Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience and Community Greening

Ilan Kelman (University College London and Norwegian Institute of International Affairs)

Disaster Prevention and Management

ISSN: 0965-3562

Article publication date: 7 April 2015

326

Keywords

Citation

Ilan Kelman (2015), "Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience and Community Greening", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 284-286. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-11-2014-0234

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Ecosystems are making their way into disaster risk reduction, including climate change adaptation. Based on ecosystem management principles, Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction, and the climate change offshoot of Ecosystem-based Climate Change Adaptation, have spawned programmes, tools, publications, and the PEDRR network (Ecosystems for Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction) at http://pedrr.org

That happens before a crisis strikes. What about post-disaster recovery and reconstruction, even where that segues into disaster risk reduction (including climate change adaptation), development, and sustainability? Greening in the Red Zone edited by Keith G. Tidball and Marianne E. Krasny aims to fill this niche. They specifically refer to “post-catastrophe, community-based stewardship of nature that serves as a source of social-ecological resilience” (p. 6).

The book is divided into three parts. Part I “Foundations” is effectively an introduction, with the two principal chapters by the editors explaining, summarising, and theorising in their view the key aspects of greening, the red zone, stewardship of nature, and resilience. Part II “Motives and Explanation” comprises 14 chapters with further overarching views and themes, such as children and trees, interspersed with case studies. Some theories, for instance biophilia and topophilia, are explored in the context of using nature for post-disaster reconstruction and resilience. Part III “Cases and Practices” has 17 chapters which are much more pragmatic and closer to work on the ground, with the final chapter being the editors joining with another author to synthesise the material and to conclude the book. Then, an “Afterword” closes the volume.

The book’s breadth in terms of space and time is impressive. Case studies crisscross the globe, from Haiti to Russia to Liberia and from Sarajevo to New Orleans to Soweto. Having more specific examples from South America and Oceania including the Pacific Islands would have rounded out the geographic coverage perfectly. Meanwhile, the chapters do not remain immersed in the contemporary world, but delve back into history, analysing examples from WWI and WWII, with some authors placing their material within the context of centuries (e.g. Chapter 19) and millennia (e.g. Chapter 16) of history. The authors, while somewhat USA focused, nonetheless display excellent diversity through balancing amongst gender, age, career stage, location, profession, and discipline.

The gems of the book are the short case studies from practitioners, powerfully but succinctly describing examples of what those authors have completed in the field. The judicious use of colour photographs, maps, and illustrations vibrantly brings the chapters and examples straight to the reader, ensuring that the colours in the book’s title are not just words. Having an editors’ summary of the longer chapters after each abstract is somewhat disconcerting, making it appear as if each chapter requires two abstracts. Nonetheless, the result of this volume is a powerful concept of “Greening in the Red Zone” articulated well and then demonstrated in practice by solid, empirical case studies relating stories that deserve to be told by those implementing the work.

In between the concept and the practice lies theory. The attempt to insert a theorisation thread throughout the book is commendable and appropriate, but the choice of that theory is puzzling. The theory selected without justification is the Resilience Alliance’s view of “resilience” without reference to the poignant critiques of that material. The whole-hearted adoption of one narrow view of “resilience” distracts and confuses. For example, despite reading Chapter 11 three times, I still cannot fathom why it is necessary to force the term “social-ecology memory” onto the reader rather than just using “memory”. That compares with the elegant use of “social memory” in Chapter 12.

Consider if the book’s coverage, as quoted above, was written as “post-catastrophe, community-based stewardship of nature for resilience” – or even dropping the latter two words. No discernible change emerges. Similarly, page 11 describes “the goal of this book is to explore how the actions of humans to steward nature become a source of individual, community, and SES [social-ecological systems] resilience in chaotic post-disaster or post-conflict settings”. That statement could be straightforwardly provided as “the goal of this book is to explore how the actions of humans to steward nature support resilience in post-disaster or post-conflict settings” or even “the goal of this book is to explore the actions of humans stewarding nature in post-disaster or post-conflict settings”.

Nothing would inherently change in the book or the book’s importance apart from removing a particular resilience theory standing in between the concept and the practice. That would be the same if any other resilience theory were used to bridge the conceptualisation of “Greening the Red Zone” and the case studies. Irrespective of the resilience paradigm adopted, the case studies would still be invaluable; history and geography would still be thoroughly represented; and “Greening in the Red Zone” would still be an important concept, described and applied impressively well. In one way, the test of a theory is whether or not excluding it makes a difference. Without one particular view of “social-ecological resilience”, this volume still stands strongly in its own right as original research; makes a fascinating, needed, and innovative contribution to the literature and to practice; and with less jargon becomes more direct and understandable.

Removing the Resilience Alliance work might also encourage those authors whose references are mainly twenty-first century to learn a lesson from their fellow authors who embed their work historically, recognising the rich environmental management, stewardship, conservation, disaster, and, yes, even resilience work from last century and before. As another example, from page 36, place-based approaches to disaster and dealing with disaster precede by decades the 2008 citation which is provided. Thinking beyond the distracting theory could further have provided space to explore cross-cutting topics such as gender and indigeneity, which are present, but not fully developed.

Ultimately, “Greening in the Red Zone” is needed for research, policy, and practice. This book represents an exciting area and approach to continue pursuing further, in exactly the manner which most of the authors do. This book admirably sets the stage for exploring and applying that process.

Author’s response

Response from Keith G. Tidball and Marianne E. Krasny

In his balanced and thoughtful review of Greening in the Red Zone, Ilan Kelman points out a couple of deficiencies that we the editors of the volume regret we were unable to better mitigate, in particular the lack of a case study or theoretical piece grounded in South America or Oceania, and the somewhat US-focused nature of our roster of authors. His main contention, however, is the choice to contextualise our study of Greening in the Red Zone in the overlapping schools of thought regarding social-ecological systems (SES) resilience as manifested by the Resilience Alliance and the Stockholm Resilience Center (though it should be pointed out that the inclusion of this theoretical perspective expanded the contributing author roster’s international representation significantly!). In hindsight, given the international development implications of this work, an explicit acknowledgement and discussion of the dissension around and critiques of resilience thinking in its various forms would have been very valuable. In fact, we have graduate students writing up literature reviews and expanding the critiques for publication as we speak, though that won’t help the Greening in the Red Zone volume, at least in its current (first) edition. We must also add, however, that our decision to interrogate greening in red zones via SES resilience thinking was not haphazard or without justification (though admittedly, as Kelman points out, the justification could have been much clearer). We feel strongly that the value of SES resilience thinking, especially as articulated by Folke and colleagues, is in the insistence that we not reinforce dichotomies such as humans versus nature, but rather discipline ourselves and our discourses to reflect the profoundly and paradoxically obvious yet elusive reality of our situation as social animals existing completely within ecosystems of varying scales. As imperfect as the SES school of thought may be to some, in our estimation, the importance of emphasising the “humans-in-the-environment perspective” – that earth’s ecosystems, from local areas to the biosphere as a whole, provide the biophysical foundation and ecosystems services for social and economic development – is highly applicable and sorely needed in the context of vulnerability, disaster, and so forth. At the same time, this position enables acknowledgement that the ecosystems we observe have been shaped by human decision making throughout history and human actions directly and indirectly alter their capacity to sustain societal development. We are extremely grateful for the stimulating review, and look forward to pursuing further the possibilities raised herein.

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