ECOLOGIAL RESTORATION
ER
AT CEDAR LAKE POINT BEACH (AND BEYOND)
This morning, I logged in just before 5 am to attend a webinar called, "The role of urban green and blue space for climate and nature action" hosted by EastSide Greenways. Little did I know until the webinar began that the webinar was based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. But in the world of nature, we're all connected and I was very interested in a new global perspective. Before the webinar began, I made note of my objectives in attending this meeting. After all, it was before 5 am when I was getting ready for this, and I'd darned well use my time productively. They were, "Discover creative insights of how arguments can be made to garner greater awareness, resources, and approaches for public support, engagement, and investment into ecological restoration of public urban parks' natural areas." The webinar was recorded and I understand that I will later be provided with a recording and the presentation pieces from each of the speakers, so I will add links to this blog when received. Nature Based Solutions (NbS) mindsetA first insight was about the term Nature Based Solutions. It's wonderful when you learn a whole discipline, concept and nomenclature. The common language opens all kinds of doors to more learning. And this NbS is a great one. Jonny Bell of RSPB Northern Ireland provided a policy perspective. The key insight to this concept is that it starts with a question, "Can nature provide a solution?" More times than not, the answer is likely a yes. The second part of the concept is, NbS includes people. We are a part of nature, and as members of whole, our efforts are not a substitute for how we use fossil fuels, but involve protection, restoration, and management of the natural wilderness. The Climate Change Act of Northern Ireland (2022) illustrates a commitment, followed by a number of plans to address challenges. KEY INSIGHTS: - Addressing solutions through nature are proven to result in benefits that cost a fraction of capital projects. - Efforts to protect, restore, and manage the natural wilderness require approaches designed, managed, and monitored by local populations. - Policies at all levels of government are instrumental to providing direction for planning. Future-proofing actions are a mustLandscape Architect James Hennessy of the Paul Hogarth Company referenced an IPCC Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report and described a host of impactful actions available to us to improve soils, plant the right trees in the right places, manage ecology, and further engage with the public. My interest piqued when the notion of a Biodiversity Action Plan was listed. What if our park board took this approach to protect natural areas? KEY INSIGHTS: - Harness energies of volunteers, including valuing the local skills of the community. - Establish and utilize an effective process to engage with the public. - Be creative with communications including ecological projects, interpretive signage, and involvement of the local artist community to create artworks. - Tick tock! Time is critical. Do what we can do now, and still plan for what we can do in the future. Catalyze Nature Based SolutionsJennifer McKinley of UPSURGE addressed how to generalize what's working in urban environments in several cities across Europe. Here in Minneapolis, volunteers are working to address ecological restoration, but our communications and sharing amongst us of our efforts, experiences, and learnings are at best informal and ad hoc. The Lighthouse Project provides a helpful framework about how to facilitate decision making and sharing of information to accelerate actions. Nature based solutions cannot be separated from those interacting with them; the community is critical in planning, design, and feedback. Again, time is of the essence. It's a reminder of why I named this blog "ER" at Cedar Lake Point Beach. The work of ecological restoration is in a state of emergency. KEY INSIGHTS: - Evidence-based solutions have biggest impact. - The community is critical in participating in planning and governance of actions. - The local public speaks for nature. Nature is a silent partner (until it's too late). Greenspace ParksThis was truly an ah-ha part of the webinar. It addresses an issue I keep reminding myself about as I work to help support the natural environment. That is, managing nature has many competing players. Supporting natural areas cannot come at the expense of ways the parks support youth, for example. We need not to look at this as a zero sum problem. How can we protect nature and serve other needs? Julie Proctor of Greenspace Scotland presented a really cool project called Park Power. It's a climate change park that once installed, generates electric power that serves the community by lowering their heating bills. The geothermal system taps the earth's temperatures and creates power stations. I couldn't help but think about some of Minneapolis northside neighborhoods that don't have as much natural green space and could benefit from such a project. And from what I previously reviewed, the Northside Commons Park remodel was sadly much about laying artificial turf for playing fields and built structures versus natural areas. In this segment, I asked via chat about artificial turf, which they more accurately refer to as "plastic grass." In response to the proliferation of plastic grass the EU actually banned its use. Wouldn't that be a wonderful policy for our park board to pursue? I also asked a question about available examples of how the monetary value of nature has been used to help with arguments about justifying investment into restoring natural areas, and will follow up on some of that. KEY INSIGHTS: - There are win-win examples of nurturing nature and serving youth and recreational amenities. - There are examples of innovative uses of natural resources that benefit a whole surrounding community with their needs for more affordable energy to power and heat homes. We have a responsibility to do moreMeasured by climate change and/or loss of biodiversity and extinction of species, it's hard to imagine continuing into the future as usual. For areas like Cedar Lake Point Beach, the first step is now and it's urgent. We must continue the process of working collaboratively with the park board staff to eradicate invasive plants so that existing native plants may be released of their constraints to thrive, and so that new plants we seed into the ground have better chances of survival. We need to enable nature to do what she does best. But nature based solutions are barely possible if we continue to ignore the albatross around her neck, the suffocating presence and institutionally unabated spread of invasive species.
Is it impossible to believe we can establish institutionalized policies (we are still without a coherently meaningful Buckthorn policy), plans (wouldn't it be nice if we had like others a Biodiversity Plan), and legitimate community collaboration in ecological protection, restoration planning and management, and monitoring of natural areas?
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When I see this . . . I can't help but see this And so I did this. To try to create more of this, healthy Cottonwood stands What is the value of nature?It's vexing. How do we as a community express our appreciation and value of nature? I am reminded of the story about the blind men and the elephant. It's a resource for food, timber, stone and other goods. It's a place of amenities for leisure and recreational activities. It produces clean air, decomposes waste. Nature and natural areas are undeniably valuable. But there's such a lack of shared information to describe much less enumerate its value. I've been reading the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board proposed budget. Through and through, I'm reading about asset management. Great! But through and through, I can't find anything that assigns some kind of economic value to our park system's thousands of acres of natural areas. What gets counted counts. What doesn't get counted doesn't count. Nature is not pricedI look at the native trees that are being strangled and starved to death in our Minneapolis park system's natural areas, and there is death and destruction. There is depreciation of economic value. There is the human toll imposed upon nature due to disregard, neglect, and distraction, not to mention over-development. Our park budgets are focused on asset management; life expectancies, capital improvements, repair and maintenance of "hard" capital assets such as roads, bridges, buildings, parks, playgrounds, and infrastructure. But too little on protecting and being stewards of nature and natural areas. A fraction of the thousands of acres of natural areas are considered "managed" areas. Why? Perhaps it's because we don't have a system to assign an economic value to nature. How much is that tree worth? Better yet, how much does that stand of Burr Oaks worth? I've attended Park Board workshop discussing how much trees cost to plant, and the need to water them. But what about the mature trees that have been standing for longer than any of us? More so, how much is that stand of trees worth that warrants our protection? Unmanaged areas are being consumed and their value depreciated by invasive trees such as Buckthorn, and in the case of Cedar Lake Point Beach, Mulberry trees. And the stewardship of invasive species is largely yielded to the initiates of community volunteers who work under an agreement that reads more like a permit than a cooperative agreement. Economist Sir Partha Dasgupta explains a lot of this in The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review and in an episode of the The Overpopulation Podcast where he states, "Nature is not priced. It is invisible, silent, and mobile." As a result, "depreciation is not picked up. We need to do that." The 600+ page Review report is a bit of a sandwich to bite into, but it appears to be an amazing resource to answering how we might begin to account for the value of nature, and in turn consider what kinds of investments are appropriate to protect this asset. After all, according to the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the economy is a subset of nature. There are plenty of economic reasons to conserve and protect nature and ecosystems. How wonderful would it be if our Park Board looked at Asset Management that valued natural areas, and as a result invested more strategically and cost-beneficially on protecting our ecosystems. That's the thread I'll be pulling on in the winter months ahead when not plucking Buckthorn.
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March 2024
AuthorI'm Steve Kotvis, volunteer Park Steward for the Minneapolis Cedar Lake Point Beach peninsula who has a newfound love of restoring this natural area and more. I'm learning as I go, and enjoy sharing that with those who have an interest. I'm also a photographer, so the photos in this blog are mine unless otherwise labeled. |