Civic Ecology seeks to help people organize, learn, and act in ways that increase their capacity to withstand, and where appropriate to grow from, change and uncertainty, through nurturing cultural and ecological diversity, through creating opportunities for civic participation, and through fostering learning from different types of knowledge. In a more practical sense, Civic Ecology is a set of asset-based tools that can be used in international and community development, natural resources management, and education. Urban community greening, community-based biodiversity monitoring, and participatory watershed restoration provide examples of Civic Ecology tools.

Natural Resources research and extension programs in urban areas often focus on pollution, lack of open space, and violence and other social problems. A need exists for asset-based approaches to environmental enhancement and community development in cities. Furthermore, most ongoing research focuses on either the impact of green areas on people, or the negative effects of people on the environment. A need exists for systems-based approaches that examine feedback loops among nature and people in cities.

The Initiative for Civic Ecology seeks to explore systems- and asset-based approaches to international and community development, education, and natural resources management in cities, through an integrated research, teaching, and outreach program. Started in fall 2006, the Initiative for Civic Ecology encompasses research projects in New York City, New Orleans, and southern Africa, an undergraduate course on urban environments, web-mediated exchanges among youth in Russia and the US, and outreach programs in collaboration with the American Community Gardening Association. Urban community greening is one of the major Civic Ecology education and community development tools. A chapter about Civic Ecology and its role in socio-ecosystem resilience will appear in an upcoming book on social learning and sustainability.

Over the past two years, 16 undergraduate students have participated in our Urban Environments seminar and Alternative Spring Break service-learning project in NYC. The students helped to clean up community gardens in Harlem in collaboration with local community-based organizations. Building on what they learned in this course, Cornell students went on to work with faculty in Natural Resources to design and teach an Environmental Justice course, which has a current enrollment of 48 undergraduate and graduate students. During 2006, we incorporated recommendations for community greening into a plan developed by the Department of City and Regional Planning for rebuilding New Orleans. The plan has been awarded funding and our recommendations are being further developed in collaboration with New Orleans partners ACORN and Parkway Partners. Youth in Tomsk Russia, Baltimore MD, and Bronx NY learned about gardening in cultures locally and internationally through participating in a blog-mediated exchange. Students in Ithaca and NYC participated in after-school programs where they learned about local knowledge, civic action, and science in US and international contexts.

Keith Tidball (Natural Resources)