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Need-based transfers in water management and disaster recovery workshopHosted by the Human Generosity Project and the Decision Center for a Desert City, Arizona State University
Applying need-based transfers to pressing large-scale problems – what can we learn
from disasters?
Photo by David Kozlowski
Keith G. Tidball, Ph.D.Department of Natural ResourcesCornell University16 JAN 2015.
Caveats & Disclaimers – what you need to know…
Infantry TidballInternational Affairs Tidball
Academic Tidball
Trying to hang with the cool kids… my anthro DNA
Source: http://archives.wfpl.org/2008/09/04/religion-practicing-snake-handling-comes-under-scrutiny/
Tidball, K. G. and C. P. Toumey (2007). "Serpents, Sainthood, and Celebrity: Symbolic and Ritual Tensions in Appalachian Pentecostal Serpent Handling." Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 17(Fall): http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art17-serpents-print.html
Tidball, K. G. and C. P. Toumey (2003). Signifying Serpents: Hermeneutic Change in Appalachian Pentecostal Serpent Handling. Signifying Serpents and Mardi Gras Runners: Representing Identity in Selected Souths. C. Ray and L. E. Lassiter. Athens, Georgia, University of Georgia Press.
The fascination with symbols and ritual persisted…
Camp Algiers – Relief HQ NOLA Post-Katrina
Trees as Social Objects in Anthropology
“From its beginnings , anthropology has concerned itself as much with the ways in which natural processes are conceptualized and the natural world classified, as with the ways in which human societies interact with their natural environments and use natural resources.”
Laura Rival- The Social Life of Trees
Trees and Rebirth: Resilience, Ritual and Symbol in Community-
based Urban Reforestation Recovery Efforts in Post-Katrina New Orleans
Keith G. TidballCornell University
Department of Natural Resources
American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting:Philadelphia, PA USA
Dec 2009
Session: THE SOCIAL LIFE OF TREES: COMMUNITY RESILIENCE, COLLECTIVE ACTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL BEHAVIOR
“Scrap House” art installation by Sally Heller. Convention Center, NOLA.Photo: Arts Council of New Orleans
Tree Symbolism in Anthropology
“…Trees are used symbolically to make concrete and material the abstract notion of life [and are] … ideal supports for such symbolic purpose precisely because their status as living organisms is ambiguous.”
Laura Rival- The Social Life of Trees
Symbol of Re-birth
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-new-orleans-0525_r_lmvmay25,0,4086594,full.story
On Tennessee Street, only trees
remained after the storm.
Residents now look to the trees as
a symbol of their neighborhood’s
endurance, and their street bustles
with new construction. In fact,
Tennessee offers a veritable
textbook example of construction
methodology.
American Apartment Owners Association Newsletterhttp://www.american-apartment-owners-association.org/blog/2009/02/02/three-years-after-katrina-brad-pitt-still-rallies-in-new-orleans/
Tidball, K. G. (2014). "Seeing the forest for the trees: hybridity and social-ecological symbols, rituals and resilience in post-disaster contexts." Ecology and Society 19(4).
Resilience is…
• Explanations for the source and role of
change in adaptive systems, particularly the kinds of change that are transforming.
• Focused on social-ecological systems –not simply linked or coupled systems of people and nature, people IN nature
• Found at multiple scales, from the scale of a farm or village, through communities, regions, and nations to the globe.
Resilience - the ability to absorb disturbances, to be changed and then to re-organize and still have the same identity. It includes the ability to learn from the disturbance. Walker, B., C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig. 2004. Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 9(2): 5. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5
“…there will be social mechanisms behind management practices based on local ecological knowledge, as evidence of a co-evolutionary relationship between local institutions and the ecosystem in which they are located.” Berkes & Folke 1998
“…systems that demonstrate resilience appear to have learned to recognize feedback, and therefore possess mechanisms by which information from the environment can be received, processed, and interpreted.” Berkes & Folke 1998
Explore the means, or social mechanisms, that bring about the conditions needed for adaptation in the face of disturbance (eg. disaster and war) fundamental to social-ecological system resilience.
Trees Shaped Resilience before and after Katrina
Before
• Ecosystem service provision– cooling
– storm water mgmt
– air quality
– aesthetic & recreational values
• Sense of place– Well-being
– Social capital
– Links to SES resilience
After
• Actionable restoration target
• Symbol of regeneration, rebirth, resilience
• Source of memory and memorialization
• Basis for emergence of a Community of Practice
• Catalyst for re-initiation of virtuous cycles in social-ecological system
WHAT INITIATES GREENING?
Urgent Biophilia
Positive Dependency
Memorialization
Mechanism
Social-Ecological
Symbols and Rituals
Tidball, KG. (2012). Urgent Biophilia: Human-Nature Interactions and Biological
Attractions in Disaster Resilience. Ecology and Society. 17(2).
Tidball, KG & RC Stedman. (2013). Positive Dependency and Virtuous Cycles:
From Resource Dependence to Resilience in Urban Social-Ecological Systems.
Ecological Economics. 86(0): 292-299.
Tidball, KG, ME Krasny, E Svendsen, L Campbell, & K Helphand. (2010).
Stewardship, Learning, and Memory in Disaster Resilience. “Resilience in
Social-Ecological Systems: the Role of Learning and Education,” Special Issue
of Environmental Education Research, 16(5): 341-357.
Tidball, KG (2014). Trees and Rebirth: Social-Ecological Symbols, Rituals and
Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans. In: Tidball and Krasny, Eds., Greening
in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience, and Community Greening. Springer
publishing.
Source of Memory & Memorialization
The 2002 "Restore the Oaks" art installation featured 30 local artists, each creating an original mural on the outer freeway columns to memorialize the live oak trees that once stood on either side of Claiborne Avenue.
I am going to go further back (than Katrina)…We lost something…we had these big majestic oaks that city planning and everyone else saw fit to uproot. Along with those oaks we had inherited businesses. So that’s the legacy that’s lost. So, these trees (we are planting) might be a reminder of what we lost, so that we don’t ever forget it and don’t let that happen to us again, as well as kind of light a fire under us to ensure that we won’t have to worry about a legacy being lost (due to Katrina) (Treme community member and tree planter, January 19 2009).
Memorial tree examples are familiar…
Scythe Tree, Waterloo, NYFrom a postcard
Survivor tree NagasakiPhoto by: Meghan Deutscher
Memorial tree examples are familiar…
The Oklahoma City bombing “Survivor Tree”
Image from http://www.panoramio.com/photo/14637493
Memorial tree examples are familiar…
2001
The New York City 9/11 “Survivor Tree”
Spring 2009
Michael Browne/Parks Department David W. Dunlap/The New York Times
Memorial tree examples are familiar…
Saint Paul’s Chapel, NYC
Tree memorials are “Living Memorials…Because of the
overwhelming desire to honor and memorialize the tragic losses that occurred on September 11, 2001 (9-11) the United States Congress asked the USDA Forest Service to create the Living Memorials Project (LMP).
This initiative invokes the resonating power of trees to bring people together and create lasting, living memorials to the victims of terrorism, their families, communities, and the nation.
See USDA Forest Service Living Memorials Project www.livingmemorialsproject.net
How do others account for greening activities in disaster and war?
LOCATION RED ZONE TYPEAfghanistan Ongoing wars in the Middle East
Berlin, Germany Post-Cold War divisions
Charleston, South Carolina 1989 Hurricane Hugo
Cameroon and Chad Mid 2000’s civil unrest in Central Africa
Cyprus Demarcation between Greek and Turkish Cyprus
Europe 1940’s WW II Nazi internment camps
Guatemala Ongoing post-conflict insecurity
Iraq Ongoing wars in the Middle East
Johannesburg, South Africa Early 2000’s Soweto, Post-Apartheid violence
Kenya Early 2000’s Resource scarcity conflict
Liberia 1989- 2003 civil war
Madagascar Costal vulnerability
New Orleans, USA 2005 Hurricane Katrina
New York City, USA 2001 September 11th terrorist attacks
Rotterdam, Netherlands Ongoing urban insecurity
Port-au-Prince, Haiti 2010 earthquake
Russia Post-Soviet Cold War urban insecurity
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 1992-1996 conflict
South Korea Demilitarized Zone
South Korea 2002 Typhoon and coastal vulnerability
Stockholm, Sweden Urban insecurity in times of war
Tokyo and Hiroshima, Japan WW II bombings
United States WW II involvement
United States Violence and prison populations
Joplin/Detroit/NYC Case study
Applied Work
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
Acknowledgements
Thank you!