Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
2011 Global Environmental Action Conference Tokyo, Japan
I was invited to present at the GEA International Conference 2011 entitled Building Sustainable Societies through Reconstruction, Working with the International Community for Regenerating Japan," held in Tokyo, Japan on 14th and 15th of October, 2011. The Conference was opened with the attendance of H.I.H Crown Prince, Naruhito, GEA Chairman, Mr. Juro Saito and Mr.Yoshihiko Noda Prime Minister of Japan. Director-General of GEA, Ms. Wakako Hironaka presided over the Conference as its Chair.
Pictures from the meeting are here. My presentations in English and Japanese appear below:
My presentation in Japanese is here:
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| Japan's Crown Prince Naruhito |
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| Japan's Prime Minister Noda |
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| Keith Tidball of Cornell University Civic Ecology Lab and NY EDEN |
The conference was organized by the Global Environmental Action (GEA) supported by the Government of Japan, namely, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and Ministry of the Environment. The Conference aimed to undertake a high-level policy dialogue in order to articulate concrete measures to realize sustainable societies not only in Japan, but also in the international community, capitalizing on Japan’s experience of the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters.
Pictures from the meeting are here. My presentations in English and Japanese appear below:
My presentation in Japanese is here:
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Serious business: The evidence on heat waves
Some EDEN work appeared on the College of Human Ecology blog Evidence-Based Living...click on the picture.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Urgent Biophilia- Presentation at Resilience 2011
This presentation is Chapter 4 of the forthcoming book Greening in the Red Zone: Disaster, Resilience, and Community Greening.
Urgent Biophilia - Resilience 2011
For the full chapter in PDF form, see Civic Ecology Lab Publications.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Conceptual Framework for Civic Ecology Education
My latest article "Urban Environmental Education From a Social-Ecological Perspective: Conceptual Framework for Civic Ecology Education" has been published in Cities and the Environment (CATE).
http://escholarship.bc.edu/cate/vol3/iss1/11/
http://escholarship.bc.edu/cate/vol3/iss1/11/
Sunday, January 16, 2011
"Oak Hatred" in Historic Sweden
On a recent trip to Sweden I was talking to a few of my colleagues about my interests in tree symbolism, while on a hike through a forested area in Stockholm featuring a few ancient oaks. My colleagues related to me the following: "a monarch decided in the 16th or 17th Century that oak were not to be cut since they should be used for warship building. This resulted in noblemen being ordered to protect oaks, whereas farmers stamped out and killed oak seedlings as fast as they could. If the farmers let the oaks grow up, they would loose usable land surface. So, on the whole, we lost oaks." I found this accounting for the decline in oaks interesting both in terms of symbolic importance, and in terms of unintended consequences of management within Social-Ecological Systems.
I looked into this further and discovered a scholarly accounting of this phenomena by Per Eliasson, University of Lund, Sweden. He says, in a paper titled "The political history of the oaks in Sweden from the 16th to 20th century," that "The conflict in Sweden between the state power and the peasants over oak trees was one about many different values – culture, economy, politics and ecology. It was not only about ownership and timber, but also about the oaks role in damaging the crops and about the oak as a symbol of the crown." In another related paper titled "The Oak Tree, from Peasant Torment to a Unifying Concept of Landscape Management" by Jerker Moström of the National Heritage Board of Sweden, we learn of the Swedish historical expression “Tender oak trees and young noblemen should be hated,” an ironic peasant saying originating from the 18th century. According to Moström, the saying expresses the hatred within the peasant community towards the nobility and the oak trees at that time, caused by what they perceived as injustices in the contemporary Swedish forestry acts. He says that during the 17th century the oak became not only an important source of income for the nobility but also a physical symbol of the wealth and power of the aristocracy.
These papers and others can be found in the proceedings from a conference held in Link̦pin, Sweden called The Oak РHistory, Ecology, Management and Planning, report 5617, May 2006. I found this interesting to contrast with the symbolism of the oak in the New World, especially the contemporary meanings I am exploring of the Live Oak in post-Katrina New Orleans and more broadly within the Gulf Coast region. These symbolic meanings of the oak and other trees in post-Katrina New Orleans are treated in depth in the forthcoming book Greening in the Red Zone in a chapter titled: Trees and Rebirth: Symbol, Ritual, and Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans.
I looked into this further and discovered a scholarly accounting of this phenomena by Per Eliasson, University of Lund, Sweden. He says, in a paper titled "The political history of the oaks in Sweden from the 16th to 20th century," that "The conflict in Sweden between the state power and the peasants over oak trees was one about many different values – culture, economy, politics and ecology. It was not only about ownership and timber, but also about the oaks role in damaging the crops and about the oak as a symbol of the crown." In another related paper titled "The Oak Tree, from Peasant Torment to a Unifying Concept of Landscape Management" by Jerker Moström of the National Heritage Board of Sweden, we learn of the Swedish historical expression “Tender oak trees and young noblemen should be hated,” an ironic peasant saying originating from the 18th century. According to Moström, the saying expresses the hatred within the peasant community towards the nobility and the oak trees at that time, caused by what they perceived as injustices in the contemporary Swedish forestry acts. He says that during the 17th century the oak became not only an important source of income for the nobility but also a physical symbol of the wealth and power of the aristocracy.
These papers and others can be found in the proceedings from a conference held in Link̦pin, Sweden called The Oak РHistory, Ecology, Management and Planning, report 5617, May 2006. I found this interesting to contrast with the symbolism of the oak in the New World, especially the contemporary meanings I am exploring of the Live Oak in post-Katrina New Orleans and more broadly within the Gulf Coast region. These symbolic meanings of the oak and other trees in post-Katrina New Orleans are treated in depth in the forthcoming book Greening in the Red Zone in a chapter titled: Trees and Rebirth: Symbol, Ritual, and Resilience in Post-Katrina New Orleans.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Anthropology, Science and the Art of Media Sensationalization
Recently, a colleague known for "button-pushing" found ammunition to load his derision gun with, in the media hype surrounding the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) so -called controversy regarding science. Hundreds of anthropologists voiced their concern to the New York Times a few days later. The AAA has since posted a response to the public controversy over science in anthropology, in which they state: Some recent media coverage, including an article in the New York Times, has portrayed anthropology as divided between those who practice it as a science and those who do not, and has given the mistaken impression that the American Anthropological Association (AAA) Executive Board believes that science no longer has a place in anthropology. On the contrary, the Executive Board recognizes and endorses the crucial place of the scientific method in much anthropological research.
Stay tuned.
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