Tiny Ecology Part 2 – ‘Seeing the forest from the trees’ in Race and Nature

Source: The Climate Change Review

On a cold fall day in early November, the beauty of the brightly colored leaves are  magnified under the blue sky and glimmering sunshine. The leaves are seemingly painted burnt colored oranges, fiery reds and muddy browns, as they dance their final dance from their tree branch onto the Earth. Walking along the trails of an ecologically restored corridor, called the Glen Stewart Park, there is an assortment of shrubs, perennials and deciduous forest (FGSR, 2016). The red oak and red maple trees here fill my lungs with fresh crisp air that give me a sense of purity and calmness not commonly experienced in typical urban life. Listening closely to the forest echoes, I can hear the many winter birds fluttering about the forest like the Black-capped Chickadee or the drumming of the Downy Woodpecker onto the cavity of a nearby tree (Ibid.). But it is when I sit down on a beautifully crafted park bench that I think about the infamous phrase of what it means to ‘see the forest from the trees.’

In many ways the infamous idiom is about widening one’s gaze of the world to a broader perspective. Taken more literally, when I look beyond the tree line of the park with a more critical lens to the world I can see the residences of multi-million dollar housing in a gentrified neighborhood called the ‘Beaches’ that are mainly the homes of white settlers (Elkaim, 2012). While I am not in the same economic tax bracket as my neighbors, I do identify as a white settler that has the privilege to access green spaces like this one so close to my home. Which begs an ethical question about access to nature. Specifically, who gets access to parks like this one and who does not? More importantly, why?

It is in places like this, where parks and privilege are intimately connected, that I cannot help but think about the way in which race is a central issue when it comes to ‘natural’ environments. Historically, race has been considered a ‘separate issue’ outside of the scope of environmental causes when in fact they are intimately connected (Jampel, 2018; Pellow, 2016). According to scholars in Critical Environmental Justice, there is systemic racism at play when racialized bodies and communities have limited access to natural spaces like parks, while there is systemic silencing of the ever-increasing exposure of environmental toxicity on these same racialized bodies and communities (Scott, 2014; Waldron, 2018). Dr. Ingrid Waldron argues in her book There’s Something in the Water (2018) that this trend is part and parcel of a colonial legacy with current and historic practices in ‘environmental racism’ towards Black and Indigenous Peoples of Color (BIPOC), specifically with BIPOC women facing the disproportionate share of environmental burdens and costs like impacts to their health and reproductivity. Catherine Jampel (2018) takes the argument a step further by arguing that all kinds of ‘othering’ including ableism is part of intersectional oppression that treats non-white people and places as ‘objects’ for the neoliberal and neocolonial agenda.

However, when it comes to parks like the one I am sitting in, it is more than just an issue of the equal distribution of trees and access to green space in of itself, but it is an issue of climate justice. A report titled Urban Forests in a Changing Climate stressed the importance of forests as natural carbon sinks by absorbing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and other pollutants, therefore mutually benefiting human health and our climate system (Conway & Scott, 2020). For example, in the City of Toronto alone, urban forests are estimated to store 1.1 million metric tonnes of carbon, according to the same report by the University of Toronto and the Greenbelt Foundation (Ibid.) Additionally, these urban forests act as a refuge for extreme heat events, as they help keep buildings and neighborhoods cooler in the summer months (Ibid.). Moreover, green spaces in cities help with flooding and erosion prevention in higher precipitation months (Ibid.). Lastly, there is growing evidence that shows the connection between green spaces and mental health, such as ‘forest bathing’ and the role parks have played in reducing stress during the pandemic (Conway & Scott, 2020; Roviello et al., 2021). Hence, urban forests play a critical role in climate adaptation and mitigation. Yet the communities that predominantly receive these wide-ranging  social and ecological benefits are mainly privileged white communities in Toronto, with BIPOC communities having the least access to green spaces and their associated co-benefits, according to the same report by the Greenbelt Foundation (Conway & Scott, 2020).

Jacquelin L. Scott, one of the co-authors of the report says, “the absence of trees is another layer of inequality in lives shaped by oppression” (Conway & Scott, 2020, p. 4).  She argues that parks are ‘coded’ with systemic racism as they were designed primarily for white people by white people (Ibid.). For example, it has been found that higher-income neighborhoods – like white settler communities – have greater political influence in City-level policy decisions over park designation and expansion, according to a 2016 report by the Green Infrastructure Ontario Coalition,  (as referenced in Cruickshank, 2020). Furthermore, Scott points out that tree planting is traditionally done by organizations run by white settlers where they primarily cater to white settler communities (Conway & Scott, 2020). Hence, the very location of parks and tree planting efforts in cities like Toronto is coded with race and colonial privilege, which negatively impacts BIPOC communities in mitigation and adaptation to a warming world. Yet this is nothing new when it comes to global climate politics, as there are similar trends of this kind playing out in the global arena.  In terms of climate adaptation, those that have the highest ability to adapt to a warming world are the wealthiest and often residing in the Global North, and those that have the least ability to adapt are the poorest and often marginalized peoples in the Global South (Alston, 2019).

That is why sitting here on this crisp fall day, on a park bench of the Glen Stewart Park, I know there is a deeper strata layer to the story of this place than what is visible on the surface. While I know there is great wisdom in the very park I sit in with the more-than-human world that exists here, there is a deafening quality with the human world that surrounds this place. For the dominant paradigm stories we tell of places like this one contain a ‘colonial gaze’ which ignores issues like race. This racial silencing extends beyond parks themselves and into the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of climate solutions. Yet, this is the kind of thinking that got us into the mess in the first place, by sustainable Imperialism over people and the planet. Hence,  when it comes to the climate crisis, ‘seeing the forest from the trees’ means opening our eyes to a wider perspective than the dominant paradigm thinking and opening our ears to marginalized voices. Only then can we begin to answer the calls for systemic change, rather than simply rebuilding our colonial past that masquerades today in a ‘green’ cloak, or in this case a green space.

References:

Alston, P. (2019). Climate Change and Poverty: Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights (Section III A. Human Rights, B. Poverty, C. Inequality). UN Human Rights, Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), report to UN Human Rights Council, A/HCR/41/39. Retrieved from: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3810720?ln=en

Conway, T. & Scott, J.L. (2020). Urban Forests in a Changing Climate (report). University of Toronto (Mississauga) & Greenbelt Foundation. Retrieved from: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/greenbelt/pages/14604/attachments/original/1600457503/UrbanForestsChangingClimate_REPORT_E-ver_REV.pdf?1600457503

Cruickshank, A. (2020). Toronto’s racialized communities have less access to urban forests: report. The Narwhal. Retrieved from: https://thenarwhal.ca/toronto-race-urban-forests-climate-change/

Elkaim, A. V. (2012). Development ahead: Queen Street is experiencing growing pains in both the east and west ends. National Post. Retrieved from: https://nationalpost.com/posted-toronto/development-ahead-queen-street-is-experiencing-growing-pains-in-both-the-east-and-west-ends

FGSR. (2016). Environmentally Significant Areas. Friends of Glen Stewart Ravine (FGSR) (website). Retrieved from: https://friendsofglenstewartravine.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/environmentally-significant-areas/

Jampel, C. (2018). Intersections of disability justice, racial justice and environmental justice. Environmental Sociology 4(1), 122-135.

Pellow, D.N. (2016). Toward a Critical Environmental Justice Studies: Black Lives Matter as an Environmental Justice Challenge. Du Bois Review, Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research, 13 (2), pp. 1-16. DOI; 10.1017/s1742058x1600014x

Roviello, V. et al. (2021). Forest‑bathing and physical activity as weapons against COVID‑19: a review. Environmental Chemistry Letters. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-021-01321-9

Scott, D. (2014). Environmental Justice. In M. Brydon-Miller & D. Coghlan (Eds.). The SAGE encyclopedia of action research.

Waldron, I. (2018). There’s Something In The Water Environmental Racism in Indigenous & Black Communities. Fernwood Publishing.