Future We Want: Your Turn

May 152012
 

In the run-up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit in June, we asked for transformative ideas that will help us build a Future We Want (as the UN puts it).  The wider Ecotrust community responded with some though-provokers, which have us chatting around the watercooler, real and virtual.

Great Portland Pulse, a project that maps the way services and public investments spread — often unevenly — across our home region tweeted, “An equitable region is the #futurewewant.”  Equity mapping is an important, emerging tool guiding metropolitan regions everywhere in making cities more just and livable for all. In Denver, for instance, these maps are helping the city decide how to invest in future bus and light rail lines. The World Bank is strategizing on how it funds green growth, in order to most quickly eradicate poverty.

307 People of Color Collectively

An equity map for the city of Los Angeles shows access to parks (green) for neighborhoods of color (shades of red/yellow). The City Project via Flickr.

It’s a movement that overlaps with the marine planning work we do, which ensures that new marine protected areas, offshore energy sites and other ocean ventures jibe with existing fishing and recreation uses. And it’s the type of work our software team will be joining more and more.

We consider food the gateway to talking about resilient economies, communities and ecosystems and there were, appropriately, many food-and farm-related ideas flowing in with the #futurewewant tag. Community member Janie Malloy pushed for more urban food forests, along the lines of Seattle’s forthcoming 7-acre forest in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. “Support urban edible landscaping,” Malloy said.  Farm to Fork Events, which sets up farm dinners all over Oregon, would like to see their concept of agri-tourism and community building grow, as a building block to “a healthy, vibrant sustainably food system.” And Josie Osborne from the Tofino (B.C.) Botanical Gardens urged a more ethical, cruelty-free food system and “ better food security for all.”

Beacon Hill Festival 2011

An area at the edge of Jefferson Park (above) in Seattle will be turned into a food forest.

 

Food security is on our agenda as well, as we pursue our food and farms work — whether it’s pushing for more money to get fresh local food into schools or expanding a robust networking site at FoodHub to connect growers to hospitals, cafeterias and other large institutional buyers.

Tell us more. How can we better improve on equity and food system work as we move forward and build out a future we all want?

 

Partnering with nature: How one city’s growth could be greened

May 012012
 

Human life depends on the services provided by healthy ecosystems. As described in the UN-backed Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, these services include the provisioning of resources such as food, fiber, and raw materials; regulating services such as water filtration, storm buffering, and climate stabilization; supporting services such as soil formation, photosynthesis, and pollination; and cultural services that are spiritual, aesthetic, and recreational.

Human activities can impede ecosystem functions, thereby reducing flows of services. For instance, impervious pavement impairs watershed function, thereby diminishing services such as fish abundance. Prioritizing for production or harvest of a single commodity, such as food or fiber, can diminish other services in that same ecosystem, such as erosion prevention or soil formation, as well as undermine overall ecosystem resilience.

NCC bioswale

In working with nature in cities, stormwater filtration from bioswales is only the beginning.

Approaches to working with nature, however, can enable, rehabilitate, and restore ecosystem functions. Designs for on-site stormwater interception and infiltration can effectively reduce the imperviousness of built environments. Food production techniques can maintain or improve yields while bolstering species richness and abundance, enhancing soil fertility, and increasing carbon sequestration. In the Pacific Northwest, restorative forestry can effectively provide timber harvests while supporting other ecosystem services.

Practices and frameworks for working with nature to improve ecosystem functions, increase flows of services, and bolster the resilience of coupled human-natural systems include permaculture, agroecology, ecological forest management, ecological design, and green infrastructure.

Recently, Ecotrust looked at how the Portland Metro area could better utilize ecosystem services. In an urbanizing world, there are huge potential economic, social and environmental benefits to investing in ecosystem services in or near metropolises. While much research has been devoted to economic valuations of un-priced ecosystem services, cities and regions are in the early stages of incorporating these values into planning.

Ecotrust’s own experiences with ecosystem service projects and valuations, including the development of spatial and economic analyses for marine planning deliberations, lead us to seek to better understand these types of research questions and public engagement processes.

For Portland, we developed a set of scenarios to explore the potential for meeting social goals through management for ecosystem services across the greater region. We focused on three services of significance to the rural-urban context: carbon sequestration, stormwater interception, and food production. Our questions were:

  •  What percentage of the region’s climate change commitments could be met through biological sequestration — trees and other plant matter?
  • What percentage of the city’s stormwater management commitments could be met via green infrastructure?
  • What percentage of the region’s food needs could be satisfied with regional production?

For carbon sequestration, we examined current carbon storage and new sequestration potential in stream-side riparian buffers in The Intertwine Alliance’s regional parks and open spaces, as well as new sequestration potential in the urban forest canopy within the city of Portland.

For stormwater interception and infiltration, we examined the additional potential for tree planting in the urban tree canopy at the scale of City of Portland combined sewer system (which covers about one-third of the city), leaving aside for the moment additional potential of other public and private management options such as bioswales, ecoroofs, downspout disconnections, and rain gardens.

For food production, we looked at the landscape potential to satisfy regional needs from agricultural production lands in the tri-county Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington area, without considering the potential of community gardens or other production within urban areas. Nor did we consider the availability of farming inputs.

Based on plausible scenarios for working with nature, we developed the following estimates:

New carbon sequestration in the region’s riparian areas and urban forests could sequester 485,472 metric tons of CO2 per year by 2050, meeting 2.1 percent of Oregon’s greenhouse gas reduction targets on a current per capita basis. Stormwater interception by new urban forest canopy could meet 6.3 percent to 14.8 percent of city’s projected infrastructural needs by 2040. We found no specific targets for regional food production to satisfy regional demand, but based on a preliminary analysis of landscape suitability, we estimated that the region could supply current regional consumption for most crop categories, with the exception of meat products.

The full report, Partners with Nature, lays out our assumptions and conclusions in more detail.

By definition, our findings are partial and exploratory, and this exercise is as much about framing questions as it is about arriving at quantitative estimates. Each of these scenarios could be re-considered within a participatory or planning context, under differing assumptions or more detailed projections for climate, population, and other anticipated changes. We consider this report an invitation to more in-depth, place-based scenario development that supports shared goals, practices for working with nature and resilience building, in Portland and across the globe.

Future We Want: Local food sovereignty, not land grabs

Apr 252012
 

As Ecotrust promotes a natural model of development, one that builds upon principles of healthy ecosystems, we’re paying close attention to global trends that affect the management of ecosystems and the services they provide – water, food, clean air.  One hot topic lately is the issue of land rights.

Arable land the world over is becoming an increasingly contested resource. In response to high food prices and relatively low land prices, an increasing number of investors and corporations have been buying up agricultural land in developing countries concentrated in Africa, but spanning the globe: Uganda, Sudan, and Ethiopia as well as Brazil, Cambodia, and Pakistan.

Land grabbing in Uganda

Land being cleared for a palm oil plantation in the Kalangala Islands in the Ugandan section of Lake Victoria. Jason Taylor/FOEI via Flickr.

 

Meanwhile, local, small-scale farmers and herders, who have customary rights but lack legal title to their land, are being pushed off their ancestral lands, often coercively, deceitfully, or through intimidation by the agribusiness companies themselves, the state police, or the local elites who benefit from the deals. Land grabbing has become a global issue: since 2001, an estimated 227 million hectares of large-scale land deals have occurred or are currently under negotiation.

Large-scale investments in agriculture promise to expand the global food supply and increase production of biofuels, which stand as an important, though flawed, alternative energy source. But can such investments accomplish these goals without trampling the rights of local smallholders or degrading other local services of nature – such as clean water, forest-filtered air, and biodiversity? Not as long as current systems of land tenure prevail.

Most international land transactions today occur between national governments who possess formal title to large tracts of land, and investors and agribusiness corporations from the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. However, due to the legacy of colonialism that pervades the legal systems of large parts of Africa and Asia, formal legal rights and customary land tenure patterns are often completely disconnected from one another.  From the perspective of the local people who live, farm and herd in these regions, agribusiness corporations have simply stolen their land.

In the short run, the increased world food supply will be used to feed growing populations in rapidly developing countries such as China and to bolster the food security of countries with fragile agricultural systems, such as Saudi Arabia. However, social and economic inequities will rise sharply as a result of these deals, as land becomes concentrated in fewer hands across the globe. In the countries that receive the investment, a growing proportion of land will be both foreign-owned and cultivated for export, undermining local food sovereignty.

So far, none of the proposed large-scale solutions to this problem have made a dent. United Nations human rights policy mandates that governments seeking to implement eminent domain on behalf of business seek free, prior and informed consent of affected local residents. However, this provision has not been enforced in most (if any) large-scale land deals. The World Bank, meanwhile, has proposed a set of guidelines for responsible agricultural investment, but its provisions have been weak.

The inadequate response of the multilateral agencies has sparked increasing involvement by NGOs and activists. Oxfam has recently released an influential – and controversial – report on the topic of land grabbing, and the global peasants’ movement, La Via Campesina, has been organizing protest events calling for the abolition of land grabs.

The International Land Coalition, an umbrella civil society organization, has most recently contributed to the ongoing effort by releasing its own report that draws from three years of research and analysis. Will the new attention given to this problem lead to adequate solutions that respect smallholders’ rights? Time will tell.

The most successful means of resistance to land grabbing have been local initiatives for sustainable land use, such as the community protected area in Cambodia profiled by Ecotrust’s Astrid Scholz in a recent blog post. In Rwanda, new and locally designed technologies for drying fruit and vegetables hold out the potential to expand small farmers’ access to export markets. These initiatives offer hope, but the question remains: are they scalable?

As we head to the global environment conference in Rio in June, are there sustainable, socially just, and scalable alternatives to land grabbing that respect farming and herding communities, increasing resilience while preserving biodiversity and traditional knowledge? We’ll continue to explore the themes of land rights and sustainability in the posts that follow.

How will we build the future we want? What are your ideas for radical institutional change? These are the questions the UN is asking in preparation for the Rio+20 Earth Summit in late June. In response to their Future We Want campaign, we’re curating transformative ideas for building a more resilient world. We’ll share some of the ideas we’re cooking up here at Ecotrust, but most of all, we want to hear from you. Email obrooks (at) ecotrust (dot) org.

Future We Want: Community-driven fisheries

Apr 192012
 

In 2005, an outspoken, gregarious San Francisco crab fisherman named Larry Collins wrote down his vision for a more prosperous future. It ran to 20 pages of handwritten scrawl but it boiled down to one idea: small-scale Bay Area fishermen boosting their income by selling directly into markets in the region. Eventually he connected with Ecotrust, which, among its many creative uses of capital over the years, has helped other community-based fishermen and local associations secure loans and grants that help with equipment costs, fish catch quota purchase and marketing ventures.

Crab boats in San Francisco are joining a national community fisheries movement Courtesy of SFCFA

Global research published last year has shown that, in both the developed and developing world, viable community-based fishermen who have a meaningful stake in management of their local marine resources create more resilient fish stocks and fishing communities. The strongest example is in Chile, where the fishery surrounding a type of snail called  the “loco,” or Chilean abalone involves 700 areas co-managed with 20,000 artisanal fishermen along 2,500 miles of coastline.

Building on work with community fishing organizations in Alaska and Oregon, Vice President Astrid Scholz initiated Ecotrust’s work with Collins and the fishermen on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf.

The group of eleven fishermen, running small crab and salmon boats out the Golden Gate, have scraped by for years selling to commodity fish buyers, while watching bigger boats voraciously fish out crab stocks off Northern California. They successfully fought for state limits on the number of crab pots in their region, establishing an ethic to protect long-term viability of the stocks. And then they built a business plan with Ecotrust to ensure increased economic returns on their catch.

This year, the group used a $250,000 grant Ecotrust received from the California Ocean Protection Council to secure a warehouse lease on Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf and  access to a hoist and an ice machine, two simple tools that allow the fishermen new control on where and how they sell fish. It’s no secret that a handful of processors dictate the flow of seafood and the price levels up and down the West Coast; in the crab business, processors exert considerable pressure by commanding  the hoists that offload boats and the manufacture and sale of ice, both of which fishermen depend on to get crab to market.

At Pier 45 in San Francisco, the fishermen’s association unloaded 350,000 pounds of crab themselves in December 2011, and put the crab out on the live market.  By distributing it themselves, they saw a 10% higher return for their crab and their late fall salmon. The organization also sold bait at reduced cost to its members and peddled ice to other processors on Pier 45, bringing additional revenue. And it earned hoist fees for offloading other fish from members and non-members alike.  After paying out expenses at the end of the 2011-12 season, the group cleared a profit.

Last week, the association joined with a dozen other like-minded organizations to start the national Community Fisheries Network. Membership groups agree to responsibly manage fish catches around their home ports and work to ensure fishing communities and members earn a fair benefit from fishing harvests. Like the San Francisco cooperative, these organizations will also be offering fee-based services to members and other colleagues, buying product and re-selling it on the wholesale market, and building brand awareness in local and regional markets for community-caught fish.

Ecotrust will bring its experience building new social ventures over the last 20 years to support the branding and marketing of community-caught fish —  the brand that San Francisco fishermen have begun building with their recent declaration of independence. The eventual vision for Larry Collins and his colleagues is a full-service retail market on the Wharf. It will be a 21st century take on the thriving waterfront markets of old. The group is also exploring purchase and leasing of permits and fish catch quotas for groundfish on the West Coast.  And we believe that driving this sort of place-based innovation, at the nexus of social, environmental and economic wellbeing, is the best way to transform society.

How will we build the future we want? What are your ideas for radical institutional change? These are the questions the UN is asking in preparation for the Rio+20 Earth Summit in late June. In response to their Future We Want campaign, we’re curating transformative ideas for building a more resilient world. We’ll share some of the ideas we’re cooking up here at Ecotrust, but most of all, we want to hear from you. Email obrooks (at) ecotrust (dot) org.

 

Remapping the world: Overcoming boundaries to a resilient future

Apr 172012
 

By Jens Ambsdorf

In the last twenty years, we have made tremendous progress in imagining ways to create a better, more sustainable world. We see this vision documented in the declarations and guiding principles the UN and other governing bodies have created. But this vision has yet to become reality — how little has changed in the way we approach development.  We are stuck in old habits, old structures, old territorial and ideological thinking that is so deeply rooted in our history that change is too slow to come.

 

The world mapped by bioregion. More at resilienceregions.org/home

The urgency of the agenda for the UN Conference on Sustainable development in Rio this June cannot be understated—we face unprecedented and linked economic and environmental crises, and the delegates in Rio have a tremendous opportunity to address these crises by reshaping the institutions that govern international development. Instead of trying to fix a system that itself is the cause of the dilemma we are in, we have to step out of the box and rethink that system entirely.

National governments are increasingly unable to deliver to their citizens the fundamental services they are designed to offer. The gap between poor and rich, those who have and those who have not, those who participate and those who don’t, is widening worldwide; and that gap is created and strongly enhanced by national politics, taxation, and other factors which effectively restrict choices. Even in established democratic countries, the gap between national governments and the people is widening and participation in traditional political systems is dwindling.

On the local and regional level it seems clear what the goal of governance should be: our own wellbeing and that of our fellow citizens. But on the national level, a constant conflict of interests blurs this fundamental goal and the wellbeing of individuals and communities becomes more and more obscured.

The dwindling power of national governments in comparison to international corporations and financial markets only increases this risk. Today, ever increasing national deficits transform public assets into private profits, and on the flip side, convert private risks into public debts. National and international governance supports the interest of capital and markets against the interests of the people; limiting individual freedom and options for individuals to be active and self-determined parts of society.

We need governance that returns to the commons; governance that rises from its people, and focuses on the fundamental wellbeing of its societies. These fundamental needs are tangible and diverse, and best understood within particular cultures and the regions they inhabit.

The challenges we face are global, but the solutions can only be found on an appropriate scale: the regional scale.

The sense of place and belonging has always been important for human beings.  Our sense of place is rooted in a geographical context and also in how our culture emerges from that place — how our community relates to one another. This is as true for people in the Siberian tundra as it is for people that call New York City their home. This relationship is reciprocal– it is not only that you belong to a place, but that place also belongs to you.

When land and resources no longer belong to the majority, the disconnect between people and place discourages responsible behavior and the stewardship that is needed to support vibrant, healthy societies.

Responsibility without ownership is weak and ownership without responsibility is arbitrary.

Regions are the largest and yet smallest unit that people can feel an active part of. It is where individuals still matter and where ownership and responsibility can still be meaningful. But regionalism in this sense is not only bound to the traditional borders of culture and idioms. It can be far more–varying in size and boundaries depending on the particular characteristics of the land and its culture.

What is a region?

A region in this sense is the dynamic geographical expression of a common set of qualities, conditions, questions, and opinions of people in that area. This definition includes but is not limited to the traditional idea of a region. This traditional approach is mainly territorial and historic and does not reflect the multiple dimensions of human existence today.

Nor does this understanding of regions neglect the need for structure and order.  One of the great advancements of the last century was that on a global scale, we have achieved a broad consensus that demands human rights. We have seen in Somalia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and elsewhere what the unmediated and complete removal of order and common values creates. It supports the expression of the darkest parts of human behavior and cannot be tolerated. We desperately need good governance on all levels.

National governments have been the cornerstones of global stability in the world as we know it.  But our world has changed and we can’t overcome the challenges we are facing with institutions that are living in the past. Not only do we need to redefine our economic models, but we also need to rebuild our models of governance. To chart the way towards these new models into a future we all want, we need to remap the world.

What does remapping mean?

Remapping is to reconsider our relationship to the places we live. Since the current borders of nations cut through many historical, cultural and bio-geographical landscapes, they are not suitable to address the challenges the current state of the world demands.

Remapping means a radical reorientation centered around people and place, where people take ownership of the places they live. Ownership also implies the ownership of a problem and the responsibility for solving it. Remapping in the first place means people living within their geographical context. At another level, it means to also integrate wider tangible and non-tangible relations.

Bioregions offer a starting point for this approach.

The European Wadden Sea does not end at the borders of Germany, Denmark or the Netherlands, but the political borders result in different management schemes, different rights for land users, different results in the protection of its natural resources. Even while there is a high degree of coordination between those nations, this region could be governed much better if it were mapped by regional, not political boundaries.

Or, if we look at watersheds like the Euphrat that include several nation states, how can it be that one nation consumes the commonly shared resources of all the people up and downstream without even consulting with them? This is clearly unjust.

Similarly, fishing fleets are destroying the future of coastal communities in East Africa for the short-term profit of far distant fleet owners.

On a larger scale we see how the temperate forest ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. and Canada are totally dependent on the current climate pattern that leads to the rainfall and cloudy skies there. This is a long evolved natural pattern that we as humans are currently changing with an uncertain effect.

A regional perspective sheds light on the imbalances of capital flows and resulting economic fragility. Money flows into regions like Africa to capitalize on abundant resources, but the profits flow out just as quickly. Profits are neither reinvested locally or used to offset the social and environmental costs of the activities.

So remapping allows us to better understand where the costs and benefits of economic activities are born between different regions. It can facilitate burden sharing as well as benefit sharing. What is clear from these examples is that the definition of a region has to be broader than a geographical one.

Remapping is not the solution towards a better world. Remapping is a thematic tool and concept that enables us to better understand the context in which we live — the vulnerabilities we face, as well as the opportunities.

And it may contribute answers to the overarching question: how are we going to live on this planet in the future in peace together, well and happy?

Jens Ambsdorf is CEO of the Hamburg-based Lighthouse Foundation.

 

 

 

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