Conference 2003
Greening the City:
Bringing Biodiversity Back
into the Urban Environment
Abstract:
Social
Aspects of Biodiversity in the Urban Environment
Margaret
Kilvington and Will Allen (Collaborative Learning for environmental
management, Landcare Research, Lincoln)
The premise of this conference
is that 'greening the city' by bringing 'biodiversity' back into
the urban environment is an important normative goal. However,
in order to enact this, it is necessary to ask ourselves just what
is the nature of this goal? Is it for fundamentally environmental
or ecological reasons we might pursue it or are we after something
else? It would be hard to argue that there are many instances where
the conservation of unique ecological systems rests on the opportunities
presented to us in an urban environment. In fact it is more likely
to be the opposite. Mostly we are talking about restoration of
systems and species once present or even abundant — into environments
fraught with challenges for them. Surely this could be better achieved
in an environment without the multifarious competing interests of
urban living?
We suggest that there
are many reasons for considering the goal of bringing biodiversity
back into the urban environment as a social one. It may be based
in a changing cultural identity, which calls for greater representation
in our landscapes of the iconic symbols of indigenous New Zealand.
It may be for reasons of 'holism' — a desire to see greater integration
of human and non-human ecological systems. It may also be for the
potential for enhancing a kind of 'nature stewardship' ethic in
society that greater interaction between people and 'nature' might
lead to.
If these are indeed at
the root of the goal to bring biodiversity back into urban environments
this has significant implications for both our interpretation of
what constitutes 'biodiversity' in the urban environment, and the
social processes by which we enact any landscape transformations.
In this paper we will present what we consider to be some of the
important ingredients of a framework for biodiversity restoration
in urban environments that takes cognisance of the essentially social
nature of the goal, paying particular attention to how we might
work with existing community values about nature and the environment,
and how to facilitate change which results in the kind of positive
associations with natural biodiversity that we hope for.
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