Building Adaptive Capacity Through Civic Environmental Stewardship: Responding to COVID-19 Alongside Compounding and Concurrent Crises (original) (raw)
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Stewardship, learning, and memory in disaster resilience
Environmental …, 2010
In this contribution, we propose and explore the following hypothesis: civic ecology practices, including urban community forestry, community gardening, and other self‐organized forms of stewardship of green spaces in cities, are manifestations of how memories of the role of greening in healing can be instrumentalized through social learning to foster social–ecological system (SES) resilience following crisis and disaster. Further, we propose that civic ecology communities of practice within and across cities help to leverage these memories into effective practices, and that these communities of practice serve as urban iterations of the collaborative and adaptive management practices that play a role in SES resilience in more rural settings. We present two urban examples to build support for this hypothesis: the Living Memorials Project in post‐9/11 New York City, and community forestry in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. These cases demonstrate what we refer to as a memorialization mechanism that leads to feedbacks critical to SES resilience. The process begins immediately after a crisis, when a spontaneous and collective memorialization of lost ones through gardening and tree planting ensues, following which a community of practice emerges to act upon and apply these memories to social learning about greening practices. This in turn may lead to new kinds of learning, including about collective efficacy and ecosystem services production, through a kind of feedback between remembering, learning, and enhancing individual, social, and environmental well‐being. This process, in the case of greening in cities, may confer SES resilience, through contributing to both psychological–social resistance and resilience and ecosystem benefits.
Building Resilience through Collective Engagement
Architecture_MPS
The basic premise of this study is that the collective engagement of the citizens in a disaster-prone city helps transform their city to become resilient. Many urban managers encourage citizen participation by providing a venue for citizens to engage in public issues, including those of city planning and management. Citizen participation is important in building a cohesive community, empowering its citizens, and enhancing their sense of ownership of their community and city as a whole. The research underscores that collective engagement and action have an influence in the transformation of a city. The study will use the concept of resilience in the socio-ecological systems context to build a conceptual framework on the transformation process. Cities are ecological systems with both natural- and built-environment characteristics. Cities are complex multidimensional systems with both the social (human) and the ecological (natural and built environments) tied together. The changing lan...
Journal of Emergency Management, 2006
This paper describes the development of a disaster resistant community at the University of New Orleans (UNO). It includes the process for obtaining leadership support and “buy in,” for identifying specific expertise within the university community, and for enlisting and ensuring broad stakeholder support and participation in the plan.In late 2004, the author’s research team at the University of New Orleans successfully sought and was subsequently awarded a FEMA-sponsored grant to develop a Disaster Resistant University (DRU). This resulted in the formulation of a comprehensive mitigation plan aimed at identifying and reducing risks throughout UNO’s campus.Early in the planning process, the research team decided that, unlike other universities who had been awarded FEMA DRU grants, it would be important to develop local, “in-house” expertise in disaster resiliency to ensure sustainability. Rather than contracting an external agency to develop the mitigation plan, the researchers deci...
Background: Disaster preparedness is a national priority, with vulnerable communities disproportionally exposed to risk. After Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) identified " Whole Community " response as risk reduction strategy. Community-based organizations (CBOs), government, and healthcare were identified as critical sectors for capacity building to optimize community resilience. Objective: Evaluate community factors that contribute to resiliency in disaster aftermath in a mid-sized, socially complex city through collaboration with government, CBOs, and healthcare. Methods: An environmental scan engaging diverse communities in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, examined local crisis cooperation. Interviews with CBOs, government, and healthcare explored familiarity with FEMA's " Whole Community " approach, inter-sector relationships, and disaster experience. These were followed up with a community table-top exercise (World Café format) with 77 CBO and response agency representatives, plus continued focus-group meetings. Results: One-size-fits-all disaster plans are not productive, but incorporating community assets is limited by CBO operational constraints. Concerns about CBO/government interrelationship strength, abstract event relevance to CBOs, and planning priorities. Conclusions: Major discrepancies persist between " Whole Community " ideal and application. CBO involvement in preparedness is critical to optimize community resilience. Developing sustainable, mutually beneficially, practical partnerships with socially marginalized communities are key to resilience, but overlooked in disaster planning.