Photo by Gordon Fraser, Ravina Project.
Nature and science are both part of our thinking, but seem to reside in separate parts of our brain. For environmentalists, this separation is particularly noticeable. Whether it is desirable is another thing and that is our topic for this summary.
Reconciliation
When we speak of reconciliation, we begin with an acknowledgement of fundamental wrongs in our history that persist until today. One of those many wrongs was the treatment of indigenous cultures as much less worthy than that of settlers. We can try to repair the damage from this wrong by both supporting indigenous cultures and by learning from them, and then integrating what we have learned into our thinking. I hope to do that here, and in particular by bringing nature-based thinking into what we often think of as a science topic. The principles of two-eyed seeing and looking backwards and forwards seven generations in making decisions are examples of indigenous thinking I will try to integrate throughout.
At the same time, we must also acknowledge the ongoing material effect of indigenous dispossession and attempted cultural erasure by settlers. Lack of clean water, propane used for heating, fossil fuel pipelines over their lands. Some of these effects can now only be remedied by the wilful application of science (and political will to see it through). Further, indigenous nations and groups today rightfully demand high-speed internet everywhere to enable better access to scientific and other knowledge for all.
Nature-based vs. Science-based thinking
There is, of course, no clear line between these two ways of thinking but rather important differences in emphasis:
- Wholistic vs. component parts- nature-based thinking is more likely to look at components of natural systems as part of a whole, whereas science-based thinking is more likely to attempt to isolate what is believed to be the most important component parts
- Observation vs. measurement- observation is a part of the scientific method, but has become secondary to measurement; in nature-based thinking, deep and long observation is central and measurement may or may not flow from that.
- Intentional design after testing- both systems do rely on intentional design after testing, but nature-based systems are more likely to be concerned with aspects that cannot readily be tested and measured.
Here’s a first thought on integrating the two ways of thinking. Bringing (or bringing back) deep and long observation into scientific thinking can only enrich it. This does not mean ignoring or diminishing the role of data and measurement. Data is as important for understanding and addressing climate change as it is for understanding and addressing new and old pathogens through vaccines.
The Big City and Environmentalists
Most people, and environmentalists certainly, in the big city long for connection to nature. This is true whether they live in a concrete jungle or a leafy neighbourhood of the city and whether they work in science or with nature or both. Some find it in parks, ravines, gardens or even in a 30 metre wide linear bicycle and walking beltline trail, or on the shores of the Humber or Don River or Lake Ontario. Others need to be far away from the city to experience connection to nature and regularly travel for this purpose.
The city itself is governed by a big bureaucracy with siloed departments or agencies, concerned with water, power, waste, zoning and building standards, transit, policing, libraries and so on. Most of these departments or agencies have an important environmental aspect. The city does have a small environment, climate and forestry department, with little or no impact on the behaviour of many of the departments or agencies. Division into components lends itself to science-based thinking by the city as a whole, in my view, and not a particularly sophisticated or informed version of that kind of thinking. Integration among different science/engineering disciplines (say for water, waste and power in using treated wastewater to heat buildings) is hard given the structure of the city, and integrating nature-based thinking is even harder. This isn’t the only reason that the City is falling short of its climate goals, but it doesn’t help.
In the environmental movement, we have people concerned with science and science-based solutions, people who enjoy nature and perhaps long for natural solutions to our problems, and people who have a foot in both camps. Perhaps all of us can aim to hear more of the thoughts of people on the other side of the nature/science continuum. So, for instance, when the City aims to replace sewers that are now overwhelmed or worn out, we can think both of nature-based water solutions that can reduce demand on the sewers and also of capturing waste heat from them if the replacement is in fact necessary.
I propose here to look at a few of the specific issues environmentalists in the big city address and how we might integrate nature-based and science-based thinking into our actions and advocacy.
Use of Space
The whole topic of use of space is central to the idea of a city and what we as environmentalists are trying to achieve here. It straddles the line between science-based thinking and nature-based thinking. We want the city and neighbourhoods within it to be as complete and as self-sufficient as possible, for reasons of efficiency and minimization of climate impact as well as to allow the pleasure of contact with nature within the city or very close to it. It is here where notions of growth and degrowth, urban sprawl and rewilding and donut economics meet.
It also seems to me that environmentalists can use both nature-based and science-based thinking to advocate for changes necessary to achieve complete and self-sufficient cities and neighbourhoods. Deep and long observation as well as data measurement will help make better decisions. So too will a focus on the whole, and an awareness of the interconnectedness of the component parts, which include homes, businesses, utility infrastructure, greenspaces, and transportation routes (both to the city and inside it). In other words, to consider cities as analogous to an ecosystem. This is not a novel idea to say the least.
Food
The widespread availability of good local food, or food security, is very much a part of a city’s health. In that respect, we are lucky to sit on some of Canada’s best farmland here in Southern Ontario, and we would be wise not to deplete it further. This connects the issue of food security to the complete neighbourhoods and communities in a city. By building efficiently and compactly, we use as little of the prime farmland for urban development and can also incorporate food-growing into the urban landform.
There is more to food security than preserving good quality arable land. How we grow food and making sure our food is consumed either directly by people or as a result of food rescue operations are other aspects of food security. Regenerative agriculture incorporates nature-based thinking from the outset in its design and operations by attention to the needs of the land holistically as well as what it produces. On the other side, food rescue operations in the urban environment of necessity must be planned with a fine attention to detail and yet respond quickly to changes.
Waste
Waste is a huge issue for cities. How we avoid it, and what we do with the waste we cannot avoid consume a good portion of the time and budget of cities and the concern of environmentalists. There are so many kinds of waste- food waste, plastic waste, paper and metal waste, electronic waste, waste heat and more. Each has its own features, but there are some common themes. Avoidance of waste is almost always a good thing (and popular across the political spectrum incidentally). To avoid waste, It helps to think of where the product came from before wasting it- the farmer’s toil, the trees that grew for decades or centuries, the millions of years required to produce fossil fuels. The science helps also- the impact of say, microplastics and forever chemicals on health is one that we learn more about from scientific exploration. Both nature-based thinking and scientific thinking may help motivate us to avoid waste. Similarly, composting and anaerobic digesters are different ways of addressing organic waste with a nature-based and science-based approach respectively. Different, but both valuable in the urban environment.
Science and nature are not two solitudes. Integrating both into our thinking and action can make us more effective green neighbours.
