Stewardship, learning, and memory in disaster resilience

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• resilience
• communities of practice
• civic ecology
• urban
• stewardship
• memory
• disaster
• social learning

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge generous funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Federal Formula Funds program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and the Community Forestry and Environmental Research Fellowships program. We would also like to acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers and in particular Ryan Plummer, who provided critical guidance and suggestions on early drafts of this contribution. Finally, we are grateful to the USDA Forest Service Living Memorials Project and Parkway Partners ReLeaf New Orleans initiative for their inspirational involvement in honoring, memorializing, and recovering from the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.