Keith G. Tidball Cornell University “Green Cities” CRP 384/584 Nature in The City.

Keith G. Tidball

Cornell University

“Green Cities”

CRP 384/584

Nature in The City

“The battle to save the world’s remaining healthy ecosystems will be won or lost not in the tropical forests or coral reefs that are threatened but on the streets of the most unnatural landscapes on the planet.”

Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute

According to Webster

-SAVE is a VERB: saved , sav·ing , saves

To rescue from harm, danger, or loss. To set free from the consequences of sin; redeem. To keep in a safe condition; safeguard. To prevent the waste or loss of; conserve. To set aside for future use; store. To treat with care by avoiding fatigue, wear, or damage; spare: save one's eyesight.

Saving Mother Earth

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Genesis 1:26 KJV

http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/2163/Dominion-over-Animals.htm

• Both the “dominion” paradigm and the “save earth” paradigm suffer from anthropocentric bias.

• Both fail to see systems and ecological process as operating before, during, and perhaps long after the appearance of humans.

Paradigm Problems

Cartesian Dualism

These “Paradigm Problems” reflect the 17th Century philosophy of Cartesian dualism - the dichotomous separation of humans from nature.

Urban Nature—OXYMORON?

Systems ThinkingSystem Dynamics entails

making three fundamental shifts of mind relative to traditional ways of thinking.  

From linear, laundry list thinking to a circular, closed-loop view of causality.

  From an external to an internal focus

on performance; how we, not others, are responsible for results.

  A focus on an operational view of how

things work in contrast to analysis methods based on statistical correlation of past trends.

RJ Walkers adaptation of Barry Richmond. An Introduction to Systems Thinking, iThink 4.0 documentation, High Performance Systems Inc., Page I-12.

Cities Natural Resources

Systems Thinking

“Systems dynamics thinking gets a lot of its power from a 'feedback' perspective -- the realization that tough dynamic problems arise in situations with lots of pressures and perceptions that interact to form loops of circular causality, rather than simple one-way causal chains.”

George Richardson. System Dynamics in an Elevator.http://www.stewardshipmodeling.com/System%20Dynamics%20in%20the%20Elevator.htm

Remember This?

In Western culture, the dichotomy of good and evil is often taken as a paradigm for other dichotomies. In Hegelian dialectics, dichotomies are linked to progress. In Chinese philosophy dichotomies are linked to cyclical processes rather than progress1.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

2. For a full discussion of the taiji or Yin Yang symbol, see http://home.att.net/~numericana/answer/symbol.htm#taiji

Some paradigmatic dichotomies may be self-defeating “circular” processes, or may not lead to progress without an event to move the flow of energy within the process.

Clockwise Counter

-clockwise

Paradigmatic Dichotomy Example #1

For Environmental Security, “Natural Resources are the Source of

Conflict” vs. “Natural Resources are a Source of Solutions to Conflict”

The paradox: While in some cases conflict has and does arise over competition for natural resources, natural resources can be a path to “Environmental Peacemaking1.”

Paradigmatic Dichotomy Example #2

For Sustainability, “Cities are Good” vs. “Cities are Bad”

The paradox: While cities are centers of consumption, sources of pollution, and often concentrate crime and conflict, they are also centers of human and economic capital, sources of innovation and organization, and repositories of diversity.

Can these two paradigmatic dichotomies be organized conceptually to makes some sense of the circular nature of these two important paradoxes?

Resilience theory provides explanations for the source and role of transforming change in adaptive systems.

SES- Socio Ecological System

• In 2008 more than half the people on the planet will live in cities.

• As early as 2030, four out of five of the world’s urban residents will live in what we call the “developing world”

• Many experts predict that cities will be where future conflict will be most prevalent

• Cities are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters

Urban Facts

Cities and Mega Cities Today

• 19 mega-cities with 10 million or more

• 22 cities with 5-10 million

• 370 cities with 1-5 million

• 433 cities with 0.5-1 million

Cities and Nature• A large percentage

of Earth's biodiversity exists in urban or urbanizing areas.

• Cities are embedded in the natural environment of whichever place on Earth where they develop.

Connecting

• Connecting city dwellers with their local nature and watersheds is critical not only for building support for the conservation of faraway places, but also for the ecological restoration and stewardship of biodiversity at home.

Conservation

Conservation of local urban biodiversity is as essential to global ecosystem conservation, sustainability, and human survival on the planet as is conservation of the Amazon rainforest or the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.

Environmental Justice

Many urban people cannot afford to go out of town to experience nature and/or they have grown up without the benefit of experiencing wild nature. 

Nature...

Urban areas are the diverse, complex, intensely developed and decisive milieu in which we humans are confronted with the global challenge of how to interact more harmoniously, locally, with the rest of the natural world.