Abstract
In cities, towns, and rural areas throughout the Pacific Northwest, there are dozens of communities that are taking the future into their own hands. They are constructing innovative solutions to confront today's pressing issues—environmental change, economic opportunity, access to health care and education, affordable housing, transportation, and cultural vitality. They are thinking creatively, strategically, and inclusively to maximize human flourishing in ways appropriate to their places.
Over the last year and a half, in my role as a Sustainability Catalyst Fellow at Philanthropy Northwest, I have had the privilege of covering eight remarkable projects from a wide variety of places, representing cities, watersheds, and rural communities. Each project demonstrates inventive approaches to community-based sustainability and addresses equity, diversity, and inclusion in meaningful ways. Each shows the ways in which environmental issues touch all aspects of community life. Collectively, the projects offer an impressive portfolio of policies, practices, and processes—providing the Pacific Northwest, and every region of North America, with visions for a sustainable future.
The projects are staffed by a multigenerational and multicultural group of brilliant women and men, representing a range of backgrounds and values. Each project amplifies the varied voices in communities, whose endeavors are deeply rooted in their belief in people and their connections to place. Project leaders and community members alike are generating new ways of thinking and practical actions that facilitate hands-on learning and real community change.
In this editorial, I interpret the roots of sustainability in the Pacific Northwest, briefly describe the projects, and provide a list of emergent practices. I conclude with some comments about why projects such as these are relevant for higher education. For the full picture, with detailed profiles of the projects (including photographs), and more discussion of the emergent practices, please refer to the full report at: https://www.iau-hesd.net/sites/default/files/documents/pnw_changemakersreport_.pdf
The Pacific Northwest enjoys spectacular beauty, abundant natural resources, and rich ecological and cultural diversity. A regional map shows 27 separate bioclimates, stretching from Alaska to Southern Oregon to Wyoming, including coastal rain forests, deserts, fertile lowlands, and interior mountains, each featuring distinctive subdivisions. There are dozens of indigenous tribes with unique languages and cultures. There are immigrant groups from more than 100 countries. There is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States (Seattle), the bustling I-5 corridor, and hundreds of rural communities.
The history of Pacific Northwest settlement is a story of natural resource extraction, especially in timber, mining, agriculture, livestock, and fisheries. Indigenous cultures practiced what we today call environmental sustainability. Their cultural traditions emphasized multigenerational resource use. In only a century, westward expansion brought a different approach to the land, resulting in dramatic increases in clear-cut logging, landscape-scale mining, industrial agriculture, and overgrazing, as well as the depletion of salmon runs. This process still has great impact on communities throughout the Pacific Northwest, prompting difficult conversations about conservation, stewardship, prosperity, and opportunity.
In many communities, the profits from natural resource extraction yield temporary prosperity. When the resource dwindles, some communities are left behind, leaving them with few economic alternatives. This results in unstable boom and bust cycles, undercutting the fabric of community life, requiring communities to reassess their local economies.
The impact of boom and bust cycles takes various forms in urban and rural areas, but there are similar patterns. Seattle and Portland are examples of boom cities, spurred by the arrival of tech and biomed industries, the infusion of cultural creatives (many from the millennial generation), among other factors. Some wish to settle permanently. For others, these cities are way stations in the global economy. One result of these intentional migrations is a spectacular increase in real estate speculation; construction cranes are ubiquitous in the Seattle and Portland skylines.
As gentrification spreads, affordable housing becomes a distant memory. The displaced residents, many in lower economic brackets, can no longer afford to live in their neighborhoods. Hence, affordable housing, accessible transportation, access to health care, and many other basic aspects of community life are under threat. In these communities, environmental sustainability takes on a whole new meaning. Projects such as Seattle's Yesler Terrace and Portland's Living Cully address these challenges by demonstrating equity, diversity, and inclusion as the foundations of a sustainable community.
Medium-sized and smaller cities also experience economic and environmental transitions. Their local economies rely on a natural resource base while also dealing with the realities of a global economy. The Puyallup Watershed Initiative that encompasses Tacoma and the surrounding area is a model for community-centered change, engaging residents in addressing issues of sustainable agriculture, food security, alternative transportation, and industrial storm water. The Walla Walla Community Council brings multiple stakeholders together to study issues of local significance and generate community-based solutions to improve education, food security, and outdoor recreation opportunities. Garden City Harvest in Missoula, Montana, promotes sustainable agriculture and community gardening as a means to foster food security, social well-being, and economic opportunity.
Rural regions are on the frontlines of natural resource extraction cycles. Conservation of natural resources is crucial to their future. Their challenge is to develop an ethic of stewardship so that the natural resource base regenerates, while developing alternative revenue options. The Blackfoot Challenge in Ovando, Montana, bordering the Bob Marshall Wilderness, works with ranchers who are striving to maintain livestock while preserving the quality of the recreational environment. Sustainable Southeast Partnership in Coastal Alaska brings together people from the fishing and timber industries, native communities, and conservationists to develop regional stewardship strategies. The Center Pole on the Crow Reservation is revitalizing cultural traditions and building economic opportunity through programs in food sovereignty and educational attainment.
Community-based sustainability requires balancing ecological integrity and human flourishing; ecosystem health and human health; biological and cultural diversity; and environmental quality and economic growth. Increasingly, communities, businesses, and principalities understand that in order to thrive and prosper, they must achieve sustainability. They aspire to cultivate a spirit of creative innovation in support of civic responsibility, economic opportunity, inclusive decision making, multiple stakeholders, and diverse representation.
What follows is a set of emerging practices for community-based sustainability. These practices emanate from grassroots initiatives, inclusive processes, reflective participation, and a spirit of creative problem solving. All of the projects and people covered in the report embody these practices:
• Understand place as common ground. • Balance short-term needs and long-term strategies. • Invest in economic and ecological security. • Promote creative placemaking to unite changing neighborhoods. • Engage in compromise, consensus, and collaboration. • Cultivate community leadership and expertise. • Emphasize multigenerational solutions. • Encourage innovation and transparency. • Integrate learning and civic engagement opportunities.
These emerging practices are a stark contrast and constructive alternative to the prevailing media wisdom that we are a polarized country, plagued by divisions and rancor, gridlocked by indecision and obstruction. I don't want to minimize the distress experienced in so many communities, or how hard it is to bring people together. Rather, I'd like to emphasize that there is another narrative, one that you'd be hard pressed to find in the corporate media. These community-based sustainability projects are living testimony to what happens when people roll up their sleeves, emphasize their common commitment to place, and dig in for the long haul.
I only had the time and space to visit and learn about eight projects, but there are hundreds more scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest, at different stages of development. Think about the community where you live. I'll bet you can name a dozen projects with a similar profile. There are hundreds, if not thousands of exemplary community-based sustainability projects throughout North America. I could (and hope to) write such changemaker profiles for multiple regions. We need to amplify these successful models for constructive change.
Higher education has a crucial role to play. Seattle University is actively involved with Yesler Terrace. Portland State University works with Living Cully. Every project at one time or another has worked with local educational institutions. These projects provide research opportunities, capstone experiences, internships, and staffing. Public education occurs in multiple venues. Community members who participate in these projects learn about group process, public policy, organizational development, as well as the technical aspects of sustainability—energy conservation, affordable housing, community gardens, public transportation, public health, and environmental planning.
If the sustainability movement is to succeed in the long run, it has to broaden its constituency to include diverse community members and multiple stakeholders. It must expand from environmental sustainability to all aspects of community life. In my view, Pacific Northwest Changemakers represent the future of how we think about sustainability and environment, emphasizing place, equity, inclusion, and opportunity. Campuses can better prepare their sustainability students by involving them in projects such as these. There is no better sustainability education than involving students and faculty in community-based projects.
The success of the campus sustainability movement was built on grassroots action, hardworking campus activists who had a strategic vision for their campus communities. Eventually multiple constituencies got involved. Pacific Northwest Changemakers projects also emerged from grassroots community involvement, permeating all aspects of community life. Imagine the synergy of the campus and community working together. What amazing models for community sustainability we can generate!
Mitchell Thomashow is the author of The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus. He is currently working on a new book project, To Know the World: The Future of Environmental Learning, to be published by The MIT Press. He consults with colleges and universities on their sustainability and environmental studies programs. You can contact him through his website: www.mitchellthomashow.com