🎙️Including Diverse Voices in Sustainable Landscape Design, with Dr. Amanda Sesser
🎙️Designing Nature’s Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast
Summary:
Dr. Amanda Sesser, the Coordinator of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) Partnership, discusses the need for inclusive design and decision-making processes that involve diverse stakeholders and empower communities. By bringing together various sectors of society, such as transportation, energy, and conservation, sustainable landscapes can be co-designed, created, and managed for people, planet, and prosperity. The episode emphasizes the need to balance human well-being and ecological integrity – a challenge that requires a new governance model that breaks down silos in traditional planning and decision-making. It addresses historic patterns of inequality and injustice to create a more inclusive and equitable society and highlights the concept of reciprocity and the importance of engaging indigenous and other disenfranchised people.
Key Discussion Points:
Sustainability encompasses more than just conservation; it involves meeting all societal needs without favoring one value over another.
Landscape design is a proactive rather than reactive approach to work towards sustainability.
Engaging diverse stakeholders around common values rather than perceived threats on the landscape.
Identifying compatible objectives between diverse stakeholders is key to designing sustainable landscapes. Different reasons driving actions can still lead to mutually beneficial outcomes when aligned properly.
Inclusivity is crucial – ensuring that underrepresented groups have a voice at the table helps avoid repeating historical patterns of inequity and environmental injustice.
Tackling historical patterns of inequity through inclusive decision-making processes involving underrepresented communities.
The importance of sustainability in designing landscapes that meet societal needs without compromising ecological values.
Resources:
For More Info:
…or participation inquiries, visit www.designingnatureshalf.com
Credits:
Research / Writing / Editing / Production by Rob Campellone & Tom Miewald;
Cover Art / Logo by Lucas Ghilardi;
Intro / Outro Voiceover by Tom Askin;
Music Composed & Performed by Aleksey Chistilin via Pixabay
Transcription:
[00:03] Intro / Outro: Mind Matter Media presents Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast, where discussions center around the most current and innovative approaches to landscape conservation and design. This is the show for stakeholders who want to adapt to the climate crisis, halt biodiversity loss, and change the world by designing sustainable and resilient landscapes through collaborative conservation action.
[00:33] Rob: Welcome to Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast. I'm your co-host, Rob Campellone….
[00:41] Tom: …and I'm your other co-host, Tom Miewald. Hey, Rob, who do we have on the podcast today?
[00:46] Rob: We have a really exciting episode ahead. Tom. A couple of weeks ago, we had Alex Wright, the Coordinator of the Midwest Landscape Initiative, on the show, and I was really excited to talk to Alex because he's what I referred to as a second-generation Fish and Wildlife Service Landscape Designer if you will. As expected, it was a great discussion, learning about his perspectives on designing sustainable landscapes, what that means, and how to do it within this collaborative framework with a diversity of partners. Well, today's guest, Dr. Amanda Sesser, is the Coordinator of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy, otherwise known as SECAS. And that's another broad-based conservation partnership effort that's going through a stakeholder-driven, science-based decision-making process to design sustainable landscapes. I'm excited to chat with Amanda, in part because she's a first-generation Fish and Wildlife Service Landscape Designer from back in the day when you and I and a handful of others, including Amanda, were laying the foundation for landscape conservation design within the Fish and Wildlife Service and more importantly, pushing it out into the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives. Today's discussion really has the potential to be insightful, Tom, because I know both you and Amanda to be big, innovative thinkers on this topic, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes.
[02:24] Tom: Those are good thoughts. You know, you bring up looking at how things have evolved over that time when we were working together there, and I'm thinking about how things have evolved over the years. It's a really interesting question. I mean, to me, it depends on how you ask it. If you had the word “design” at the end, then in my mind, you're talking about the planning aspect as it's envisioned, and then in that concept, that restricts talking about the topic to the world of science and planning. The term “conservation” implies a focus on biodiversity in many ways, although I think that the term can be a lot broader if you want to. If you're talking about the means of developing a collaborative, strategic plan like design and planning, I'm sure that there have been many evolutions on the technological side of things, particularly in the developed world, with data, information, and science to visualize landscapes and help people design and plan a broader conversation to expand this scope would be, you know, let's look at the concept of “landscapes.” How do we make landscapes more mainstream beyond the world of science and, agencies and organizations? And to me, that's an evolution that needs to happen. I'm not so sure that we're there right now. At the same time, I think the broader, holistic thinking of landscapes at landscape scales is happening more and more. It's just not maybe in a structured realm like planners like to think about where you have these steps of convening, planning, implementing, and monitoring. I know that there are counties in the US that identify goals, look at plans, and develop a plan with spatially-explicit activities. So, it sounds to me like with landscapes and the design process centered around landscapes, we're talking about another aspect, another layer of planning, and I think we need to be clear about what the ask is. When we ask people to enter that world of talking about landscapes, what are we asking the world to do differently than that they're not, not doing already in some of the locally-led landscape type efforts, you know, counties plan, and watershed Council's plan and people do some planning. You know, to me, the question across the podcast is always like a new governance structure, a model that needs to be developed, that incorporates or gets us out of silos to do something that is done by some of the more official governance models like counties, that they're not doing everything from a landscape perspective, either in terms of concepts like connectivity or timeframes, where you're looking at landscape timeframes. But I see so much value in creating these collaborative efforts like SECAS that Amanda is working on and that we're creating these structures at a broader scale that is somehow augmenting the existing ways that we do planning and design. To me, when we talk about landscapes, we're talking about the integration of myriad existing structures within a geographic area and asking them to think more holistically and longer term. With some of those ideas, like connectivity and transcending jurisdictional boundaries, I think there's a robust world of planners and designers out there at the local level, conservation districts, and many counties have planners thinking about sustainability. It feels important to me to clarify what we're asking people to do differently with this concept of landscapes. And some of the concepts embedded within landscape conservation so that they can actually use and implement landscape conservation design.
[05:55] Rob: Yeah, I think that's fair. It's interesting you use the terminology of planning quite a bit in your introduction, Tom. I think of it more as design, and there is a difference between the two disciplines. What I like about the idea of design is that we're building something. The design discipline has been around for as long as humanity, and we've been designing things, all sorts of things, trinkets, and phones, and I'm just looking at my desk here, pens and microphones and computers. We design these things, and then we build them. And I think in landscape conservation design, we're talking about building something new. A few episodes ago, we had a very thoughtful discussion about the international community's agreement on the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework with Hugh Possingham, specifically as it relates to Target 3 of the Agreement, which is that we're going to conserve and manage 30% of our lands and waters by 2030. And that's an international agreement with nearly 200 countries signed on to it, and Joe Biden's Administration has pushed it out; and partnerships, like Amanda’s, are working together to try and figure out how to actually identify representative, well-connected landscapes, ecosystems within those landscapes that are governed sustainably. It's interesting that the conservation community has really rallied around this idea of 30X30, which is just Target 3 of this Global Biodiversity Framework that includes 23 Targets, and everyone is focusing on Target 3. I'm particularly interested in Target 1, which speaks to the idea of a participatory, inclusive spatial planning and collaborative management approach, which sounds a whole hell of a lot like landscape conservation design to me, Tom. I want to talk to Amanda about what she's doing with her partners to address Target 1, with ultimately a goal to Target 3. But then there are those other 21 targets in the international agreement that we must also speak to. One of those is empowering disenfranchised communities, indigenous peoples, and local communities and empowering them in the spatial planning and decision-making process. And so, I definitely want to talk to Amanda about that.
[08:54] Tom: I think you partially answered my question from earlier: what are we asking for people to do differently? A landscape approach could potentially be one where you're not looking at Target 1…2…3. It could be a way of integrating all those Targets into one landscape-based, holistic way of viewing the world. I don't know what all the targets are, but maybe there's a way in that approach to do it more holistically and with sustainable development goals as well.
[09:19] Rob: Let me share Amanda's bio so we can get this conversation started. Dr Amanda Sesser has substantial experience building and leading landscape conservation partnerships among diverse state, federal, and NGO partners. She led multi-stakeholder landscape-scale conservation planning and implementation efforts among over 30 partners from Alaska and northwest Canada, including federal agencies, four states, indigenous communities, research institutions, and non-governmental organizations. Amanda also assisted with incorporating climate change into daily management practices while in Alaska. She brings experience from technical and collaborative leadership in dozens of states and 19 countries, where she has helped organizations, communities, and governments better understand, manage, and adapt to social and ecological changes. Amanda is currently located in New Orleans, Louisiana, and is the coordinator of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy Partnership, otherwise known as SECAS. SECAS brings together public and private organizations around a bold vision for the future of their region, connecting the lands and waters of the Southeast and Caribbean to support healthy ecosystems, thriving fish and wildlife populations, and vibrant communities. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Ecology and Conservation from Florida Institute of Technology, a Master's of Science in Ecosystem Ecology from Tulane University, and a PhD in Biology from the University of Alaska. Without further ado, let me welcome my old colleague and friend, Dr Amanda Sesser, to the show. We're really glad to have you here, Amanda. Did I miss anything from your bio that you want to add or highlight?
[11:34] Amanda: Hi, Rob and Tom. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. And no, I think you did a great job with the introduction. Thank you.
[11:42] Rob: Hey, before we begin, I threw around the “S” word quite a bit in my introduction and I want to give you a chance to speak to the idea of sustainability from your perspective. I raise the subject because, if we're going to discuss landscape conservation design as a method and a means to achieve 30X30, and in my mind, that includes the idea of designing sustainable landscapes. I think it's important for our listeners to understand what we're talking about when we use the word “sustainability.”
[12:18] Amanda: I was glad to hear the conversation that you and Tom were having at the beginning of the episode about what “design” means and what “conservation” means. And it's really relevant when it comes to landscape sustainability. When I think of landscape sustainability, it's so much broader than just the conservation institution. A well-designed landscape needs to meet all of the needs of society, transportation, housing, energy, minerals, and other extracted resources, as well as vibrant communities, parks, recreation, access, and all of the conservation values of fish, wildlife, habitat, and biodiversity. A well-designed landscape needs to meet all of those values. And so, for me, sustainability is when you have a landscape that can meet all of the values of society without drastically altering its state towards one value or another. Meaning all of the values can be designed for and managed for in a way that they can all coexist. And what we see a lot in the conversation around landscape conservation design, it's a fantastic first step to have the conservation institution of an entire ecoregion coming together under one vision, thinking of how we are going to combine forces to tackle some of these wicked 21st century challenges that no one organization or institution can handle alone, like climate change and climate adaptation. But when we are speaking with one voice, we can now enter into conversations with these other sectors and have a seat at the table. Individually, the conservation institution is much too small to be at the table with the transportation sector, energy, education, housing, and all the other sectors that are driving the market economy that is driving the future of our landscapes. So, for me, sustainability is when all of those values, including conservation, but not limited to conservation, have a space at the table.
[14:38] Tom: When you talk about sustainability at the landscape scale, so it sounds like you are considering engaging with some of the direct threats on the landscape. You don't want to articulate that as a threat to some of the sustainability factors, but in some way, you have to kind of frame it as that, in a way. So, what are some ways that you have found that you can effectively convene these diverse interests around some of those things that might be perceived as direct threats, but in a truly holistic landscape, we need to kind of not use that language, but that concept still is embedded in there.
[15:15] Amanda: Yeah, it's a great point, Tom. What I always say is that “one person's threat is another person's livelihood.” So, I don't use that term at all. In a partnership space, drivers of change can fit. But if you're in Alaska, for instance, and you're working with the mining community, the people who are mining have moved out into the landscape because they value the wide-open wilderness. They value the vastness and the naturalness of the Alaska landscape. And so, they share many of the values that the conservation community does here in the southeast. Private landowners really care about keeping their working lands working. They care about the biodiversity; they care about the endangered species. And so, they might be in the timber harvesting industry or paper pulp or any of the other industries, but they still really care. They want to keep their lands working because the alternative would be to sell to a developer and then have condos or a shopping mall or something go in that place. And so, at our core, we have many shared values, and that's the way that we connect as people right across any space. We connect with values, we connect with shared experiences, and we try not to alienate one sector or another. As a person who has a vehicle, lives in a home, and uses electricity, I would be hypocritical to say that the transportation sector is unimportant in my life. I mean, if I-95 has a pileup and I can't get where I'm going for hours at a time, that really affects me, right? And I use electricity, I use resources. The Douglas fir studs in my house were harvested in the Pacific Northwest, where you are, Tom. We have this interdependence in our society on petroleum resources and solar, wind, and other sources of energy. We have an interconnected web that is the foundation of our society. So, to think about it only regarding the conservation institution really sells us short in terms of reaching sustainability. If you think about what shapes and drives a landscape, it's all the other sectors that I mentioned earlier, transportation, energy, and housing, that are not in a designed way, typically, but just going out and making those changes across the landscape, deciding where new roads are going to be built, where new housing complexes are going to be built, and where and how much we're going to be putting in power plants and other things. And the conservation community is very typically not at the table when making those decisions. And so, landscape design is an effort to say, okay, how can we grab the pen and write that future that allows for all of those sectors and all of the things that our society needs to exist in a way that can be maintained long term, in a way that's sustainable?
[18:33] Rob: Regarding the question of how do you bring a diverse set of stakeholders together to have this conversation about sustainability, is that the common thread amongst all of us, all the different sectors, is human health and well-being. And every sector of society believes that it is contributing to well-being in different ways. Of course, they all have different impacts on the environment and on biodiversity, but nevertheless, our society and our way of living have come a long way. And that's because organizations have developed processes. Some of those processes are planning and design processes to create things that make life easier and, in theory, if you can afford it….better. Within the context of landscape conservation design and landscape conservation, I think about scientific disciplines that have contributed to the evolution of our way of thinking about conservation in general. You know, in the late 1970s / early 1980s, we had Landscape Ecology, studying the relationship of landscape patterns and their influence on biological and ecological processes. Then you had conservation biologists Michael Soule and Reed Noss come into the picture in the early-1980s and say, “Hey, we have a real problem here with the number and diversity of threatened an endangered species; and we as a conservation community, we as biologists need to address this and to specifically speak to or take action to conserve the most vulnerable biological aspects of the landscape,” and building / designing that interconnected landscape makes a lot of sense on the conservation side of the house. But how do you do that without impacting the social side of the house? This idea of landscape sustainability and landscape sustainability science that has embraced the idea of human well-being might be the avenue where we sort out both the ecological side of the house and the social side of the house.
[21:12] Amanda: When you're talking about biodiversity loss and the loss of connectivity, we know the pattern of land use change in this country and across the globe is one of ecosystem fragmentation and habitat degradation, and we are well-versed in conservation science in trying to pick up the pieces. So, conservation science was developed to be very reactive, to wait until something breaks and then come in and try to fix it back to what it used to be or restore ecosystem services or whatever the goal is. And in the Southeast, as well as in the other landscape partnerships that I've coordinated, we need to change the conversation away from how we let the larger market economy come through and continue to fragment, right? How do we prevent that from happening? And where we just let it come, we just let the bulldog dozer roll through, and then we, as the conservation institution, pick up the pieces. We need to change it from that to one of how we can design where are the most important wildlife corridors and connectivity across the landscape so that species can track their climate niches as the climate changes and that we can protect hotspots of biodiversity and manage for threatened and endangered species and all of the things that we do in a way that's proactive versus reactive. And by doing landscape design, we can think about, okay, it's not us versus them. And I said landscape design, not landscape conservation design, as I said in the beginning, because it's not us versus them. Landscape conservation design is a great step, but it's still us as the conservation institution versus everyone else. Landscape design takes us to that holistic view of, hey, these things really do matter to people and to people's livelihoods and people's quality of life. So, we do need to allow for certain values to be maintained on the landscape that are in contradiction to conservation values. But can we do it in a way where the environmental impacts are minimized? In other words, can we plan proactively for connectivity and say, hey, if you need to put in a transportation corridor that parallels I-95 to relieve traffic congestion, let's look at how you would place that on the landscape, where you would put it so that it's not going to disrupt panther migration pathways and other types of aquatic and terrestrial connectivity. Can we do it in a way where really sensitive and rare ecosystem types aren't going to be bulldozed over working with solar projects, for instance, to say, hey, here's a spot, here's the best spot for that, versus just what's the cheapest land or the easiest to get to? Which is what some of the decisions that are being made now. So, that idea of being proactive is really key to what we're talking about. And then from the partnership standpoint, we're not looking for shared objectives necessarily at that landscape level. We're looking for compatible objectives. That's something that Gordon Myers, who just took over a landscape coordinating role with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies earlier this month, pointed out to me at the last SECAS Steering Committee Meeting. We were having this conversation about “compatible” versus “shared.” A compatible objective would say, okay, well, we might be doing this for different reasons, but it will help us get to the outcome that both of us want. So, one group might be really thinking about access to affordable housing, and another group might be thinking about wildlife connectivity, but if they're compatible, it means, yes, we're working together to both achieve our individual outcomes, even if they're not the same thing, driven by the same reason. And then lastly, the last point I'll make here, before tossing it back to here, what you all think is we have to talk about the NIMBY phenomenon. NIMBY or “Not, In My Backyard,” we have to be open and honest about the history of placing energy projects, for example, in the backyards of communities of color and on tribal reservations. When we think about where we're going to place transportation corridors or a solar energy project, we really need to look ourselves in the mirror. Sometimes, the voices that are not represented at the table do not have the chance to speak. And so, the NIMBY phenomenon means, yeah, I would love for this solar energy project to go forward; just don't put it in my backyard. Don't put it near my community. But hey, you can put it towards that other community over there. That's different than me. And guess what? They're not at the table, so they're not going to have anything to say about it; so we can get it on the books. We have a legacy of doing that in our country as well as other places around the world. If we are going to do this sustainably, we need to think about breaking some of those patterns, those historic patterns of inequity and injustice, and ensuring that underrepresented groups are at the table. You know, in the past, it was, oh, well, it's better for the entire landscape, even if it's bad for this community, right? Like, take one for the team. But that way of doing business and making decisions is over, right? And we need to really think about what that looks like to be more inclusive. And we're doing so in a way that is better for all of humanity and not just the typical conservation partners we usually work with.
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[28:31] Tom: That was a great answer to my initial question that I was asking, you know, what are we asking people to do differently? And so, we're asking people to get together, look at what we have in common, look at some of those injustices, look at some of those ways that things can be done better in terms of where we spatially put important parts of how people make a living on the landscape. So, my question then is, what are some of the modalities to get towards that outcome that we're looking for? Is it that county planners are incorporating this information into their strategic plan? That's where many things happen at a local level, all sorts of local level governance bodies that do planning. How does that information that we develop in a landscape design get to the ground so that people can use it to make decisions and have those conversations? Or does that happen at the level of the collaborative landscape partnership that might be developed? I'm just trying to get your sense of your kind of theory of change, I guess, about how that works.
[29:32] Amanda: Yeah, that's great, Tom. I mean, that's the $65 million question, really: getting down to the implementation piece. And there are as many models out there as there are groups that are working on these types of challenges. So, there's no silver bullet or one way to do it. But community planners and county-level practitioners really inspire me, and if anyone has ever thought about going to the National Adaptation Forum but hesitated, I'm going to say, please go. It is pretty much the only conference that I like to go to these days. And it's a forum where many community planners, state level folks, come together, tribal leadership shows up in force, and they talk amongst each other about how, hey, how can we do this? How can we combine forces? How can we link? And a lot of those conversations are also being had at these landscape scales, these broad coalitions across really large regions. And so that communication needs to happen both ways. If you have a good landscape conservation design, like SECAS has the Southeast Conservation Blueprint, our map shows 50% of the highest priority areas for conservation across the entire southeast and the Caribbean. Our team, the SECAS staffers, love to sit down with local practitioners and say, well, where do you fall out within the Blueprint? And how can you, you know, the actions that you're taking on a local scale, how does that scale up across the Southeast? And so, stepping down these large designs into implementable local plans is kind of the point, right? Because you're not going to implement action at the landscape scale. Most likely, the action will take place in smaller, you know, management units or smaller within municipal boundaries, things like that. Within watersheds or areas of a land trust or other organizations. So, stepping it down is key, but then also making sure that your landscape design is inclusive of the local needs, the local priorities so that if somebody from a state scale or a watershed scale or a county scale or a municipal scale looks at the design, they should be able to see their priorities reflected. And if they don't, we need to go back and revise it. So, the Southeast Conservation Blueprint gets revised on an annual timeframe because we do reach out and work with individuals from across the entire Southeast to say, sometimes they say, “Look, that doesn't make sense: you're over prioritizing this, and you're completely missing this other thing.” And our staff love to hear that because it's an opportunity to improve the Blueprint, to make it more reflective of what's really a priority on the ground. So, it's that two-way communication that's critical. And also, when it comes to organizations or sectors of the population who have not traditionally been included in the design and this type of large-scale planning, you know, there's one thing to say, “Well, we need to invite them to the table.” Clearly, we do, but I think the critical first step is for us to join their tables, meeting the conservation institution and meeting large-scale regional collaboratives. We need to join their tables. We need to meet them where they are and listen. Listen to what's important to their communities, listen to what's important to their livelihoods, what are their greatest challenges, what are their perceived obstacles, and what are their opportunities. And how can we learn from their experiences to integrate their needs better into what we're doing? And some examples are, you know, in the panhandle of Florida, there are North Star communities that have come together and formed a coalition in the wake of Hurricane Michael. So, Hurricane Michael just destroyed a lot of communities and the Florida Panhandle, and they're still, to this day, recovering and picking up the pieces. Several communities have come together into, again, what I call, they're calling themselves North Star Communities, and they are communities that are heirs’ property. So, you have African American communities who can trace their land back in their families for generations, generations upon generations. And you have folks who might not have gone to college, yet they know how to manage their land like nobody's business. They can read their land like the back of their hand, and they really know what it is that they're doing. They were trying to put together a trail that would link the North Star Communities to bring in some tourism and recreation economy. The trail would then end up in a national forest area where people could camp and everything for the weekend. But to get there, you'd walk through these communities and there would be museums describing the experiences of the people who lived in these small communities and the history. And there could be libraries, and there could be ice cream shops and different businesses popping up along this trail. And so, when the North Star Community group decided that they, you know, “Hey, let's get funding to build this trail, to build this cultural connectivity across the Florida Panhandle landscape,” they were laughed out of the door. You don't have the science. You don't have enough data behind what you're talking about. You know, this is science funding. And so, the communities reached out to the SECAS staffers, and the SECAS staffers pulled up the Southeast Conservation Blueprint and said, all right, you know what? Let's talk about why this is important: biodiversity for aquatic connectivity, terrestrial connectivity, and all of these various resources, natural resources, and cultural resources. Let's put some numbers on paper. And so, they were able to pull out statistics of exactly why and how this project is going to be beneficial for the larger conservation community and help us reach that goal of a connected network of lands and waters. That's our vision. Our goal is a 10% improvement in the health, function, and connectivity of the southeastern landscape by 2060. They could pull statistics out and put it on paper and have a very solidified scientific justification for why this project makes sense. Next thing you know, the project's getting funded, and then it's going underway. And so, it's that. It's that partnership. It's listening to the communities, understanding what it is that they need going to them, not asking them to come to us, and then finding that way where we can take that regional landscape scale design and scientific information and target it to on the ground outcomes in the local communities where people live.
[36:39] Rob: Amanda, you talked a little bit about this NIMBY concept and suggested that the conservation community needs to come around with the idea that sometimes these big infrastructure projects are going to go in, in the landscape that we care about, and we have to accept that. And I think that's right. But isn't that part of the negotiation process? So, when you get to the point where there's a large infrastructure project going in or being proposed, and the collaborative is able to provide some perspective on that project, isn't the time to have a discussion about implementing that project? Isn't it appropriate to do that at the tail end of that design process, or are those decisions being made separate from the design process?
[37:40] Amanda: A little bit of both. I would say that we don't want to wait until the end of the design process to think about who might be impacted by the design and to make sure that they're at the table to help direct how the design looks at the end and the reason why NIMBY exists is because, I mean, first off, you can't have a table that's big enough that has everybody sitting at it. It's not going to function. So, you have a cross-section of the larger community sitting at a table to identify what's important and where we will put things. Large-scale infrastructure projects will continue. Let's not fool ourselves. They will continue. But can we do it in a way that's smarter, has less ecological footprint, less impact, and does not contribute to our systems of hierarchy, oppression, and injustice? Right. So, one of the ways that we can do that is by, okay, maybe there are some proposed sites for a large infrastructure project, and we want to say, all right, well, who would be impacted by that? And make sure that those people have a voice, because it's when they don't have a voice that that project's going to be placed in their backyard because the people who do have a voice will say, great, we want the project to go forward, but just not right here. And so, then there's a power dynamic where the people who are given a voice in the design project get to decide what goes where and what gets implemented where. And those folks who are not at the table, you know, well, we're not even thinking about them because they're not even here. And that's. That's what set up our current system of inequality. And I live here in New Orleans. I don't live very far from a place called Cancer Alley, a corridor through the river parishes and south of Baton Rouge called Cancer Alley for a reason because there's been so much environmental pollution from the petroleum industry here in Louisiana that the rates of cancer are just very high. And so, who lives in Cancer Alley? It is a majority-black area, and it is an area that struggles with poverty and access to some basic resources. And those folks weren't at the table when the decisions were made. They weren't at the table when the decisions were made to put a petrochemical plant right outside of their community, you know, right next to the school. And so, moving forward, clearly, we need to move away from industries that are toxic to human health and think about nature-based solutions in general. But we need to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's inclusive. And so, it's always better to include impacted communities or marginalized voices from the very beginning than it is at the end. Well, if you've made it to the end and you're going to include people, that's better than not including them at all. But if you're really going to have a say and to be able to direct how the landscape design is going to look, it'd be better to have them involved from the very beginning, and they might have perspectives and ideas that no one's even considered before. And it can bring a new level of innovation to the project when you have a whole new sector of folks at the table.
[41:11] Tom: I've heard this concept throughout our podcasts, and Amanda, you brought it up as well: the concept of a common table where people get together to talk, have dialogue, review information, and develop strategies. I think that's a common theme throughout all the podcast episodes. So, thank you for bringing that up. Rob, is there anything else you'd like to add?
[41:33] Rob: People want to participate in the decision-making process, and we could get into a discussion about the current political state of the country and the divisions that we're dealing with currently, but I think some of those divisions are precisely because people have felt disenfranchised and that decisions are being made without their participation. So, I salute Amanda and her comments regarding empowering people and local communities specifically. Tom and I have been talking quite a bit about that for the book, and I think we're ready to make a recommendation as part of it. So, I just wanted to comment on that. Tom, if there's anything else you'd like to add.
[42:21] Tom: No, I thought this was a great discussion. Thanks, Amanda, for talking with us today.
[42:25] Rob: Amanda, do you have any final thoughts?
[42:28] Amanda: Sure. Some of the tribes here in the Southeast have been helping me understand more about this idea of reciprocity and how that translates to a regional collaborative like SECAS and doing the work that we do. You know, across the entire Southeast, we often reach out to tribes asking for their indigenous knowledge, asking for their participation in various aspects of the landscape conservation and design work that we do. And so often, you know, we say thank you, and then don't return to the tribe with, here's the results, and here's how your information was used, and just ensuring that indigenous knowledge is incorporated, as well as western science; how both, well, all…there's not just two. It's not a duality, but how all these different ways of knowing can lead to the data supporting a regional design effort. And so, this idea of reciprocity has been what I've been working with for the past year or so within the SECAS partnership, and one of the natural resources and cultural resources that's really important in the Southeast is Giant River Cane. It is a habitat for many threatened and endangered species, including Swainson's warbler and others. “Canebrakes” is another word for it, and they have been reduced to 10% of its historic range. Right, because canebrakes are also, like, a really good place to build houses and infrastructure. But for the tribes in the Southeast, who already, many of them have already been displaced from their ancestral lands, and. And they might live in Oklahoma, but they're really interested in what's going on in Mississippi. In Louisiana, for instance, river cane is a cultural keystone species, where it's used to make baskets, textiles, and building materials. It's used for instruments; it's used for tools and other really important aspects of society. And so, it's a cultural keystone species for at least 16 tribes in the southeast who formed the River Cane Restoration Alliance. And so, we're thinking about bringing in river cane as a cultural indicator into the Southeast Conservation Blueprint from a scientific perspective. But we can't do that without indigenous knowledge. And at the same time, the people with that knowledge are aging. And in some tribes, there might only be one individual left who has that knowledge. And so, the clock is ticking to get this information documented and share it with natural resource managers so that they can manage river cane breaks on National Wildlife Refuges, for instance, and in other areas. But in a model of reciprocity, we need to set the table and invite our tribal partners to come eat. We're going to put the spread out. We will have the all-day buffet and then invite our tribal partners to come and eat. Maybe we'll do that two or three times and then ask our tribal partners if they can contribute their indigenous knowledge and put skin in the game of helping do the restoration of Giant River Cane and so forth, but especially when we have had a long history within government, but also, you know, just the larger community of not being good partners. We have a lot of trust that we need to build, and we have to right a lot of the wrongs of the past. And that's gonna take however long it takes before we get to the part where we feel like we have all of us at the table.
[46:16] Rob: Well, thanks again to our guest, Doctor Amanda Sesser, and thank you, our listeners, for tuning in to Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast. I've been your co-host, Rob Campellone…
[46:31] Tom: …and I've been the other co-host, Tom Miewald. Join us every two weeks for another informative episode of Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast.
[46:40] Intro / Outro: Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast is researched, written, edited, and produced by Rob Campellone and Tom Miewald. Lucas Gallardi created the Designing Nature's Half cover art and logo design. Tom Askin is the voice behind the intro and outro, and the music was written and performed by composer Aleksey Chistilin via Pixabay. Designing Nature's Half: The Landscape Conservation Podcast is a proud member of Mind Matter Media, a startup multimedia network whose mission is to change the world by designing sustainable and resilient landscapes for people, planet, and prosperity.
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Dr. Amanda Sesser, the Coordinator of the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) Partnership, discusses the need for inclusive design and decision-making processes that involve diverse stakeholders and empower communities. By bringing together various sectors of society, such as transportation, energy, and conservation, sustainable landscapes can be co-designed, created, and managed for people, planet, and prosperity. The episode emphasizes the need to balance human well-being and ecological integrity – a challenge that requires a new governance model that breaks down silos in traditional planning and decision-making. It addresses historic patterns of inequality and injustice to create a more inclusive and equitable society and highlights the concept of reciprocity and the importance of engaging indigenous and other disenfranchised people.