Author: Jessica Zhao

Since 1960, Jane Goodall has changed the world perception of animal conservation through over 50 years of groundbreaking work studying, protecting, and saving chimpanzees. Her discoveries disputed misconceptions about chimpanzees and other primates, and she has since dedicated her life to urging humans to protect and live in harmony with all living things on this planet. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in 1977 to continue her vision through advocacy, education, and research and now spends an average of 300 days traveling as an environmental activist.

The JGI website actually has a timeline of Dr. Goodall and JGI’s life, as well as a map of worldwide JGI projects. The “Tapestry of Hope” also created an interactive map of all Roots & Shoots projects, a youth development program started by JGI.

Rather than repeat these previous maps/timelines, my project aims to test the power of maps, social media, and storytelling. Inspired by her storytelling abilities, I will follow the hashtag “WheresJane” and read news articles on  Dr. Goodall’s recent activism. I will then use this information to create a StoryMap that tracks Goodall’s impact as she spreads environmental awareness and hope around the world.

     Although Dr. Farber and Pedro Lasch did not address art as an act of environmental activism specifically, the creativity, tactics, and process of making impactful, time-sustaining monuments could definitely be applied to environmental activism projects. From the power of stories to representation to hope, the Penn Monument Lab project and Pedro’s accompanying comments touched on and connected multiple themes that our class has discussed throughout the semester.

    During the introduction of the Monument Lab: A Public Art and History Project, Farber described how his team analyzed the placement and characteristics of current monuments in Philadelphia. He brought up the question of presence and power, asking “What is present and what is missing? Whose stories are being told?”. I immediately thought of the Radical Mapping group because they asked very similar questions. Instead of just asking what and who the monuments represent, Farber brought to light whose stories were missing and how they can fill in those gaps. This included people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, family backgrounds, etc. – essentially “inviting everyone to the table”, as Crystal Dreisbach previously urged.

    Secondly, Farber encouraged us to “meet people where they are”, which applies to both public monuments and environmental movements. If we want to engage as many people as possible, we must first welcome them into the space, then use actionable and transactional methods to keep them engaged. For example, Farber discussed the importance of quick actions such as signing a petition or writing down one’s own idea, then giving them a “gift” in a form of this transaction. He also emphasized participatory social engagement and furthering one’s own goals by connecting to others’ issues. For environmentalism, this means understanding the intersectionality of nature with issues of human health, poverty, race, etc. to reach more people in the conversation. Art, therefore, acts as an incredibly powerful tool to welcome people and keep them engaged.

    Lastly, Farber and Pedro discussed the exhaustion that incurs from hours of labor behind getting permits and building the monuments, and how to combat that. Ultimately, the answer is hope. Seeing one’s work come into fruition, other people interacting with it, and pushing a project to greater levels than anticipated will further one’s motivation. The work is exhausting indeed, but Hope, this feeling of expectation, can and will keep you going.

    I felt inspired by Dr. Farber and Pedro Lasch’s talk and thought that it was a great way to summarize this semester. They discussed activism, art, and people, and now it is our job to apply these concepts to environmental projects of our own.

The past two weeks, we have discussed the concept, challenges, and necessity of hope. Hope exists – flourishes – in an area of uncertainty, where negative and positive fuse to forge new plans. We saw this in Catherine Flowers, Tools for Grassroot Activists, in Masanobu Fukuoka, and in Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective. Throughout the movie, I kept taking note and starring my notes for moments of hope. Ben Falk used swales to convert the least productive, rock sheet land into the most productive. Eric Toensmeier grew over 70 kinds of perennials and 46 species of fruit, despite having a backyard with terrible soil and shade. Dwain Lee saw New York City’s drab concrete roofs as an opportunity to engage and coexist with nature. But for me, two other people rose above, regenerating their communities by mending life for humans and nature.

First, Ari Rosenberg and Louis Sanchez from Camden, New Jersey. Camden has been known as the poorest city in New Jersey and one of the highest crime rates in the nation, yet Louis sees every abandoned lot as an opportunity for growth, for life. The waterfront rain garden has given this student a way to give back to the community and see a flourishing, lively green space among the other areas in Camden. His hope to turn these spaces into productive places just shows the possibilities of our youth and their relationship to nature.

Pandora Thomas also exemplified hope through her work with formerly incarcerated men. These men exude a kind of care and curiosity in understanding how to care for plants, anticipating and hoping to transfer the knowledge to their own children. The journey of navigating their post-incarceration life while taking responsibility for plant lives truly embodies the transformation and redesign aspects of permaculture because they co-designed the movement together with nature.

I love permaculture so much because it does not simply prescribe better, simplified farming methods, but also embodies a new mindset of regeneration, harmony, and creating a full ecosystem where humans, plants, insects, soil, etc can all live and thrive together. It prescribes a symbiotic relationship with plantlife and urges humans to learn to assimilate into ecosystems rather than imposing themselves on it. In my last blog, I wrote about the importance of returning back to the land and the value of farming. For the majority of America, however, I also see opportunities for cities to adopt permaculture into its urban landscape to happily live among other life – human and plant.

“INHABIT.” Accessed April 12, 2018. http://inhabitfilm.com/.

After reading a few of my classmate’s blogs, I saw a common call for humans to return their lives back to nature. Colin asserted that people must experience nature to truly appreciate it, while Kendall reflected on the value of living simply and “in tune” with life and nature around us. I believe these two thoughts go hand in hand, and that nowadays, Americans stray further and further away from understanding the land. From city dwellers to elite businessmen and even to college students who spend most of their time inside, people are losing sight of the incredible and unsurmountable goods and services Earth provides – not that we humans create.

Back in the 1850s, farmers accounted for over 60% of the American labor force, whereas now only 2% of Americans are directly employed in agriculture. This only describes people actually working on farms, but the percentage of citizens living in rural areas has similarly declined dramatically from about 30% in the 1920s to 15% of the population in 2014. Now I’m not saying everyone should move to the middle of the country, buy a plot of land, and figure it out, nor would that be sustainable, but nothing in a city really compares to the value of living near or working on a farm.

My high school actually had a five acre garden plot on the land, which educated students through multiple means. Every student ventured to it at some point, whether through school-wide tree planting and bird nest building initiatives, semester long volunteer shifts, or an 8-week summer internship. And personally, I owe all of my environmental interest that have developed over the past two years to that little farm.

Without the live pigs that I visited, gave feed to, and which eventually ended up at our dining hall, I would not have gone vegetarian so soon. Without the opportunity to build and populate a top-bar hive with 10,000 bees during my senior spring, I doubt I would have discovered what remarkable creatures honeybees were – and the major implications their population decline . Their hive dynamic, the fact that all worker bees are female, and the major impacts they have on human food production blew me away. But with that, I also learned about the pesticide and habitat threats, along with the implications that honey bee population decline would have for the future of our crops. Thus sparked a shift in mindset from appreciation to preservation.

But most importantly, without the hands-on experience last summer, I would not have learned what I did about and from the earth. Waking up at 7am for a laborious three hour shift, we would seed, trellis, transplant, and harvest plants, remove weeds by hand, cover crops to prevent pests (rather than use a pesticide), and harvest five kinds of flowers to make bouquets. The diversity of crops and skills I acquired, even if they do not completely align with Masanobu Fukuoka’s, taught me the amount of hard work, care, and understanding needed to produce fresh food. Oh, and by the way, the asparagus, cherry tomatoes, and raspberries I ate straight from the plants were by far the best tasting produce I’ve ever had.

Again, I do not mean to say that everyone should become a farmer, nor is that the intention for my own future (I don’t think anyway…), but working with land gives you an understanding of nature like no other. So to everyone – I urge you to get outside. Feel the sun’s rays illuminating and warming your skin. Dip your bare feet into a pond, or listen to the birds tweet on your morning walk. Return to our roots, return to nature. Listen to the Earth and you will find life.

Sources:

“Farm Population Lowest Since 1850’s” https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-lowest-since-1850-s.html

United States Department of Agriculture

Throughout this week, from working on our social media platforms to reading Tools for Grassroots Activists to listening to Catherine Flowers speak, a central message rung: hope for the future lies in younger generations. With bright but fiery eyes, the power of social media, and a recognition of the immediate and demanding effects older generations have had on the Earth, we are the future. For the first, or at least the most urgent time, we recognize the possibility that our children and grandchildren will have drastically different relationships with nature than we did. People all over the world will fight over water scarcity, cities may drown under rising sea levels, the sixth extinction may become a reality. Although many of these issues have existed for years, the magnitude and acceleration of them have never reached such extreme levels.

The environmental issues we face may seem to pile higher and higher, each new statistic on CO2 emission levels, climate change, species endangerment, sea levels, population growth, the list is endless. Perhaps we have reason to be angry at the “older generations”, but we must remember that the “resilience of nature is good news”, as Dr. Jane Goodall assured us in her keynote speech (187). We must act now, and act radically – small changes in consumerism, although helpful, cannot by themselves reverse current trends. We are realizing more and more that we must utilize social media and practice active citizenship.

I definitely fall under the category of environmentalists who try to communicate with caution, worried about offending the other party or seeming “unreasonable”.  After reading Annie Leonard’s speech, where she urges environmentalists to “think bigger, aim higher, and dream more courageously”, I felt particularly heartened (31). We (environmentalist) also often forget that the majority of Americans do actually support policy changes in support of environmental efforts. In a NY Times article depicting “How Americans Think About Climate Change, in Six Maps”, we can clearly see this. In every state, over 50% of citizens support strict CO2 limits on existing coal-fired power plants, with most states over 60-70%.

It’s easy to feel alone in this fight, bogged down by the science and data, but most people simply do not have the initial tools for activism we have been equipped with. Now our job is to keep fueling the fire, invite everyone to the table, and demand change.

NY Times article mentioned:

To be honest, the presentation from Counter-Cartographies Collective did not reverse my skepticism towards mapping as an effective means of activism. I found many of their maps, especially the “disorientation guides” convoluted, not visually appealing, and geared towards highly specific audiences. The map of buildings, statues, and other names on campus revealed that most honored figures were not women or people of color, but the stagnant map made it difficult to clearly distinguish the location of each memorial. The Skype presenters, however, made interactive maps that I found much more user-friendly and engaging. By adding a radius and timeline around each point of eviction, one could clearly see the acceleration of evictions, concentrated in certain areas. I also found the personal stories attached to certain points very effective because they put faces to the data.

Over this week, other examples of mapping discussed in class and and in Tools for Grassroots Activists have also proved to me the many ways that mapping can be utilized as an activist tool. One particular point we touched was paying attention to what isn’t represented on a map, and how changing that can shift perspective. For example, adding sacred Native American and religious sites around rivers and natural landmarks brings in a human element that geographical maps typically exclude. In Tools for Grassroots Activists, they discussed multiple movements that used Google Maps to show change of one area over time. Although I now understand the power of mapping, I think that clarity and the element of time make them much easier to absorb and more interesting.

The last three classes have been my favorite of the semester thus far. The inspiring tales and lives of Robin Kirk and Crystal Dreisbach combined with the reading from Rules for Radicals has equipped us with an arsenal of tools for creating successful movements. Among the three sources, there was a common theme of working with all groups of people within the system for gradual changes. In Kirk’s example of the slave trade, people did not devote their efforts to ending slavery all together. Rather, they used witnesses, victims, and informational reports to target multiple angles of the issue and connect with people on a human level.

Rules for Radicals similarly emphasized the importance of understanding and respecting others’ values when addressing one’s own concerns because people typically do not respond well to radical and sudden change in principles. Therefore empathizing with the masses first will increase support for one’s initiatives. Secondly, Saul Alinsky claims that we must “start from where the world is”, meaning we must accept the current situation of the world before we can attempt to change it. In all of this, patience becomes the ultimate virtue.

Lastly, Crystal Dreisbach quoted, “it takes 10 years to build an overnight sensation”, referring to the years of hard work and toiling she put in for the explosive success of her many initiatives. I was also struck, however, by her willingness to invite everybody to the table. Doing so had three major benefits: she was able to knock down any barriers or misconceptions, it created a meeting space for different groups to share their ideas, and the masses contributed by helping fill in gaps of knowledge.

In our own projects, we have already adopted this gradual, collaborative mindset by speaking to multiple groups on campus, dining leaders, and eventually reaching the more general public. For the divestment group, they edited the goal from full divestment to less than 10%. Together, small actions will hopefully build a snowball effect to change campus for the better.

     In Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story”, she discovers the U.S. perspective of Africans as “incomprehensible people fighting senseless wars, unable to speak for themselves waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner”, a mindset widely portrayed through western literature. In Helon Habila’s African novel Oil on Water, however, we gain a new perspective on the relationship between westerners and Africans, or to put it frankly, wealthy, White people and the collateral damage around oil sites. Fiction as a genre allows us to conduct thought experiments, build connections, and read literature with a critical mind. It also allows readers to enter an imaginary world or into the mind of people with completely different backgrounds than their own. Sadly the perspectives and descriptions in Oil on Water directly reflect a reality that many people, especially Americans, cannot fathom or only think of distantly. I rarely think of where exactly the oil we use comes from and its destructive impacts on both local landscape and the humans who live there.

     Nnedi Okorafor also claims that “science fiction is one of the most effective forms of political writing” and revolves around the question of “what if” in her TED Talk “Sci-Fi Stories that Imagine a Future Africa”. Habila tackles not an imagined “what if”, but a current, real-life narrative through the incredibly descriptive scenes of oil damage as Zaq and Rufus attempt to navigate the black water. From the dead animals to the foul stench of the swamp, Rufus even says the village “looked like a setting for a sci-fi movie” (37). This novel, a necessary exposé of oil extraction, uses fiction to enlighten a greater audience on the reality and gravity of the situation for modern day Africans.

Habila, Helon. Oil on Water. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.

In her article It’s Not Climate Change, It’s Everything Change, Margaret Atwood discusses major issues in today’s environmental movement and actions that continue to revolve back on a few major powers: businesses and governments. She rightly argues that with “no clear benefit” to changing their consumption of resources to conserve energy, businesses and corporations driven by capital have zero incentive to limit their extraction of resources, an example of the economic “tragedy of the commons”. Although industrial corporations have greatly increased global carbon emissions and waste, their profits seem to somehow outweigh these negative impacts on the globe. Even more detrimental than passing on the responsibility of acting sustainably is the way that certain governments and politicians still refuse to accept the reality and gravity of our environmental condition, which depends hugely on their actions and policies.

The government actions that Margaret Atwood exposes are simply laughable. Rick Scott forbidding the use of terms like “climate change” and “global warming” and Canada “tricking” its citizens with maps of the increasing size of icecaps are only two examples of such foolish acts. After Trump entered office, many US government sites similarly deleted such terms from their search engines. By doing so, our government is only encouraging ignorance by suppressing conversation and education on pressing matters for current and future generations. These actions also illuminate our privilege as country, since many poorer and less fortunate areas of the world already experience the “picture 2” effects Atwood discusses. For example, Atwood imagines a world where people must “fill their bathtubs with water” and where “their toilets would no longer flush” beneath a picture of long lines where people wait to buy food in bulk. This so-called imagined water shortage and inefficient lines are a reality in Cape Town, caused by a combination of factors: wealthier people failing to limit their water usage even after multiple warning, a growing 4 million population, and a 3 year drought no one expected to last this long.

I would argue that politicians and people who resist the facts of climate change merely have not seen or lived through the effects. They do not realize that their words, policies, and actions affect people around the world. Yet, I do not understand how people can see the increase of flooding, forest fires, droughts, sea levels, etc and still refuse to accept these occurrences as evidence for climate change and global warming.

On a final and different note, I would like to share an artist whose chalk pastel drawings, inspired by photographs of real ice caps and oceans, inspires to share the threatened beauty of nature. I was reminded of this artist,  Zaria Forman, after reading Barry Lord’s theory on society’s relationship between art and energy.

Name: Jessie Zhao

Hometown: Princeton, NJ

Major: Environmental Science

Three topics that interest me:  Framing of climate change / environmental issues to the public, environmental activism through visual art, and sustainable food systems.

Interesting exciting bit of news I read today:  Indonesian entrepreneur Kevin Kumala invented a plant-based, biodegradable plastic made from a common Indonesian vegetable, and has made rain ponchos, bags, and food containers.