Author Archives: Jennifer McGivern

Connecting Communities to Coastal Resilience: How Can Public Participation in Wetland Restoration and Management Enhance Sustainability for New York?

Abstract

Coastal resiliency, or the defense against extreme weather events, is becoming significantly more critical to the livelihood of coastal communities as the frequency and intensity of storms increases and is exacerbated by rising sea levels due to climate change. In 2012 Superstorm Sandy cost $42 billion across New York State in structural damage and displaced many residents from their homes for prolonged periods of time as storm surges surpassed record highs for the region. New York’s coastal communities need to be better prepared for future climate related scenarios and resiliency planning needs to include protection of public health and safety, reduced risk of structural and non-structural damage, and improved recovery strategies. Coastal wetlands provide a critical line of defense against more intense and frequent weather events due to their ability to mitigate storm damages by providing natural resistance from flooding through rainwater absorption, protecting shorelines from erosion by buffering wave action and sediment capture, as well as their capability to naturally accrete, or build up vertically, to contend with sea level rise trends. In this paper I will explore how to best bring the scientific research and evidence of the anthropogenic impacts to tidal wetlands to a practical level of understanding on the community level. By building connections between the community and the natural coastal landscape, a sense of care for the environment and a relationship to the value it has for coastal resiliency is more likely to develop among residents, which may significantly improve the success and sustainability of coastal wetland restoration and management initiatives. 

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo speaking during a tour of storm damage on Staten Island after Sandy, with President Obama, Senator Charles E. Schumer and, second from left, Shaun Donovan, the federal housing secretary.
Credit…Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Significance of coastal wetland ecosystems

Coastal wetlands are highly productive areas that provide important ecosystem services. These environments contain a diversity of native vegetation and support abundant aquatic, avian, and terrestrial wildlife. Healthy functioning wetlands also improve water quality by filtering stormwater runoff and metabolizing excess nutrients which is critical for clarifying the water and creating more suitable conditions for natural resource and commodity production and supporting commercial and recreational estuary-related business.

These ecosystems are also vital in in the context of climate change and sea level rise. Tidal wetlands have important carbon sequestration abilities and may be significant in relation to the urgency to reduce global carbon footprints contributing to planetary warming. Vigorous wetland conditions also provide protection to public health and infrastructure by providing natural resistance to storms and flooding which is increasingly becoming more important with rising seas and more frequent extreme weather events. Protection and restoration of the natural estuarine environment and its ability to mitigate storm damages should be of the highest priority for New York’s coastal communities.

Interacting stresses on tidal wetlands

Historical anthropogenic impacts to New York’s coastal wetlands over the last century such as grid-ditching existing marshes for mosquito control, filling of wetlands for development, construction of infrastructure segmenting habitat, and displacing native species with human introduced non-natives has caused ecosystem degradation and loss of wetland acreage. Further degradation of tidal wetland habitat has occurred due to urbanization and indeed much of New York’s population is concentrated around these coastal environments. In fact, coastal wetland systems arguably serve more human uses than any other ecosystem and are the sites of the world’s most intense commercial activity and population growth with approximately 75% of the worldwide human population living in coastal regions.

Anthropogenic eutrophication, or excess nutrient inputs to coastal system from human activities, has become a serious problem; nitrogen being the primary nutrient of concern for waters in the New York region. Nitrogen inputs to New York’s coastal estuarine systems from human land uses generally originate from fertilizers, stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflows (CSOs), and wastewater systems. Excess anthropogenic nitrogen inputs promote a series of positive feedbacks by altering ecosystem processes leaving coastal wetlands more susceptible to the erosive forces of storms, sea level rise, and gravitational slumping. This cascade of changes can eventually result in deficient ecosystem functioning, threaten the long-term stability of marsh systems, and cause wetland acreage loss. Climate change can further compound these issues since areas in the Northeast U.S., including New York, are expected to experience increases in precipitation as well as warmer conditions during the winter months, resulting in more precipitation as rain and less as snow, which can increase the frequency of runoff events. More stormwater runoff and CSOs translates to higher levels of nitrogen reaching estuarine habitats and increased levels of degradation to wetlands.

Calving of vital creek bank as a result of low marsh cordgrass.
Mark Bertness. http://www.bertnesslab.com

Connecting communities to wetlands through management and restoration

Nutrient management policy implementation paired with wetland restoration projects can potentially repair damages to tidal marsh habitats and thus preserve their healthy ecological functioning and the ecosystem services that they provide to coastal communities including coastal resilience. However, many residents in New York’s coastal communities who live in close proximity to these habitats and are largely contributing anthropogenic eutrophication through their everyday activities, may not see the intricate connections, which I have endeavored to lay out in my paper, that wetland ecosystems indeed have to their everyday lives. I argue that improvements in communication and engagement with local communities as well as fostering an environmental ethic can significantly improve wetland restoration and management efforts.

Fresh Kills in Staten Island, NY was wetland habitat that was valued so low that is was opened as a landfill in 1948 to be a receptacle for New York City’s garbage and became one of the world’s largest dumps. Fresh Kills Landfill was closed by Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2001 and the site is currently undergoing restoration. This work includes restoring 360 acres of wetlands and  reclaiming 1,000 acres of higher elevated areas previously altered by landfill operations as grasslands (also an important carbon sink) to transform the area into “an extraordinary 2,200 acre urban park that will be a model for sustainable waterfront land reclamation, a source of pride for Staten Island and New York City, and a gift of open space for generations to come” (https://freshkillspark.org/). This is a really beautiful and, for me, emotional “ugly duckling story” and may serve as an inspiration for other potential ecological restoration and reclamation projects which will be so important for coastal resiliency, carbon sequestration, climate change, and our future.

Garbage scows bring solid waste to Plant #2 at Fresh Kills Landfill, 1973.
Chester Higgins, Jr. – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
https://freshkillspark.org/blog/wetland-restoration-freshkills-park
(Photo: Alex MacLean)

Public education and outreach campaigns are valuable for cultivating community engagement with wetland protection, management, and restoration efforts but importantly need to focus on creating a dialogue and participation between scientists, government, and the public. Communities especially need to be persuaded that a series of incremental actions and behavior changes that they are indeed themselves capable of carrying out has the potential to accomplish significant changes to our coastal wetland ecosystems. The incorporation of in-field education and volunteer activities as well as recreational opportunities is also essential to create a sense of place and can very often, in turn, bring a sense of care to the environment. In these ways new frameworks for environmental stewardship could be better put into action both on the ground within local communities and at broader national and international socio-ecological levels.

Note: The American book cover pictured here irks me a bit since both female main characters are described as having dark hair.

Core Text:

Itaranta, Emmi. Memory of Water. Harper Voyager, 2014.

Summary:

In Emmi Itaranta’s futuristic dystopian world, global warming has significantly melted the polar ice caps, drastically changing the Earth’s geography. Large coastal cities were drowned when the rising oceans vastly altered shorelines. Salt water has intruded into freshwater resources thus drinking water is scarce and the most coveted commodity.

Seventeen-year-old Noria Kaito lives with her parents in a small village on the outskirts of the city Xinjing within the Scandinavian Union, now occupied by the power state of New Qian. Noria is training to become a tea master like her father, a profession which is controversial and challenging for a female to earn. When Noria’s mother moves to the city to take a position at the University of Xinjing, her father completes her tea master instruction which includes finally revealing to her a hidden natural freshwater spring in the fells just near their home which they must protect. Shortly after her tea master graduation ceremony, Noria’s father becomes ill, leaving her to tend to their home, the tea house, and the secret spring all on her own.

Noria’s life-long best friend, Sanja, is her only trusted companion. Together they navigate the wartime oppression as they line up at a single pump with fellow villagers to fill jugs with their weekly water allowance. They get pleas to spare a cup of water from scared mothers holding their sick babies while waiting in line to receive medical care from the severely understaffed and ill-equipped hospital.

As an escape from the horrors of everyday life, Noria and Sanja frequent the plastic grave on the outskirts of their village to hunt for unlikely treasures from the past-world era. Sanja is a tech wiz and spends her time in her workshop immersed in restoring the items that the pair recover. After finding buried hidden discs at the secret spring and a busted player in the plastic grave which Sanja repairs, the two learn that the recordings contain documentation of an unfinished expedition to the Lost Lands which leads them to plot their own journey in hopes of completing the mission that the team of scientific researchers could not.

Emmi Itaranta tells Memory of Water at an unhurried and cool pace like the gradual trickle of water through earth and rock. Yet there is something ethereal and enchanting about her prose that keeps the reader engaged in this deep story and the characters whose secrets shape their purpose and path as intricately as water carves stone.

Teaching Resources:

Atwood, Margaret. “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet.” The Guardian, 25 September 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/26/margaret-atwood-mini-science-fiction

In this short text, Margaret Atwood conveys a somber mythical tale illuminating the ages of Humankind. Humanity has risen and fallen and what is left of our great civilization is the writing on a brass cylinder. Atwood invokes the personal and emotional by transfixing the perspective of the reader to that of an outsider, presumably the one finding this profound remnant of history during an archaeological quest. This mirror-like effect parallels the situation in Memory of Water, of Noria and Sanja discovering remnants from the past-world era and trying to piece together their meaning and significance from history. The theme of tracing origins in both works highlights present action and future imaginaries in addressing climate change.

Dawson, Ashley. “Cape Town’s water has a new apartheid” The Washington Post, 10 July 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/07/10/cape-town/

This poignant article describes the water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa during late 2017 into early 2018 that was successfully staved off, at least for the time being. Although water was guaranteed as a human right in South Africa’s new constitution, access to water is unequal. Municipalities have yet to provide sufficient infrastructure to many low-income areas where residents must trek a long distance to wait in line at scare communal taps and lug their water home while wealthy neighborhoods consume water freely and in excess. Memory of Water is an allegory of this real-life circumstance that will become more urgent as impacts from climate change are experienced. The novel highlights the social injustice associated with water scarcity experienced by the disadvantaged village residents on the outskirts of the large city and well as the government’s role in affording access to a basic necessity.  

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard, 2013.

Nixon’s innovative concept of “slow violence” focuses on the gradual and often out of sight violence on vulnerable communities wrought by climate change. Precarious ecosystems and poor, disempowered populations suffer the brunt of the climate crisis which they had little influence on causing. In Memory of Water the village where Noria lives is kept isolated and uninformed as to the larger happenings in the world but the ever-looming military presence restricts what they are allowed to do and where they are permitted to go. Not having access to plentiful water supplies or adequate health care causes much suffering in the village and some residents even resort to filling up jugs of water from a contaminated stream near the plastic grave just to have enough to drink or bathe with.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Margaret Atwood alludes to what has transpired in the history of Humankind in “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” similar to how Emmi Itaranta largely infers the events of the past-world era in Memory of Water. Noria and Sanja find bits and pieces of history that they must make sense from to gain knowledge of the past, present, and future. Interestingly, they also make a game out of creating and hiding time capsules of their own containing random personal objects and inscribing them with date indicating when they may be opened again. What are the effects of this practice of encapsulating history on those that create these memorials of the past and on those that discover them? Why is this such a powerful tool in telling stories and what does this say about human nature and our relationship to time and space?
  2. Though Noria and Sanja are best friends, their backgrounds are very different. Noria’s father is a respected tea master, her mother is college professor, and they live in a nice and spacious and home at the edge of the village that has been in their family for generations. Sanja’s family life and living conditions, on the other hand, are described as much less affluent. How do the socio-economic disparities between the friends come into play throughout the novel? In what ways are they treated differently by the other characters in the story especially the military enforcement? How do their backgrounds affect the decisions each of them make and ultimately their fate?
  3. Noria is more privileged than most in her village largely because she has access to the hidden natural freshwater spring that her father and past ancestors have been protecting. She must still make her presence a few times a week at the communal pump and try not to appear as though she has bathed so frequently in order to keep her secret. But when the situation in her village gradually worsens she decides that she will help others in need and as a result she marked as a water criminal with a painted blue circle on her door and is imprisoned in her own home to await her final judgement. Why did the military look the other way when Noria’s father was alive though they had suspicions that the Kaito’s had been harboring a secret water source? How does sharing her water with others in her community threaten the authority of the military and jeopardize their attrition warfare strategies?

A letter to the Governor urging for increased wetland protection and restoration funding to support coastal resiliency

Dear Governor Andrew M. Cuomo,

I am writing to express my strong encouragement for New York State to specifically direct funding to tidal wetland protection and restoration initiatives to support coastal resiliency, or the defense against extreme weather events which are becoming more frequent and exacerbated by climate change and sea level rise. As you know, New York contains five estuaries which are managed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in cooperation with other state, local, and federal government agencies. Tidal marshes within New York’s estuarine areas are not only some of the most productive habitats in the world, supporting numerous species of finfish, shellfish, terrestrial wildlife, and avian species, they are also vital for improving water quality by filtering stormwater runoff and metabolizing excess nutrients. This ecological service is critical for clarifying the water and creating more suitable conditions for natural resource and commodity production and supporting the State’s economically important commercial and recreational estuary-related industries such as the fishing and tourism.

Osprey with a fish. By: George Gentry, USFWS

Another significant ecosystem service that tidal wetlands provide is coastal resiliency in the face of impending climate change and sea level rise. Healthy functioning tidal marshes can protect public health and infrastructure by providing natural resistance to storms and flooding through rainwater absorption and protecting shorelines from erosion by buffering wave action and sediment capture. So coastal wetlands are a critical line of defense against extreme weather events which are becoming more frequent and exacerbated by global climate change and sea level rise trends. These environments also play an important role in the global carbon cycle due to their ability to act as a carbon sink by accumulating and sequestering carbon dioxide in vegetation and soil organic matter. Tidal wetland carbon sequestration abilities may be significant in relation to the urgency to reduce global carbon footprints contributing to warming and climate change.

Although coastal wetlands are economically and ecologically invaluable to the State of New York, many of these areas have become severely degraded to point where the ecosystem services they provide are compromised. Historically, a number of anthropogenic stressors during the last century have had major impacts to tidal wetlands in New York. Public nuisance and health concerns about marsh mosquito populations during the late 1800’s into the early 1900’s led to the promotion of the historical practice of grid-ditching existing wetlands. Filling of low-lying lands for residential and commercial uses as well as the construction of roads, bridges, and canals has led to severe wetland acreage loss. And cross-continental travel and trading, induced the proliferation of non-native plant species which effectively displace diverse native vegetation and compromise the integrity of tidal wetland ecosystems.

Smith Point Park, Shirley, New York. Looking South. Photo taken by Suffolk County Vector Control.

Currently New York’s most densely populated communities are in close proximity to coastal wetlands and have caused degradation of these environments due mainly to urbanization. Excess nitrogen inputs and other pollutants to New York’s coastal estuarine systems from human land uses generally originate from fertilizers for agriculture, commercial, and residential applications; stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflow discharges; and antiquated cesspool and septic systems. These anthropogenic stressors from terrestrial land uses affect tidal wetland functioning and compound the vulnerability to coastal ecosystems and communities in the context of impending climate change and sea level rise.

With sea levels rising and increasing storm intensity and frequency, New York’s coastal communities need to be better prepared for future climate related scenarios. Public health and safety, reduced risk of structural and non-structural damage, and improved recovery plans should be at the forefront in resiliency planning. But protection and restoration of the natural estuarine environment and its ability to mitigate storm damages should also be of highest priority. For these reasons, I strongly urge you to make adequate funding available for tidal wetland protection and restoration to support the coastal resiliency of New York.

Sincerely,

Jennifer McGivern

Senior Environmental Analyst and Environmental Advocate

Cc:       NYSDEC Commissioner Basil Seggo

            NYSDEC Division of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources

Will We Enter a New Wave of Energy Development? Shifting Capital via Shifting Paradigms

Andres Malm’s “Long Waves of Fossil Development: Periodizing Energy and Capital” analyzes how the historic phases of capitalism’s evolution required technological leaps in the sources of energy that drive production. Based on Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff’s theory that capitalism moves in waves consisting of “two phases: an ‘upswing’ characterized by boom conditions, succeeded by a ‘downswing’ of persistent stagnation” (162), we can see how the first long wave of capitalism beginning around 1780 denoted by water-powered industries such as cotton and iron gave way to a second wave propelled by steam, a third run on electricity, the fourth driven by gas and oil, and the fifth long wave we are currently in, typified by computerization of the economy. The transitioning from one long wave to another is not even, incremental growth but rather “proceeds through upsetting contradictions…which impel the expansion and renew the momentum again and again, and it might be these contradictions and the convulsions they generate that do most to produce and reproduce the fossil economy on ever greater scales.” (162).

But it seems that now we have come to an impasse because science is unanimously conveying that humankind has thrown off the balances and processes of the Earth System due directly to continued, elevated levels of C02 emissions from burning fossil fuels. And to reproduce the fossil economy on a larger scale than we are currently maintaining in the name of capitalist gain would have dire consequences to our planet and human civilization. Malm speculates that capitalism could instead propel itself into a sixth long wave by casting off fossil fuels and transition to renewable sources of energy which is exactly what humanity would require to prevent the disastrous scenarios of climate change. Solar, hydro, and wind powered technologies are already established and proven to effectively integrate into our electricity grids but still, our dependency on fossil fuels has not yet been curbed. Malm suggest that a “universal rollout” of these advantageous technologies might “breathe fresh air into languishing capitalism and ensure that we collectively back off from the cliff in time” (181).

Following the theory of long waves of capitalist development and arguing that we have been on the downswing of the fifth wave since the global recession of 2008, Malm implies that we are in fact on the brink of a turning point to a sixth phase. Historically the transitions between phases “are determined by such unforeseeable events as wars and revolutions, the colonization of new countries, or the discovery of new resources—‘those external conditions through whose channel capitalist development flows’” (167).  Our current state of affairs is, quite literally, a crossroads of “upsetting contradictions” inclusive of the consequences of climate change compounded by a global pandemic, severe economic downturn, and political and social instability. Could COVID-19 be the existential threat that pushes us past our paralyzed response to emissions reductions and the climate crisis into the sixth long wave?

Malm asserts that “the eruption of a structural crisis is usually attended by high unemployment, deflation or inflation, deteriorating working conditions, aggressive wage-cuts as capital seeks to dump the costs on labor and widen profit margins—all conducive to intensified class struggle” (171).  And I would argue that we are amid these occurrences right now! But “capital has the power to “lay the foundations for a new epoch of expansion” by creating “a technological revolution, concentrated to one particular sphere” (171).  Historical revolutions, between the first and the fifth long waves of capitalist development have remolded the entire economy, reimagining the technologies of transport and communications systems time and again. “If new life is to be breathed into sagging capitalism, it must come in the most basic, most universal guise: energy” (172). 

Malm contends that renewable energy technologies “perfectly fit the profile of a wave-carrying paradigm” (181). They are of virtually unlimited supply, allow for costs to be reduced, and have vast potential for applications, “causing productivity to spike, spurring other novel technologies — electric vehicle charging systems, smart grids managed online, cities filled with intelligent green buildings — opening up unimagined channels for the accumulation of capital” (181). The groundbreaking innovation of switching completely to renewable sources of clean, emission-free energy would inevitably call for new government policies and financial systems, public education, and an overhaul of our behaviors and habits.  Malm worries that “society, however, is slow in adapting, for unlike technology, social relations are characterized by inertia, resistance, vested interests pulling the brakes, always lagging behind the latest machines” (174). We have seen just that when new, renewable energy technologies emerge. They are initially received by society as a shock and spur push back in the form of skepticism, NIMBYism, etc. which must be overcome in order for them to take hold. In our current situation wherein the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening both global health and economic security, exacerbated by elevated social and political unrest and the ever-looming climate emergency, perhaps a paradigm shift in society at large is inevitably and necessarily what is being set in motion.

Losing Glaciers, Losing Steam

Released less than a year after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, causing an estimated 1,833 deaths and $125 billion in damage, the 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, follows former Vice President Al Gore’s campaign for Earth. Gore travels around the Country and the globe to present his PowerPoint containing extensive scientific data and compelling imagery documenting the stark effects of climate change to our planet delivered in a relatable, often humorous, and profoundly emotional manner. Director Davis Guggenheim weaves the climate science with Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to educating environmental managers and the public on the dire consequences of human induced global warming and the resulting climate disasters that are becoming more frequent and intense.

Gore has been fascinated with climate change data since his college professor, Roger Revelle, one of the first scientists to study anthropogenic global warming, shared his long-range study of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere with the classroom. The correlation between the drastic increase of CO2 produced by human activity since accelerated industrialization, and rising average global temperatures is unequivocal: “Out of 925 recent articles in peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Zero,” Gore states in the film. Global warming is very real and exceedingly urgent. If humankind does nothing to address it, the planet may reach a “tipping point” wherein the breakdown of Earth System’s natural climate processes will cause dramatic shifts in weather and precipitation patterns, vastly altered species diversity, population and distribution, and devastating consequences to human civilization.

Time lapsed images of shorelines retreating, lakes shrinking, and glaciers disappearing depict the powerful effects climate change has already had to the environment in many regions of the world. And projection graphs and imagery indicate what our future may hold if humankind fails to take immediate action to halt and reverse the climate crisis. How can we achieve this as a global population? We need to collectively stop burning fossil fuels and make serious transitions to renewable energy sources. And according to a 2004 article in Science, by Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, “humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem.” For Gore, it is a moral issue and deeply unethical to not take the steps necessary to solve the climate catastrophe we have found ourselves in.

Although the scientific community is in “100 percent agreement” on climate change and its dangers, a small group of world leaders has sought to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact to perpetuate the reign of big oil business. The political corruption goes even as far as coercing scientists to alter reports. Al Gore, wants to know: “Do we have to choose between the economy and the environment?” He thinks not. However fast forward to about ten years later, and globally we have not made the appropriate and necessary adjustments to our carbon emissions yet.

The 2017 film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, further drives home the point that we are heating our planet to the point of irreparable damage. And Al Gore is heated too. Becoming visibly frustrated and angry in his speeches at the lack of political response to the climate change crisis that he has dedicated his life to, Gore still will not give up. He treks through flooded streets in Miami, meets with coal mine developers in China, and consoles survivors of a devastating typhoon in the Philippines bringing us with him deeper into the social and environmental justice issues that are inevitably tied to climate change. Gore evokes the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in his speech at an event wherein he compares the challenges and accomplishments of the civil rights movement to those of the climate movement. And there are some noteworthy accomplishments including huge leaps in renewable energy development.  

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference was the largest and emotionally charged hurdle overcome in the film to which Al Gore’s hard work no doubt contributed. The situation in Paris was initially looking bleak with terrorist activity two weeks prior to the conference and then the Indian Prime Minister originally unwilling to concede to the terms of the agreement. He insisted that: “energy is a basic need” and India still needs conventional energy and fossil fuel because “denying them that would be morally wrong.” This is reminiscent of Al Gore’s claim in the first film of the moral duty of humanity to act in the face of climate change but instead of from the stance of American white privilege, we are seeing the opposite prospective.    

We get a bitter-sweet ending to the film with the Paris Agreement adopted, a huge win for the Climate Movement, yet the final minutes of the movie show Al Gore grief stricken after Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States. Trump’s criticism of former President Obama’s attendance at the Climate Change Conference was a foreshadowing of exactly what level of support for climate action to expect of the new administration.

While An Inconvenient Truth may have had the ability to leave viewers startled, engaged, and inspired, An Inconvenient Sequel somehow falls a bit short in comparison. Maybe it is because the audience has become numb to the exhausting problem of climate change, or perhaps the film did not push the envelope quite far enough.