A5 • Designing an Ecology of Interventions for Deforestation in Pittsburgh

Team Members: Alexander Polzin, Amanda Sanchez, Jenny Xin, Mihika Bansal, Xiaoran Zhang

Previously in our last assignment, we created a vision of a future in which deforestation as a wicked problem no longer exists. By the year 2100, we envision a world that is centered around three principles: self-sufficiency, economics of reciprocity, and self-governance. To begin thinking about our ecology of interventions, we focused on existing efforts that exemplify these principles. In particular, we looked to local groups such as Garfield Community Farm and BUGS Pittsburgh as examples of communities exercising self-sufficiency. We also identified Tree Pittsburgh and Construction Junction as local organizations that exhibit economics of reciprocity.

In addition to learning about existing initiatives in Pittsburgh, we also considered framing initiatives in different ways. First, the initiatives are organized in terms of the domains of everyday life. Within each category, we situated at least one overarching intervention, on either the city or neighborhood level, that then branched into different levels of scale to create our ecology of interventions. All these initiatives contain material and nonmaterial elements. There are nonmaterial exchanges of information and attitudes as well as material exchanges that foster native habitats and reuse of local resources. Our ecology of interventions is also framed in terms of 4 phases of human and tree interaction:

1. Understanding: increasing ecoliteracy and sharing visions of the future
2. Planting: increasing native tree canopy and diverse habitats
3. Growing: strengthening relationships with the forest
4. Harvesting: embedding forestry within circular economy to meet needs locally

Final Ecology of Interventions Map

Initiative #1: Living with Nature

Goal

Increasing population’s understanding of Pittsburgh’s natural ecosystem and fostering shared visions of future

Description

Expanding on existing and creating new educational initiatives meant to target different demographics within the Pittsburgh area with two main parts:

a) Look to places and people that contain a wealth of knowledge to create new educational initiatives that can reach greater parts of the population like Indigenous Knowledge, Generational Knowledge, and BIPOC Environmental Activist Group Knowledge

• To share the knowledge, while also being aware of the burden that falls upon marginalized groups as it is, we would create a new collective of neighborhood level liaisons, that work with these groups to gain the knowledge and help create different educational initiatives
• The different groups that share the knowledge would be compensated for their time and efforts, recognizing that their knowledge has value, something that has not happened enough in the past

b) Create new educational Initiatives and expand on existing Pittsburgh environmental education initiatives

• Create a social media outreach program partnered with the Pennsylvania Environmental Council specifically meant to share the knowledge gathered through the above groups, posting regularly about Appalachian forest (e.g. good management practices, native trees fun fact, etc), or an existing effort of a local environmental organization (especially BIPOC) with the goal of educating residents on ecoliteracy and helping promote local organizations’ agendas (either by amplifying their efforts or providing opportunities for donations or volunteer).
• Create an EPA managed knowledge sharing initiative in which different regions can share insights they have gained about their specific bioregion and share programs for varied age groups & lessons with other regions when coming up with new practices for creating a shared vision for a reforested nation, to make this knowledge accessible past “experts”
• Create a neighborhood outreach program centered on door-to-door canvassing to provide resources and opportunities for local residents to get involved in neighborhood environmental efforts. The focus is on creating space for local residents to work together and be engaged in their neighborhood community.
• Create Pittsburgh’s Scouts, an educational initiative targeted at elementary schools throughout Pittsburgh, partnered with the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy, where students can directly experience and understand the complexities of the Pittsburgh bioregion

Lifespan of Initiative

a) Initial Roll Out Plan

• Engagement of needed stakeholders
• Creating the neighborhood level liaison system to work towards creating the educational initiatives
• Assessing current social media platforms, and educational initiatives within the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy
• Evaluate how to integrate other forms of knowledge — including the living with part of nature, rather than living outside of nature

b) Quick Wins

• Advertising existing educational initiatives within the Pittsburgh Park Conservancy
• Utilizing social media to amplify the voices of BIPOC environmental advocacy groups
• Assessing communities engagement with existing environmental education initiatives to find opportunities for improvement

Initiative #2: Regenerating with Nature

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Initiative #3: Cultivating Community-Canopy Relationships:

Goal

Strengthening relationships with the forest

Description

Expand existing programs and platforms that build and enhance relationships between Pittsburgh communities and the urban forest. Two primary parts:

a) Expand existing programs that empower communities as stewards of the urban canopy

• Provide ways for community groups (incl. public private partnerships) and households to identify proximal trees to ‘sponsor’ / maintain / steward
• Showcase available spaces for additional plantings that can also be sponsored by community groups / households following recommendations from local nurseries and Tree Pittsburgh (a tie-in and expansion of street tree plantings through TreeVitalize and the City of Pittsburgh)
• Provide additional resources for planting trees on private property (a reboot of Tree Pittsburgh’s myTree program)
• Make additional public land available for private planting beyond immediate curb (e.g., within parks, culs de sac, etc.)
• Make additional funding available for creative projects intended to strengthen relationships with city trees (e.g., Lindsey French’s Drunken Text Messages from an Oak Tree)

b) Improve and expand Burgh’s Eye View database as platform for engaging with Pittsburgh’s urban canopy

• Improve performance, usability and search on web, mobile and offline
• Tie-in above programming
• Add additional information about tree species, habitats, care, uses, seasons,(e.g., when do paw paws fruit, when does maple sap flow), companion species, etc.
• Include specific tree and relational information — when it was planted, by whom (or in memorandum of whom), images, major events (struck by lightening; car), contact information (e.g., sponsor, local nurseries), etc.
• Households / buildings / community centers can opt-in to add privately-owned trees to the database (later this can form both the basis of larger network of exchange and steward in collective management of the commons)

Lifespan of initiative:

a) Illustrative roll-out:

• Assessment of current state of programming (overall usage statistics and in-depth user interviews)
• Engagement of stakeholders (incl community groups, city innovation team and dept. of forestry, educational institutions and nurseries) throughout city to identify and co-develop program and platform improvements
• Pilot program enhancements and develop roll-out plan
• Develop product roadmap, key metrics and testing plan

b) Quick wins:

• Community engagement during assessment includes piloting and testing expanded programming
• Increased requests for ‘sponsoring’, plantings and consultations (each also offering site of advertising of programs)
• Increased engagement with Burgh’s Eye View

Initiative #4: Establishing a Trans-local Circular Economy

Goal

Embedding forestry within circular economy to meet needs locally

Description

Expanding emerging economy model that encourages community-based circular economy and enhances the consumption-production circle on multiple scales.

a) Build up a community-based reproduction system that encourages localized material reuse and recycling and forms a self-organized system that can satisfy community-scale needs.

• Households can make full use of the material reused or recycled from the consumption from the household or neighborhood.
• The reused and recycled materials can be made full use of localized construction and renovation as an approach of place-making.
• Community initiated workshops and classes can help community members to learn and engage in the material circular process.
• Localized recycling facilities and systems can support localized material flow.

b) A trans-local reuse and recycling network that both makes circular products industry chains worldwide and promotes local-based circular innovation.

• Localized products can be sold and exchanged worldwide, creating a trans-local production and consumption relationship among communities.
• In addition to products, the knowledge and process of reproduction can be shared in more ways including exhibition and workshops.
• Communities construct a larger-scale material reproduction network based on the communication of diverse cultures of localized circular economy.

Lifespan of initiative

a) Illustrative roll-out:

• The creation of neighborhood-based initiatives making long-term commitment to support the community’s material reuse and recycling system.
• Infrastructure system built up to increase reuse/recycling efficiency.
• Artists and educators’ engagement with neighborhoods.
• Incorporate the circular product supply chain into the existing market.

b) Quick wins

• The increasing sense of consumption-reproduction in households.
• Community-scale educational programs conducted to ensure a localized circular education system.
• The emergency of circular supply chains in community and city scale.
• The communication among trans-local communities for localized reproduction experiences.

Potential funding sources

Multiple funding sources for the above initiatives should be explored, including but not limited to the existing City of Pittsburgh Public Works and Forestry Budget (e.g., where funds for maintenance might be reallocated to communities that are able to draw upon shared resources for more intensive projects), Climate Action Plan 3.0 funds (e.g., where there is overlap between initiatives and Action Plan goals), giving (e.g., donations, bequests), sponsorships, and payments from private organizations that partake in the aforementioned private-public partnerships. We feel that city-wide property tax increases, particularly in neighborhoods with less canopy coverage, would provide a negative incentive (atop popular pushback) that would counteract the initiatives’ goals — we want Pittsburgh’s denizens to invest, literally and figuratively, in the urban forest. If, however, additional funding is needed longer-term, a minimal estimated proportion of post-sale capital gains that are attributable to publicly owned and maintained trees might be taxed (e.g., for certain neighborhoods and estates over an amount to be determined). Ideally, other funding opportunities should present themselves as momentum builds and political opinion and office sways more toward explicitly valuing a triple bottom line.

Connections between Initiatives

Intended as part of an ecology of interventions, each of the above initiatives should be seen as additive and complementary. They are intended to build off the existing good work that is being done throughout Pittsburgh by communities and strengthen positive feedback loops that engender further change.

For instance, school children after participating in a school outreach program (Living with Nature) about Pittsburgh’s native plants, might go home and with their parents visit Burgh’s Eye View to identify the trees around their home (Cultivating Community-Canopy Relationships). They might add non-street trees to the database and share that they named their backyard Paw Paw tree “Pawl.” Their parents might become interested in the expanded resources available and reach out to a community garden for site and culturally specific recommendations (Regenerating with Nature). Through the relationships they develop with these local stewards, they might become more aware of the history of the land they live on and look for ways to make right instead of perpetuating problematic behaviors. When an aging maple tree balanced precariously over their home needs to come down, they are plugged into a network that can help them utilize the tree’s wood, while also sourcing additional resources in a vibrant circular economy (Community-based Re-production System).

The above example is intended to illustrate how this ecology of interventions works together. All initiatives also share common themes that intend to reinforce core principles from different angles or in distinct situations. A beginning list of these shared principles, includes the importance of sharing knowledge, the value of fostering relationships between communities as well as between humans and non-humans, and that these interventions be situated within scales of everyday life, that is, even if a project is city-wide, that it be situated within the material and non-material spheres in which people actually live.

Connections to Other Wicked Problems

While our ecology of interventions is focused on resolving deforestation, it can also help combat other wicked problems. By increasing native tree canopy and allowing native habitats to thrive in all neighborhoods, we can contribute to neighborhood revitalization efforts that help address the effects of gentrification, embrace affordable housing for livable cities (while also increasing access to affordable food) and create community-oriented green urban spaces to alleviate isolation of the elderly. In addition, creating a circular economy can help build resilience for marginalized communities. Meanwhile our education initiatives focused on ecoliteracy can instill a sense of responsibility for nature and its resources, which can help shape attitudes towards waste management. Affordable and reliable public transportation is absolutely critical for the sharing of ideas and support within and between Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. More tactically, there might be additional cost savings in vegetation management (and infrastructure maintenance) for Pittsburgh’s Public Works department if the urban canopy can be more in tune with the needs of all stakeholders.

Process

We started this project off by looking at the matrix from our previous exercise. We branched off of each bubble, looking at existing initiatives and structures in place within the Pittsburgh area. This provided us with tangible initiatives that we could be inspired by, as well as retrofit our solutions in regards to existing organizations.

Originally, we set out to create interventions in terms of the domains of everyday life and within the STEEP (social, technological, environmental, economic, political) categories. However, after discussing some initial initiatives, we realized that many of them targeted several STEEP categories. One initiative might be focused on the environment, but it also had social implications. It was due to this overlap that we found STEEP to be limiting in our analysis. And as a result, our team decided to reorganize the matrix in terms of the overarching goals we were trying to achieve through our initiatives (i.e. the phases of human-tree interaction) and tag the relevant STEEP categories to each initiative.

Reflection

Throughout this semester, our team has studied deforestation as a wicked problem in Pittsburgh, the relevant stakeholders and power dynamics involved, how deforestation evolved across time, what a future vision might look like, and interventions to take in the present to reach that vision. We have done a lot of analysis but it is also important to acknowledge some limitations: on one side, it takes a long time to realize the transition from linear economy to a circular system based on the existing market. On the other side, the infrastructure construction in communities may face the issue of not having enough funding and policy support. In addition, for this project, we did not speak directly with community members and thus, there is a risk of generalizing and speaking on the behalf of these complex and diverse communities, especially indigenous groups and nonhumans like the pawpaw trees. If this project was done in the field, it would be important to work directly with these communities.

Additionally, when designing our ecology of interventions we were heavily inspired by Donella Meadows’ “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System.” Considering our initiatives are largely centered around sharing and gaining knowledge, we centered our focus at point 6 (the structure of information flows) and above. Our goals rested on the first steps towards long term paradigm shifts. While we believe that these forms of intervention are the most effective at creating the change we seek, we also understand these initiatives take a lot of time and effort, with a limited number of upfront wins.

Nonetheless even though we have ended our project for the semester, we invite others to pick up this work and utilize transition design methodologies to tackle deforestation and other wicked problems in order to work towards building a sustainable and just world.