natural streams in the interiors of cities.

Engineers, landscape architects, and planners are taught this framework in college and graduate school. The instruction includes urban stormwater literature from which students get the impression that after about a 10-15% increase in imperviousness from urbanization it is likely that we reach a point of no return for salvaging a stable, ecologically functioning stream. Some researchers make definitive conclusions such as where impervious cover exceeds 60-70% these areas are going to be impossible to restore (Clayton 2000).

A preponderance of urban stormwater literature shows how land use changes affect urban flood hydrographs: streams flow flashier after rain, channels enlarge and erode, and large

Riley, 2 floods happen more frequently. We witness how urbanization fills in headwater streams, encases channels in concrete, puts channels and drainages in culverts, and permanently alters the drainage network of the natural stream system. Channels can incise and widen sometimes as much as eight times their original size (Hammer 1972). Eroding channels have simplified environments so that biological diversity is reduced: aquatic insects, fish, reptiles, and amphibians can barely survive and probably not thrive. Riparian plant communities are destroyed and degraded and invaded by exotic species that can crowd out natives. The wildlife dependent on these plant communities disappear. These observations are indisputable (Bernhardt and Palmer 2007).

The rational individual therefore sees little potential in restoring urban streams, other than fostering public education and improving the urban quality of life. Even the most open minded, supportive professionals who appreciate the urban environmental movement arising out of the 1980s and 1990s typically do not have expectations beyond increasing the aesthetic values of urban streams.

Testing a Hypothesis In 1982 I decided to address the issue of whether the restoration of urban streams and rivers, including the most degraded, is possible. It became clear to me that the only way to test this hypothesis was to believe it was possible and set out to try. This book is written to record the results of this 30-year experiment. Obviously, this effort necessarily required anyone entering this ambitious and time-consuming experiment to have a bias that it is possible to restore urban streams. I have attempted to honestly, and in some cases brutally, report project failures, ridiculous naivetĂŠ, and how practices evolved out

Riley, 3 of making mistakes. A range of watershed sizes are represented in these cases from very small (1.2 square miles) to the second largest watershed in the San Francisco Bay Area (400 square miles).

The question of whether restoring urban streams and rivers is possible must address three basic challenges. First, given the degraded urban watershed conditions and land use constraints inherent in the city, is it physically feasible to return a degraded steam to an ecologically functioning and dynamic state? Natural streams are inherently dynamic environments and require erosion, deposition, moving and adjusting plan forms and flooding in order to be truly living streams. Are living streams and these urban conditions mutually exclusive concepts? The second challenge is whether it is financially feasible or reasonable to attempt to re-establish this type of dynamic ecosystem in a city. The last challenge is to ask whether enough public support can be developed to enable the sometimes inconvenient land use changes that may be necessary to allow for a functioning, live stream.

The urban stream and river case studies described in this book are organized around these three questions: did the project result in a functioning stream? Were the identified benefits of the project achieved at a reasonable cost? And how were land uses in conflict with achieving a functioning ecosystem system resolved? The case studies address these ecological, economic, and social issues in order to fairly answer the question of whether urban stream restoration is possible.

For the case studies to be credible they need to be located in highly modified watersheds, represent lower or middle income communities with limited economic resources, and

Riley, 4 occur where the classic conflicts between city life, land use, and erosion and flood hazards exist. Without these factors the information gained from these case studies cannot be transferable to other heavily urbanized environments. Most of the case studies in this book therefore are located in low income, working class, or poverty neighborhoods. These are areas where restoration concepts conflict with housing, streets and parking, and recreational needs, and in areas such as school grounds and parks where the safety of children must be a concern. All of them are located where there have been flooding hazards.

How Different Are Urban Streams From Streams in Other Settings?

Memorable field trips taken to the rural California Sacramento and Toulumne Rivers and their tributaries overwhelmed me with the cumulative challenges of rivers rip-rapped (rocked), straightened, logged, dredged, dammed, diverted to agricultural fields, and constrained with berms and levees composed of toxic mining tailings. This widened perspective made restoring an urban stream in a city look welcomingly simple. Streams constantly adjust and attempt to recover from man’s modifications no matter what the setting is. The streams work to rebalance the sediment loads, discharges, shapes, and slopes, and sometimes the plant community recovers over time on its own. At times stream “restoration� is a matter of a stream directing its own recovery. In other circumstances humans intervene in an effort to hasten or redirect the recovery process. In some cases, restoration occurs because of the intervention of animals such as beavers.

Environmental management professionals need to keep in mind that the channel evolution and recovery processes we observe in more rural environments are also present in urban environments. The variables making up stream dynamics including topography,

Riley, 5 rainfall, discharges, sediment loads and sizes, vegetation, and valley and channel slopes are present, even for the streams encased in concrete. This means that the restoration practitioner in an urban environment may be able to reasonably describe how a stream may respond to changes in discharges, sediment supplies, channel slopes, vegetation removal, etc. Diagnostic assessments can be carried out to identify watershed and stream system problems such as risk of flood damages or excessive erosion, and help remedy the causes of the imbalances窶馬ot just bandage them.

Many professionals promote stereotypes or unquestioned assumptions about urban streams or rivers. One of the most notorious symbols of the highly degraded urban river in America is the Los Angeles River, encased in concrete since the 1930s. A number of Los Angeles flood control engineers state that this river can not feasibly recover any natural functions because the upstream debris basins and concrete channel sides prevent river sediment transport. Without a sediment supply the river cannot conceivably begin to express natural channel forms or river dynamics. A field trip to the Los Angles River not only reveals a channel filled with a wide range of sediment sizes ranging from sands to cobbles and boulders but also a sediment supply sufficient for creating channel complexity and allowing willow thickets to reestablish. I was led by local officials to the rectangular concrete channel Coyote Creek, and the trapezoidal channel, San Jose Creek, both tributaries to the San Gabriel River, the other degraded urban river draining the Los Angeles area. We observed channels with substantial sediment supplies that have been transported and deposited to form a single-thread meandering channel with a floodplain that supports riparian vegetation. This is occurring to the consternation of flood control officials who view this re-creation of natural depositional forms within the flood control

Riley, 6 channel as an unfortunate maintenance problem. Many other flood control engineers administering to other similar flood control channels sympathize with this commonly occurring “problem� ( figures 1.1,1.2,1.3).

Water quality conditions can also take an ironic twist in urban areas. The Los Angeles San Gabriel Watershed Council monitoring program shows high levels of coliform bacteria in the more natural upper watershed areas used for recreation than in downstream reaches in urbanized Los Angeles (Beldon 2008). Similar findings from a water quality agency study on Wildcat Creek in the city of Richmond, California, indicates pockets of pollution located in the protected open space regional parklands.

That pollution can be attributed to the large number of dog walkers who do not clean up the excrement of their pets (SWAMP 2008).