It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 19, 2020
The day is dawning on a four-day work week
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a window is opening for good ideas to move from the fringes to the mainstream — and that includes a four-day work week.
(Simon Abrams/Unsplash)Karen Foster, Dalhousie University Like any crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic is an opportunity to rethink how we do things. As we near the 100-day mark since the pandemic was declared, one area getting a significant attention is the workplace, where a window is opening for good ideas to move from the fringes to the mainstream. For example, when millions more Canadians started working from home, many businesses were forced to experiment with telecommuting. Interestingly, many now say they’ll continue after the pandemic passes, because it benefits employers and employees alike. Another idea, less widely tested than telecommuting, is generating buzz: the four-day work week. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern raised the possibility of a shortened work week as a way to divvy up jobs, encourage local tourism, help with work-life balance and increase productivity. As a sociologist who teaches about work and wrote a book about productivity, I believe she’s right.
Not a compressed schedule
A four-day work week must not be confused with a compressed schedule that has workers squeeze 37.5 to 40 hours of work into four days instead of five. For reasons that should be clearer below, that won’t help us now. A true four-day workweek entails full-timers clocking about 30 hours instead of 40. There are many reasons why this is appealing today: families are struggling to cover child care in the absence of daycares and schools; workplaces are trying to reduce the number of employees congregating in offices each day; and millions of people have lost their jobs. A shorter work week could allow parents to cobble together child care, allow workplaces to stagger attendance and, theoretically, allow the available work to be divided among more people who need employment.
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A four-day working week could be the shot in the arm post-coronavirus tourism needs The most progressive shorter work week entails no salary reductions. This sounds crazy, but it rests on peer-reviewed research into shorter work weeks, which finds workers can be as productive in 30 hours as they are in 40, because they waste less time and are better-rested.
Most employees probably wouldn’t mind spending their own money on essentials provided at the office in exchange for a four-day work week.(Jasmin Sessler/Unsplash) Shorter work weeks reduce the number of sick days taken, and on their extra day off, employees don’t use the office’s toilet paper or utilities, reducing their employer’s costs. Therefore, while it is counter-intuitive, it’s possible for people to work less at the same salary while improving their employer’s bottom line. That people might have to spend more of their own money on toilet paper is a concession most workers would probably accept. The same body of research also has more predictable findings: people like working less.
Entrenched morality of work
If it makes this much sense, why don’t we have a four-day week already? It turns out this question is more than 150 years old. Some of the answer pertains to the logistics involved in transforming our whole system of work, that’s not the entire answer. After all, the work week has been reduced before, so it can technically be done again. The rest of the reason is rooted in capitalism and class struggle. Thinkers from Paul Lafargue (“The Right to Be Lazy,” first published in 1883) to Bertrand Russell (“In Praise of Idleness,” from 1932) and Kathi Weeks (“The Problem with Work,” from 2012) have concluded we resist worktime reductions in the face of supportive evidence — and our own desires for more leisure — because of the entrenched morality of work and the resistance on the part of “the rich” to “the idea that the poor should have leisure,” in Russell’s words. We are extremely attached to the idea that hard work is virtuous, idle hands are dangerous and people with more free time can’t be trusted.
Four-day work weeks floated in the 1930s
Nobody is suggesting evil governments conspire with evil bosses to keep powerless people busy. As historian Benjamin Hunnicutt has shown, there was significant interest in shorter work hours in the 1920s and 30s, when the 30-hour week was touted as a way to “share” the work among the Great Depression’s unemployed and underemployed citizens.
Henry Ford is seen in this 1919 photo.United States Library of Congress, CC BY Even industrialists W. K. Kellogg and Henry Ford supported a six-hour day because they believed more rest would make for more productive workers. But Hunnicutt’s research in Work Without End reveals that some employers cut wages when they cut work hours, and when employees fought back, they dropped their demands for shorter work hours and focused instead on wage increases. In the complex push and pull of capitalism, eventually even the New Deal, which influenced policy and discourse in Canada, shifted away from its early demands for more leisure toward demands for more work. It’s quite possible we will do the same in our COVID-19 moment, and beg to be put back to work five days a week when this is all over. But we have new reasons for considering shorter work weeks, and they might be more widely persuasive. It is also possible that we have finally given up on the false promise that working longer will translate into better lives. The four-day work week could be another wild idea that makes it through the pandemic’s open policy window. Karen Foster, Associate Professor, Sociology and Social Anthropology and Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Rural Futures for Atlantic Canada, Dalhousie University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
100 days of coronavirus has sent shock waves through the food system
The 100 days of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of our food system, including the treatment of migrant labourers.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan DenetteEvan Fraser, University of Guelph The COVID-19 lockdown has exposed a large number of problems in the food system. Whether it was the panic buying or workers in meat-packing plants testing positive for the virus, serious concerns have been raised about the resilience of the processes we depend upon for our daily bread. At the same time, the people who process our food, keep our grocery store shelves stocked and run our farms have, to a large extent, managed to adapt to the greatest disruption in our generation.
A timeline
We begin our journey of celebrating these accomplishments, and reflecting on these challenges, in March. At the start of the shutdown, Canadians were shocked and scared to see grocery store shelves empty as the first wave of panic buying depleted inventories. In retrospect, this was a relatively short-term problem, and the supply chains worked hard to restock shelves. Government helped in several ways, including by allowing stores to restock 24 hours a day. In addition, front-line food system workers received some hazard pay and there was a rapid expansion in grocery delivery services. It wasn’t very long after this that the main food-related pandemic story was focused on Canada’s restaurants. When the hospitality sector shuttered, over a million jobs, and tens of thousands of businesses, were lost. This also threw a wrench into our supply chains since systems that were set up to feed restaurants and cafeterias had to pivot to meet the rising demand from grocery stores. As families reconnected over home-cooked meals and pondered planting community gardens, we also became aware that what we eat at home is different than what we eat at restaurants. The demand for home baking supplies soared while potatoes, which mostly are eaten in restaurants as French fries, went to waste. The industry also struggled with packaging. When restaurants purchase items like eggs or flour, they tend to buy in much larger quantities than when individual families do, so products went to waste as the packaging system worked hard to adapt.
Marginal workers
The next major food story related to temporary foreign workers as international travel bans caused panic among farm groups. Canadian farmers depend on tens of thousands of foreign workers coming to our country every year. The government responded by expediting visas and providing some money to farmers who suddenly had to retrofit dormitories to allow for quarantining and social distancing. These workers have arrived in Canada, and some of them have tested positive for the virus after contracting COVID-19 here. At least two have died. Mexico has consequently barred any additional seasonal workers from coming here, at least temporarily.
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Coronavirus: Canada stigmatizes, jeopardizes essential migrant workers Overall, worker health, farm income and Canada’s harvest are all under threat. Workers in meat-packing plants like Cargill in Alberta also started falling ill, and at least three died. At one point, almost 75 per cent of Canada’s beef-processing capacity was shut down as companies struggled to keep workers safe. Plants reopened after retrofitting to allow for social distancing, but this continues to threaten worker health, has hurt productivity and caused backlogs in the system that reduce farm income. It also led to animals being euthanized.
A mourner places flowers at a memorial for Hiep Bui Nguyen, a Cargill worker who died from COVID-19, in Calgary.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh Both the migrant worker and meat-processing plant situations reveal an uncomfortable truth about Canada’s food system. The people we depend on the most to keep us fed are often the lowest paid, the most exposed to hazardous circumstances and have the most precarious employment and immigration status. These issues should prompt a much-needed national conversation about how we treat labourers in the food system.
Food insecurity
Lastly, one of the most significant COVID-related food stories is the rise of food insecurity in Canada and internationally. From the beginning of the crisis, food banks witnessed startling increases in the number of people needing assistance. Governments responded by putting money into the emergency food sector in unprecedented amounts.
Volunteers prepare meals for food banks on the floor of the Bell Centre in May 2020 in Montréal.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz The United Nations has warned, however, the world faces famines of “biblical proportion” due to both challenges in the supply chains, along with the economic cost of the pandemic.
A national conversation
The pandemic has caused ripple effects in the food system in Canada and around the world. But there are silver linings to this otherwise dark cloud. Despite the challenges, the system has performed remarkably well, and Canadians should be thankful for the ingenuity, selflessness and hard work that has gone into keeping us all fed. At the same time, the problems revealed over the last 100 days illustrate profound structural vulnerabilities. Society is at a teachable moment, and we should take advantage of the lessons we have learned and establish the policies, programs and technologies to ensure our food system becomes stronger, more resilient and more equitable in the years to come. This is why the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph has teamed up with the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute — and other stakeholders from across the food system — to launch “Growing Stronger: Aiming for Resilience in our Canadian Food System.” If you would like to provide input, please consider uploading thoughts to our online portal. The author would like to thank artist Scott Mooney for the illustrated timeline pictured above. Evan Fraser, Professor, Director of the Arrell Food Institute and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security, University of Guelph This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Global urbanization created the conditions for the current coronavirus pandemic
Extended urbanization happens within a capitalist framework of massive inequality. The food, gas, electricity and water that make urban life possible are often packaged, piped, cabled and plumbed into the city. Urban lifestyles are sustained by vast networks of infrastructure and industry that reach into environments well beyond. These relationships are profoundly shaped by the exploitation, injustice and oppression that capitalism relies on and perpetuates. The colonial character of urbanization violently transforms material landscapes and destroys, diminishes and confines imaginaries of difference, resistance and possibility. Uneven development produces the potential for inevitable and sometimes unpredictable catastrophes. In 2019, natural disasters devastated regions from Australia to California to Mozambique; the poor, working class, Indigenous and ethnic minorities were disproportionately affected. In other words, those on the periphery, physically and metaphorically. In California, prison labour — increasingly managed by private companies — is used to fight wildfires. Meanwhile, animals and other non-human life trying to escape scorched landscapes change their relationships with humans as was the case during the Australian inferno that began in September 2019.
Anthropocentric imaginings
Science fiction, which often occupies its own kind of literary periphery, can help us examine and imagine new human-nature relationships. In Christopher Nolan’s 2014 movie Interstellar, humanity attempts to escape nature — and its own nature — by becoming a God-like, post-human divinity that can control black holes and wormholes. In contrast, in Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 film Blade Runner 2049, sustainability and food efficiency are achieved in a post-capitalist manner: the globe is covered in solar panels and synthetic farms. What remains is a deeply divided planet, and the political ecologies of extended urbanization are classed, racialized and gendered.
This scene from ‘Blade Runner 2049’ shows a flight over a futuristic Los Angeles, Calif. The ambiguous worlds of Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Andrea Hairston’s Mindscape and Samuel Delany’s Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia, to name a few, are reminders that humans, nature, technology, environments and the relationships between are them are malleable.
Complicit systems
The way in which capitalist states and enterprises address crises like fires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic are illustrative: governments behave like ostriches by burying their heads as extended urbanization and capital expansion continue unabated. Blaming environmental destruction on all of humanity obscures the variable degrees to which people are responsible; this depends both on their economic and political power and their access to and use of natural resources. It isn’t urbanization alone that caused the pandemic, and it isn’t capitalism alone either. It is the political ecology of extended urbanization that created the conditions under which COVID-19 could emerge, proliferate and go global. Roger Keil, Professor, Environmental Studies, York University, Canada; Maria Kaika, Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, University of Amsterdam; Tait Mandler, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Urban Planning, University of Amsterdam, and Yannis Tzaninis, Postdoctoral fellow, Sociology, University of Amsterdam This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Trump rally in Tulsa, a day after Juneteenth, awakens memories of 1921 racist massacre
The Greenwood section of Tulsa, Okla., is seen in flames during in 1921 during one of the worst acts of anti-Black racism in American history.
(Creative Commons), CC BY-SARussell Cobb, University of Alberta
For only the second time in a century, the world’s attention is focused on Tulsa, Okla. You would be forgiven for thinking Tulsa is a sleepy town “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,” in the words of the musical Oklahoma!. But Tulsa was the site of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history, and a long, arduous process of reconciliation over the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 was jarred by President Donald Trump’s decision to hold his first campaign rally there since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The city is on edge. Emotions are raw. There’s anxiety about a spike in coronavirus cases, but lurking even deeper in the collective psyche is a fear that history could repeat itself. Tens of thousands of Trump supporters will gather close to a neighbourhood still reckoning with a white invasion that claimed hundreds of Black lives.
In this June 15, 2020, photo, people walk past a Black Wall Street mural in the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Okla. Dozens of blocks of Black-owned businesses were destroyed by a white mob in deadly race riots nearly a century ago.(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki) A Trump rally near a site of a race massacre during a global pandemic already sounded like a recipe for a dangerous social experiment. But then there was the matter of timing. The rally was to be held on Juneteenth (June 19), a holiday commemorating the day slaves in the western portion of the Confederacy finally gained their freedom. Normally, Juneteenth in Tulsa is one big party, the rare event that brings white and Black Oklahomans together. But fears about spreading COVID-19 led organizers to cancel the event. Then came the protests over the murder of George Floyd. During those demonstrations in Tulsa, a truck ran through a blockade of traffic, causing one demonstrator to fall from a bridge. He is paralyzed from the waist down.
COVID-19 cases surging
To make a bad situation even worse, the city is witnessing a surge in coronavirus cases. Local health officials have acknowledged that the increase in new cases, mixed with close to 20,000 people packed into an arena, is “a perfect storm” that could fuel a super-spreader event.
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum speaks during a news conference at police headquarters.(Matt Barnard/Tulsa World via AP) Some of Mayor G.T. Bynum’s biggest supporters began pleading with him to cancel the event. Bynum is of that rarest of species, a Republican who has staked part of his political legacy on combating racism. It was Bynum who shocked the white establishment by ordering an investigation into potential mass grave sites from the 1921 massacre, even as many Republicans accused him of opening old wounds. Faced with the prospect of provoking a fight with Trump, however, Bynum equivocated.
Bynum found himself under attack from former friends and allies who urged him to do something. Then, on June 13, the Trump campaign announced that it would change the date of the rally to June 20 “out of respect” for Juneteenth. It was a small victory for protesters, but some were further enraged by Bynum’s moral equivalence between the protests over Floyd’s murder and a Trump campaign rally.
Reminiscent of another mayor
The mayor’s impotence has also brought back memories of 1921. The mayor then, T.D. Evans, found himself unable — or unwilling — to stand between an angry white mob ginned up over fears of a “Black uprising” and a Black community demanding racial equality. Evans saw the rising influence of the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma politics and quietly voiced his displeasure. As the Tulsa Tribune cultivated white paranoia about a Black invasion of white Tulsa, Evans, and many like him, did little. “Despite warnings from Blacks and whites that trouble was brewing,” Tulsa Word reporter Randy Krehbiel wrote in a book about the massacre, “(Evans) remained mostly silent.”
In this 1921 file image provided by the Greenwood Cultural Center, Mt. Zion Baptist Church burns after being torched by white mobs during the 1921 Tulsa massacre.(Greenwood Cultural Center via Tulsa World via AP) One historical parallel with 1921 stands out above the rest: the power and influence of “fake news” to mobilize alienated voters. While much has been made of a revolution of social media and YouTube to undercut the gatekeepers of traditional media, a false news article was the most proximate cause of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. The Tulsa Tribune published an article on May 30, 1921, with an unproven allegation that a Black man, Dick Rowland, had tried to rape a white woman in a downtown elevator. The dog-whistle came through loud and clear. No evidence was presented and charges were later dropped. But the news was enough to set off calls for a lynching of Rowland.
Hundreds killed
A mob formed around the Tulsa courthouse. The Tribune had been stoking fears of a “Black uprising” for months, running stories of race mixing, jazz and interracial dancing at Black road houses. A few Blacks armed themselves and tried to stop the lynching. The sight of armed Blacks made the white mob direct its fury at a bigger target — the Black section of town, Greenwood. By the dawn of June 1, 1921, Greenwood lay in ruins, with hundreds dead and thousands interned in camps. The devastation did not come as a surprise to those who had watched the rise of xenophobia during the First World War and the second coming of the KKK, an organization that received a boost after the screening of the racist film The Birth of a Nation in 1915 at the White House.
Trump reaches into his suit jacket to read remarks following the events in Charlottesville, Va. He defended white supremacists following a Unite the Right rally that turned violent.(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Tulsa, and the nation, had been primed for racial violence by a white supremacist media and presidential administration. Many well-intentioned people stood idly by, hoping the trouble would soon blow over. It did not. Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. During the spring of 1921, Tulsa got the tragedy. With Trump rallying tens of thousands of his supporters near Greenwood amid a deadly pandemic, the best we can hope for this time around is farce. Russell Cobb, Associate Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Alberta This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Fighting fire with fire: Botswana adopts Indigenous Australians' ancient burning tradition
ISFMISam Johnston, University of Melbourne Interest in Aboriginal fire knowledge has been high since last summer’s terrible bushfires. One initiative shows the huge potential benefits of this ancient practice – not just in Australia, but globally. The International Savanna Fire Management Initiative (ISFMI) is taking the fire management techniques of indigenous northern Australians to the world. Recently, it’s reinvigorated traditional fire management in Botswana, in southern Africa. Results so far show the Botswana project is likely to prevent significant amounts of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere, reduce destructive fires, promote a productive landscape, increase biodiversity and revive traditional culture. Australia’s bushfire royal commission is currently looking at how Aboriginal knowledge can be incorporated into mainstream fire management. So let’s take a closer look at how it’s already working in Australia and abroad.
An example of traditional indigenous Australian burning.Warddeken Land Management
Reviving an ancient practice
Intense bushfires devastate ecosystems, biodiversity, human health, livelihoods and economies. Climate change will increase the severity, incidence and intensity of bushfires in many regions. Over thousands of years, Aboriginal people in Australia have used fire to manage natural resources, and as an integral expression of culture. Burning was often undertaken in the early dry season, when fires can develop gently and be easily controlled. Such burning removed fuels such as grass and leaf litter that might otherwise cause bigger fires. It also retains the canopy and other plant matter, and so preserves habitat for animals.
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Our land is burning, and western science does not have all the answers Over time, following the colonisation of Australia, indigenous land managers were forced off or left their traditional lands. Their absence has allowed large and intense bushfires in the late dry season to increase. Traditional fire management techniques were first reintroduced at scale in Western Arnhem, in the Northern Territory, in 2007. Now there are 76 such projects – more than half either owned by, or significantly involving, an Aboriginal community. Since the projects began, the total area affected by destructive wildfires has fallen. This reduces emissions because fires caused by cultural burning are less intense and extensive than large wildfires. This reduction is recognised by the federal government as carbon credits, generating more than A$90 million for communities so far.
Ranger Ray Nadjamerrek demonstrates early dry season burning techniques in West Arnhem.Warddeken Land Management
Exporting Indigenous know-how
The initiative focuses on fire-prone savanna landscapes which globally account for more than 60% of carbon emissions from fire each year. Principally funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, it comprises an active network of indigenous organisations, traditional owners and experts. Botswana was the first site to prove that transferring this knowledge is possible. Among the reasons it was chosen were its savanna landscapes and a tradition of fire management by its own indigenous people. The first ranger exchange took place in May 2019, when Indigenous rangers from Northern Australia travelled to Botswana at the invitation of the Botswanan government.
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A surprising answer to a hot question: controlled burns often fail to slow a bushfire In savannas outside the town of Maun, Botswanan firefighters pitted their controlled burning skills against Australia’s indigenous rangers. The Botswanans applied European-style fire suppression techniques they’ve adopted over the years. This involved fire trucks and 30 people. They ignited the windward side of their area, let the fire race through and then extinguished the flames. It was 38℃, the wind was strong and the bush was dry. It was no surprise the fire was intense and all that remained was a charred landscape. In contrast, two Australian indigenous rangers used hand-held devices called drip torches to weave a path of fire through their area. Their block was gently burnt using the wind, the bush and their skill – clearing out undergrowth and leaving green-topped trees.
Cultural fire leader Otto Champion from Arafura Swamp Rangers, and Bayo Taylor from Karajarri Rangers, demonstrating cultural burning In Botswana.ISFMI The demonstration emphatically convinced the 300 spectators, who comprised most of Botswana’s firefighting community, that the skills of Australia’s indigenous rangers were effective in Botswana’s savannas. Indeed, the techniques used by the visitors are not dissimilar to traditional Botswanan fire methods. The common ground was reflected when the two groups exchanged almost identical fire sticks when the rangers visited a nearby community. Last year, Botswana sent a delegation to Northern Australia to learn more about the techniques. At pilot sites in Botswana, the communities, indigenous rangers and local fire managers are now experimenting with reinvigorating traditional fire techniques.
Cultural fire leader Otto Champion from Arafura Swamp Rangers exchanging fire sticks with Oabatsha community leaders.ISFMI
Lessons learnt
The degradation of savanna landscapes in Australia following colonisation is replicated around the world. Globally, bushfire management is dominated by the concept of fire suppression rather than prevention. Fighting fire with fire seems counter-intuitive to many people. But the Botswana experience shows these attitudes can be changed quickly. Another key lesson is that convincing people and communities to use traditional fire techniques requires real-life demonstrations. Trying to make the point through lectures, simulations and written material has limited impact. And creating networks is essential to connect the few experts and limited resources. Knowledge of traditional fire management around the world is scarce, and experience even more so. In Botswana for example, only a few community elders still have this knowledge.
The indigenous Australian rangers quickly convinced Botswanans of the merit in their fire methods.ISFMI The experiences also show scale is key. A couple of small sites, with a few local people involved, is not enough to manage wildfires effectively.
Beyond Botswana
The initiative has demonstrated how Northern Australia-style traditional fire management will be useful in other savanna environments around the world We are now working on expanding this Australian technology to other promising sites in Angola, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Brazil and Timor Leste. Many other countries are interested in adopting these techniques. New funding, including from the private sector, is needed to scale up traditional fire management internationally.
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Australia, you have unfinished business. It's time to let our 'fire people' care for this land The following people made important contributions to this article: - Nolan Hunter, CEO, Kimberley Land Council - Dean Munuggullumurr Yibarbuk, Warddeken Land Management - Rowan Foley, CEO, the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation - Cissy Gore-Birch, Executive Manager Aboriginal Engagement, Bush Heritage Australia - Professor Jeremy Russell-Smith, Charles Darwin University - Professor José M.C. Pereira, University of Lisbon - Professor Guido van der Werf, Vrije Universiteit Sam Johnston, Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
How investing in green infrastructure can jump-start the post-coronavirus economy
A tow truck driver walks back through floodwaters after hooking up a car on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto in July 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn Examples of urban natural asset planning and management can be found in progressive cities across the world. For instance, the latest urban plan for Stockholm, Sweden, has explicitly integrated the city’s natural assets. The plan gives direction to maintain and strengthen green infrastructure like parks and forests. These assets will be important for increasing climate change resilience and protecting the quality of life and health of Stockholm’s residents. In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, urbanization and climate change combine to increase the frequency of floods and urban heating. These floods damage property, disrupt infrastructure and cause sewer backups, while urban heating increases air pollution and causes heat stress. In response to these threats, the city has developed a climate adaptation strategy that includes plans to expand and strengthen the city’s green spaces to increase water storage capacity and reduce urban heating.
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How cities can add accessible green space in a post-coronavirus world In Canada, the town of Gibsons, B.C., has incorporated the local pond system into their municipal asset management plan. The ponds function as a stormwater system that stores, cleans and filters water that would otherwise require storm sewers, bypass pipes and other forms of engineered infrastructure at a cost of $3.5 million to $4 million. An important additional benefit is that natural assets can help fight climate change by capturing carbon. The Municipal Natural Assets Initiative, which works with local governments to account for and manage their natural assets, has partnered with Gibsons on its stormwater management study. It is now scaling up that example for other communities across Canada, and is helping address some of the barriers that local governments face in managing their natural assets. Investments into natural assets could help municipalities that are stretched thin due to higher spending and lower revenues from COVID-19.
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