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The onset of the pandemic led the International Land Conservation Network (ILCN) to recast plans for a global conservation congress earlier this year, shifting from an in-person gathering for 300 people in Barcelona to a series of virtual webinars. Like many organizations, ILCN saw a surprising benefit emerge from this unexpected change of plans: its webinar series received more than 1,100 registrations from conservation practitioners in 83 countries, and targeted sharing of series recordings in countries including China has expanded that reach into the thousands.
That experience led ILCN to recognize an opportunity: combining targeted, regional outreach with the global reach enabled by virtual tools and strategies could help strengthen engagement throughout the land conservation community. This fall, the organization appointed regional representatives on six continents. “By bringing on this core group of experienced regional representatives, we’re hoping to encourage a more robust exchange of expertise and ideas,” said Chandni Navalkha, program manager for Land Conservation at the Lincoln Institute.
The newly appointed representatives will utilize their deep experience in private and civic land conservation to build upon existing relationships in each region — through meetings and conversations held in person or virtually as the evolving global context allows — and forge new connections with leading practitioners and experts. They will bring their expertise to the broader ILCN community through webinars, newsletter articles, and other channels and, in turn, share resources, news, and strategies related to private and civic land conservation in other geographies with key stakeholders in the region they are representing. In China, for example, regional representative Shenmin Liu will join the steering committee of the China Civic Land Conservation Alliance (CCLCA), where she will share the evolving strategies and policies through which civic conservation efforts will be included in the planning for a new Chinese national park system.
“We are honored to have recruited such a diverse and accomplished group of conservationists to serve as our regional ambassadors,” noted Jim Levitt, director of the ILCN. In early October, Levitt hosted a virtual meet and greet that provided a forum for the representatives to introduce themselves to each other and to members of the ILCN network from around the world. The representatives each spoke for a few minutes about their work, as well as the challenges and opportunities ahead:
Citing the urgency of advancing innovation in land conservation in light of the upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity COP-15 meeting in China, as well as the growing momentum behind the global campaign to protect 30 percent of the earth’s surface by 2030 (30×30), Levitt said the virtual gathering, and the promise of an increasingly connected and collaborative approach to conservation, gave him hope. “It’s not only humbling to be in this group, I hope it’s also emboldening,” Levitt said at the conclusion of the meet and greet. “To know there is a group of people all over the world with the courage and strength and intelligence to prepare a world our great-grandchildren can enjoy . . . . The more connections we make now, the more connections we will make going forward.”
Katharine Wroth is the editor of Land Lines.
Photograph: Aerial View over Okavango Delta in Botswana. Credit: Gfed/Getty Images Plus.
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In communities across the country, parks and open space have seen dramatic increases in use this year as people sought refuge and respite from the COVID-19 pandemic. With public health guidelines recommending staying close to home, urban residents have been using public spaces in unprecedented numbers as places to exercise, be closer to nature, and socialize, dine, or shop at social distances. They have used public spaces to access essential services and to hold protests and demonstrations. The pandemic has elevated the value of parks and open space and has underscored the benefits for cities of creating more public spaces and more equitable access to them. It also has highlighted significant challenges, including how to pay for parks in the face of a looming fiscal crisis.
In many cities, the pandemic prompted city leaders to implement workarounds in neighborhoods without access to parks. The success of adaptive projects like widening sidewalks and bike lanes or closing streets to traffic has encouraged cities to continue to think creatively for the long term. COVID has also prompted discussions about how reimagining public space and creating new collaborations between public agencies could help city leaders make progress toward key urban goals, such as encouraging safer active-mobility options, expanding access to opportunity in underserved neighborhoods, converting vacant or underused land for public use, and developing greater climate resilience. Underlying all of this, the push for creating and maintaining traditional parks—and ensuring equitable access to them—continues.
“The pandemic has proven that parks are essential infrastructure,” says Adrian Benepe, who served until this fall as senior vice president and director of national programs for the Trust for Public Land (TPL) and was parks commissioner for the city of New York from 2002 to 2012. “It’s a great paradox that parks have never been more used or appreciated than now. Everything else was shut down, and parks were a last refuge.”
Even before COVID, parks and recreation had been identified as a growing priority for cities in every region of the United States. According to a 2019 analysis conducted by the National League of Cities, some 63 percent of mayors had outlined specific plans or goals related to parks and recreation in recent “state of the city” speeches, compared to just 28 percent in 2017 (Yadavalli 2019).
As the pandemic continues, many city leaders are asking themselves key questions:
• What have we learned about public parks and open space during the pandemic?
• What are the best practices for providing access to and expansion of public spaces?
• How do we reach out and listen to all communities about their open space needs?
• How can we think differently about our city’s spatial assets, and—perhaps most important—where do we find the land and financial resources to develop new ones?
Parks, Public Health, and Economic Recovery
Across the country, up to 30 percent of urban land typically is occupied by paved streets and parking lots. Parks and open space, by contrast, occupy only 15 percent of urban land. But a national survey conducted in May for the 10 Minute Walk coalition, which includes TPL, the Urban Land Institute, and the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), confirmed the crucial role of local parks and green spaces in maintaining physical and mental health and helping communities navigate toward recovery. Some 81 percent of the 1,000 survey respondents said increasing access to local parks and green spaces would help people enjoy the outdoors safely as states reopened (10 Minute Walk 2020). Two-thirds agreed that parks were important in maintaining physical and mental health, that access to local parks had become more important during the crisis, and that their quality of life would improve with better access to a park or green space near home. Urban respondents were most likely to value nearby green space.
These data points are backed up by years of research indicating that parks and open space provide many “cobenefits” for urban areas, where 80 percent of the U.S. population lives. Studies show that park use can lower the risk of stress, obesity, respiratory problems, cancer, and diabetes. Increased exposure to green space has also been linked to higher cognitive abilities, reductions in aggressive behaviors, and a stronger sense of community.
“The data are clear: Parks and green space soothe and console us, relax and restore us, reduce our anxiety, depression, and stress,” says physician and epidemiologist Dr. Howard Frumkin in Parks and the Pandemic, a TPL special report (TPL 2020b). Frumkin, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, advised: “In this and in future pandemics, we’ll want to combine physical distancing and other infection-control measures with universal access to parks and green space, to help everyone get through hard times as safely as possible.”
In addition to public health benefits, parks and open space are highly valued as economic drivers. In a 2019 NRPA survey, 85 percent of respondents said they seek high-quality parks and recreation amenities when choosing a place to live (NRPA 2019). A March 2020 NRPA poll revealed that 94 percent of respondents recognize the importance of governments investing in infrastructure that promotes economic activity, including parks and trails (NRPA 2020). Proximity to parks increases property values as much as 20 percent, which in turn increases local tax revenues. High-quality public parks and open space also draw new businesses and visitors to cities. In Detroit, the $19 million, 2.5-acre Campus Martius Park helped attract new companies and redevelopment to downtown after it opened in 2004. In recent years, it has attracted over 2 million visitors annually and has helped catalyze more than $1 billion in real estate investments around the park, with billions more development dollars projected in a pipeline that would also lead to thousands of jobs.
Urban areas also derive multiple environmental benefits from parks and green space. Trees absorb pollution, producing billions of dollars in savings from cleaner air; their shade helps reduce the heat island effect by lowering urban temperatures. The ability of parks to absorb water is increasingly valuable, not just in coastal areas and riverfront communities, but also in cities seeking to control stormwater through green infrastructure. As part of Philadelphia’s $4.5 billion, 25-year Green City, Clean Waters program—a collaboration between the Parks and Recreation and Water departments that aims to capture 85 percent of the city’s stormwater runoff—the city pledged to add 500 acres of parks and green spaces in underserved neighborhoods.
Other local initiatives, including the School District of Philadelphia’s GreenFutures plan, the Rebuild Initiative, and TPL’s Parks for People Program, are contributing to the effort to expand access to public green space in the city.
Ensuring Access for All
In recent years, cities have been exploring ways to create more urban parks and open space, but “what’s unique at this moment is people are finally noticing inequities in park access and the urgent need for public parks close to where people live,” says Alyia Gaskins, assistant director of health programs for the Center for Community Investment (CCI) at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. In the context of recent demonstrations and discussions about race and racism, she says, “people are noticing that Black and brown communities are not only at greater risk from COVID-19, but also frequently excluded from the very health benefits parks provide.”
Across the country, more than 100 million people lack safe and easy access to parks within a half-mile of home, says TPL. That number represents about 28 percent of the U.S. population, including 28 million children. In the nation’s 100 largest cities, 11.2 million people lack easy access. The organization says ensuring everyone in those cities has a nearby park would require adding 8,300 parks to the 23,000 that exist. Even where parks are available, inequities exist. A TPL study released in August reported that across the United States, parks serving primarily nonwhite populations are half the size of parks that serve majority white populations and five times more crowded. Parks serving majority low-income households are, on average, a quarter the size of parks that serve majority high-income households, and four times more crowded (TPL 2020a).
During the pandemic, states and cities have varied widely in their approaches to parks and open space. Some cities closed waterfronts and limited park access. Others sought to manage crowds by implementing controls such as timed entries or one-way signs. At the popular Katy Trail in Dallas, where visitors at a single entrance increased from 22,834 in early March to 34,366 by late March, officials instituted a voluntary system that allowed access on alternate days based on the first letter of a visitor’s last name. Some cities prohibited parking at packed parks, prompting equity questions on behalf of people who did not have the proximity or ability to walk or bike there. Other cities addressed the surge in demand for parks by converting streets into pedestrian-friendly spaces. During the initial months of the shutdown, “parks became the most valuable resource in the city,” says J. Nicholas Williams, director of the Oakland Parks, Recreation, and Youth Development Department.
To offer room for recreation in neighborhoods where parks were overcrowded or nonexistent, Oakland closed 74 miles of streets to all but emergency vehicles and local traffic in April. The city relied on a network of streets identified in a 2019 bicycle plan that had been developed with the participation of 3,500 residents.
The Slow Streets program—some version of which has been enacted in cities from Tucson, Arizona, to Providence, Rhode Island—was well received by many Oakland residents, but was also criticized for its initial focus on predominantly white neighborhoods. Working with residents and community groups in more racially and economically diverse areas such as East Oakland, Slow Streets expanded into new neighborhoods and launched “Slow Streets: Essential Places,” which improved pedestrian safety along routes to essential services such as grocery stores, food distribution sites, and COVID-19 test sites.
The Slow Streets program continues, but Williams says Oakland, whose population grew 10 percent in the past decade to 433,000, faces a greater need: “Oakland continues to grow . . . we have to set aside more park land and more equitable access to parks and open space.”
Equitable Park Planning
“City parks are at the center of resilient and equitable cities,” says Catherine Nagel, executive director of City Parks Alliance (CPA), an independent nationwide organization that has worked with mayors to leverage more than $190 million to build urban parks in underserved communities. “Our research shows some of the ways cities can leverage the equity, health, and environmental benefits of parks are to identify new sources of funding, new cost-sharing partnerships, and new [sources of] support.”
Cities are funding parks with adjacent sectors, drawing on or partnering with water, housing, and health departments, and “leveraging outside of the traditional park world,” Nagel says. Property developers are building public parks, and cities are partnering with business improvement districts and nonprofit organizations for programming and management responsibilities. “Parks are more complex than people think,” Nagel says. “They need intensive programming and maintenance, ongoing revenue streams, and the ability to interface with and reflect community user and local needs.”
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, CPA has worked on initiatives that analyze how cities are reallocating money to address equity concerns, how they’re leveraging funding from adjacent sectors, and how they’re innovating for equity and sourcing funding. CPA’s Equitable Park Funding Hub, an interactive online database set to launch this fall, will feature park funding opportunities related to brownfields, workforce development, community development, conservation, climate mitigation, and water and green infrastructure.
The Groundwork USA Network shares examples of park and green infrastructure projects that focus on community ownership and health equity gains for long-term residents in Reclaiming Brownfields (Groundwork USA 2017). In one project, Groundwork Denver helped with visioning, planning, and fundraising to transform a 5.5-acre brownfield site into the Platte Farm Open Space for the Globeville neighborhood in North Denver. Residents of the predominantly low-income Latinx neighborhood, which is surrounded by former industrial sites and bisected by interstates, led the project to restore native shortgrass prairie and install a pollinator garden and paved walking and biking trails. A $550,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment paid for construction and maintenance, which will be completed by the City and County of Denver Departments of Parks and Recreation and Transportation and Infrastructure.
The Denver project illustrates how cities can reimagine current assets. While most don’t have large tracts of vacant land, says Benepe of TPL, they could creatively retrofit brownfields, abandoned industrial sites, sanitary landfills, or railroad and utility rights of way, as high-profile projects like the High Line in New York and Millennium Park in Chicago have shown. Benepe says every city should analyze the equity of its park system and identify potential park and open space sites in underserved neighborhoods.
CCI’s Gaskins says the first step in equitable park planning is to “be in conversation with communities to get their vision for what they want parks to be, whether that’s building new parks or reimagining existing spaces.” Proximity and access are important, she says, “but it’s also the quality of the park and whether people feel welcomed and safe”—both in the park and en route to it.
Particularly in neighborhoods affected by gentrification, longtime residents often don’t feel like amenities such as parks that are introduced with new development are intended for them, Gaskins says. With new development, planners and other city officials should ensure a robust community engagement process. “Parks are more than infrastructure,” she says. “They offer access to programs and services, gathering spaces, and job opportunities that are also important for advancing health equity.”
Paying for Parks in Lean Times
Following the 2008 financial collapse, parks budgets were cut early and were among the last municipal budget items to recover. From 2009 to 2013, park spending dropped 21.2 percent, says NRPA, and by 2013, parks and recreation represented only 1.9 percent of local government expenditures. Deferred park maintenance for many large cities has been estimated in the billions of dollars.
Will parks budgets meet the same fate in the age of COVID? A late-June NRPA survey of more than 400 parks and recreation leaders found that two-thirds of their agencies had been asked to reduce operations spending between 10 to 20 percent for the fiscal year in effect on July 1, and 57 percent were facing 50 to 59 percent median reductions in capital spending. One in five reported their capital budgets had been zeroed out (Roth 2020).
Park advocates warn that city park systems have reached a critical tipping point, with heavy use and COVID-related budget cuts risking irreversible damage in 2020 and beyond. Some say priority funding for maintenance is critical to ensure that parks and green spaces are safe, attractive, and used, while others say investments in new capital projects would do more to help stimulate the economy for COVID recovery. Rachel Banner, NRPA director of park access, notes that park budgets that rely more on property taxes, which have been stable during the pandemic, may be in better shape than those that rely primarily on sales tax revenues. “Diversity in revenue streams is important,” says Banner. “Think about what’s important for resiliency in an economic downturn, like drawing from a variety of sources.”
One successful strategy NRPA has seen is to allocate a standard proportion of the general fund to parks and open space, “especially now that they are absolutely essential.” To address park equity in the capital budget, Banner says, some cities use prioritization criteria related to factors such as the quality of park space, age of equipment, ADA compliance, and neighborhood demographics including income, race, health outcomes, and car ownership.
In many cities and counties, dedicated tax campaigns have shown success in generating a significant portion of parks and open space funding. In March, Oakland voters passed Ballot Measure Q to create a 20-year tax, with 64 percent of the resulting revenues directed for parks, landscape maintenance, and recreational services beginning in FY 2020–2021. The success of Measure Q demonstrated that city residents have “turned a corner in recognizing the value of parks and open space,” says Oakland parks director Williams. While Measure Q doesn’t provide funding for new parks and open space, he says, it does address equity by providing funds to maintain and program smaller community and pocket parks. The measure was projected to bring in $13.4 million for parks in FY 20–21, a figure that hadn’t changed as of the city’s mid-cycle budget review this summer but will continue to be reviewed, Williams says.
Other successful ballot efforts include Denver’s Measure 2A, passed in 2018 and known as the Parks Legacy Fund. Between 2012 and 2017, the city’s population grew 11 percent, but park space increased by only 5 percent; the city also faced $130 million in deferred park maintenance. Combined with general funds, the Parks Legacy Fund was projected to produce $37.5 million a year to renovate parks, acquire land, and build new parks, trails, and open spaces, prioritizing high-need communities. The city expects to revise its budget to reflect COVID-related impacts this fall.
Last year, a ballot measure in New Orleans created hundreds of millions of dollars for parks over 20 years, with a priority for lower-income areas, says Bill Lee, TPL senior vice president of policy, advocacy, and government relations. Despite COVID’s impact on local economies, Lee is optimistic about other ballot-related funding prospects: “More than three-quarters of these measures pass in good and bad economic times, in red and blue states, because people see the value of parks and open space.”
Oklahoma City can attest. In November 2019, the city opened a 36-acre portion of Scissortail Park in the downtown core, on brownfield land that formerly featured abandoned buildings and junkyards. This first phase of the $132 million project features amenities such as a playground, interactive fountains, roller rink, café, performance stage, lake with boathouse and boat rentals, demonstration gardens, farmers’ market, lawn and promenade, and nearly 1,000 trees.
Scissortail Park is located next to the city’s new convention center and near the downtown library, arena, ballpark, and streetcar, all of which received funding from the Metropolitan Area Projects (MAPS) tax, a voter-approved penny sales tax created in 1993 to pay debt-free for projects to revitalize downtown and improve the city’s quality of life. A public-private partnership, the park also has benefitted from millions of dollars in donations, and it earns income from event and equipment rentals, sponsorships, food and beverage concessions, memberships, and grants. Ten years in planning and construction, the park by 2022 will include another 34 acres that will extend to the Oklahoma River with sports fields and natural areas, accessed by a bridge across Interstate 40.
Scissortail Park received a key allocation from the third round of MAPS funding; in December 2019, voters approved a fourth MAPS round, with $140 million dedicated to transforming the city’s neighborhood and community parks and sports facilities, part of a $978 million neighborhood and human services ballot measure.
“Scissortail is our cultural commons for downtown,” says Maureen Heffernan, CEO and president of the Scissortail Park Foundation, which manages the park and has kept it open with limited events and programming during the pandemic. Many people have expressed gratitude for Scissortail Park and the city’s nearby Myriad Botanical Gardens, which Heffernan also manages. “More than ever, beautifully maintained green space in urban areas has been a critical resource for people to enjoy and destress over the last few months,” she says. Urban parks “are something everyone wants and wants to fund, and they’re transformative,” Heffernan notes, adding that Oklahoma City “does not normally like to raise taxes, but residents have approved this MAPS tax because these tangible projects make a dramatic difference in people’s quality of life here.”
Park advocates also are looking to federal legislation for funding. The Great American Outdoors Act, signed into law in August, includes permanent funding from offshore oil and gas fees for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), making $900 million per year available for public lands, including city parks and trails. LWCF’s Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program is a source for annual grants for urban areas with more than 50,000 residents, providing $25 million last year in grants ranging from $300,000 to $1 million, with priority given to projects in low-income areas that lack outdoor recreation opportunities.
Parks advocates also have their eye on potential federal stimulus funds. In May, 100 organizations, including TPL, CPA, NRPA, the American Planning Association, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, asked Congress to include $500 million for jobs related to building or renovating parks in low-income urban areas as part of a future coronavirus stimulus package.
Public-Private Partnerships
In some cases, partnerships with nonprofits make the creation of parks possible. The Western Reserve Land Conservancy (WRLC), a Cleveland-based nonprofit, has conserved over 60,000 acres and created over 155 parks and preserves in the region since the late 1990s. WRLC has raised over $400 million to help land banks demolish 40,000 abandoned or vacant properties throughout Ohio, securing land for low-income communities until it can be redeveloped into parks, green spaces, or sites for affordable housing and other purposes.
Through its Reforest our City program, WRLC has planted more than 10,000 trees in Cleveland; WRLC bought a landfill on a linear site next to the zoo, cleaned up contamination, and developed the 25-acre Brighton Park with a walking/biking trail. Located in a densely populated area, the $1 million park, due to open in October, will be planted with 1,000 trees next year, and will be managed by the Metroparks District, says Jim Rokakis, WRLC vice president and coauthor of The Land Bank Revolution (Rokakis 2020). WRLC is also creating six neighborhood parks in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood that it will own or manage.
Other cities rely on business and philanthropic support to fund parks. About 90 percent of the $19 million cost for Detroit’s Campus Martius Park and surrounding infrastructure was funded by Detroit corporations and foundations. Owned by the city, the park is managed by the Downtown Detroit Partnership. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail, an eight-mile pedestrian and bike trail connecting eight cultural districts in downtown Indianapolis, is undergoing a $30 million expansion with $20 million from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., $5 million from the city, and $1 million from the Anthem Foundation. Cities are also partnering with private developers to build and operate new parks and open space. Since 1993, New York City’s waterfront zoning has required developers to provide public access to the waterfront. The zoning has led to the redevelopment of industrial sites into multiple parks that provide public access and build climate resilience.
The six-acre Domino Park on Brooklyn’s East River, opened in 2018, is part of an 11-acre site that will include the adaptive reuse of the historic Domino Sugar refinery and 3.3 million square feet of mixed-use development with 2,200 housing units, 700 of them affordable. Brooklyn-based developer Two Trees Management, which invested $50 million to build the park and spends $2 million annually on operations, worked closely with the community to identify needs such as a short access road to make the park feel truly public. The park, designed by James Corner Field Operations, includes a waterfront esplanade, recreation facilities, interactive fountains, a five-block artifact walk of salvaged factory machinery, and 175 trees. It provides public waterfront access for the first time in 160 years.
Another promising financing option is land value return, a mechanism through which cities recover the increases in property value triggered by rezoning or by investments in infrastructure. Also known as land value capture, this tool “will be an effective way for cities to convert underutilized spaces into parks and open space,” says Enrique Silva, the Lincoln Institute’s director of international initiatives.
Silva says cities could recover zoning-related increases in land value to secure land and pay for park development. Cities also can recover value through higher property tax assessments that lead to higher municipal tax revenues. City-owned vacant sites intended for buildings the cities can’t currently afford to build could also become temporary or permanent parks and lead to additional land value capture opportunities, he says. Municipal planning tools such as special assessments and transferable development rights also can help fund parks, open space, and infrastructure improvements.
Parks and open space can increase value in the form of climate resilience and now, with COVID, will be viewed as adding social value, says Silva. “There’s increasingly a sense that an investment in parks and open space as public infrastructure is an investment worth making, one that will have increased relevance as more public space is needed,” says Silva. “To the extent that COVID is forcing everyone to rethink public space and there’s a premium on open space in cities,” he says, steps including converting streets for pedestrian use and establishing new parks and open spaces are “where planning is going to lead.”
Survey on Pandemic and Public Spaces
A global survey conducted by Gehl, the Copenhagen-based design and planning firm that reimagined Times Square in New York City for pedestrians and bicyclists, reveals the importance of public space during the pandemic. Some 2,000 respondents from 40 U.S. states, 68 countries, and nearly every continent, about two-thirds of whom hailed from urban areas, shared views on the value of public space in their daily lives:
• 66 percent used nearby public spaces at least once a day, and 16 percent used them several times a day.
• Top public space destinations included the neighborhood street and sidewalk (87 percent), essential places like grocery stores (72 percent), neighborhood parks (67 percent), and stoops, yards, or courtyards (59 percent).
• Two thirds reported walking more during the pandemic; among car owners, that figure was 69 percent.
Gehl’s suggestions for improving access and reducing overcrowding of parks and open spaces include:
• Reallocate space to allow for more physically distant walking, biking, and rolling through sidewalk extensions, parking lane closures, or street closures at the block or multiblock level.
• Prioritize space reallocation measures in neighborhoods without walkable (less than 15-minute) access to parks and essential services.
• Manage flow into more congested public spaces by expanding the number of entrances or by designating gateways as entry-only or exit-only.
• To support seniors and other vulnerable populations, ensure new public spaces create opportunities for sitting at safe distances, not just moving through.
Source: Gehl (https://gehlpeople.com/blog/public-space-playsvital-role-in-pandemic).
Kathleen McCormick, principal of Fountainhead Communications in Boulder, Colorado, writes frequently about healthy, sustainable, and resilient communities.
Lead Image: According to the Trust for Public Land, more than 100 million people—including 28 million children–lack safe and easy access to parks in the United States. Credit: portishead1/iStock.
References
10 Minute Walk. n.d. “Our Research.” https://10minutewalk.org/#Our-research.
Groundwork USA. 2017. Reclaiming Brownfields: Highlights from the Groundwork USA Network. Yonkers, NY: Groundwork USA. https://groundworkusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/GWUSABrownfields-Highlights-2017.pdf.
NRPA (National Recreation and Park Association). 2020. The Economic Impact of Parks: An Examination of the Economic Impacts of Operations and Capital Spending by Local Park and Recreation Agencies on the U.S. Economy. Ashburn, VA: National Recreation and Park Association. https://www.nrpa.org/siteassets/research/economic-impact-study-summary-2020.pdf.
———. 2019. 2019 Engagement with Parks Report. Ashburn, VA: National Recreation and Park Association. September. https://www.nrpa.org/globalassets/engagement-survey-report-2019.pdf.
Rokakis, James, and Gus Frangos. 2020. The Land Bank Revolution: How Ohio’s Communities Fought Back Against the Foreclosure Crisis. Cleveland, Ohio: Parafine Press.
Roth, Kevin. 2020. “NRPA Parks Snapshot: June 24–26 Survey Results.” Open Space (blog), National Recreation and Park Association. June 26. https://www.nrpa.org/blog/nrpa-parks-snapshot-june-24-26-survey-results/.
TPL (Trust for Public Land). 2020a. The Heat Is On: With Temperatures Rising and Quality Parks Too Few and Far Between, Communities of Color Face a Dangerous Disparity. San Francisco, CA: The Trust for Public Land. https://www.tpl.org/sites/default/files/The-Heat-is-on_A-Trust-for-Public-Land_special-report.pdf.
———. 2020b. Parks and the Pandemic: A Trust for Public Land Special Report. San Francisco, CA: The Trust for Public Land. https://www.tpl.org/parks-and-the-pandemic.
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Fernando Lloveras San Miguel, executive director of the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, has been named the new Kingsbury Browne Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the recipient of the Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award from the Land Trust Alliance (LTA).
For the past 17 years, Lloveras has led the Trust, which manages and protects Puerto Rico’s natural areas, runs habitat and species restoration initiatives, and implements coordinated public awareness campaigns, among other activities. Under his leadership, the Trust has received the Seal of the Land Trust Accreditation Commission and been accepted into the International Union for Conservation of Nature, becoming the only organization in Puerto Rico to receive this distinction. Since 2012, Lloveras has also served as president of Para la Naturaleza, a unit of the Trust which aims to protect 33 percent of natural ecosystems in Puerto Rico by 2033. He served on the board of the Land Trust Alliance from 2011 to 2020 and will serve on the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation through November 2020.
Prior to joining the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, Lloveras cofounded Microjuris.com, which provides digital legal and legislative information and tools to users in Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Dartmouth College, an M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a J.D. from the University of Puerto Rico.
“Fernando Lloveras is both a great practitioner of land conservation in Puerto Rico and an outstanding international ambassador for the idea that land and biodiversity conservation is a global enterprise to which we can all contribute,” said Jim Levitt, who leads the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s land conservation efforts. “He is personable, very bright, and has a deep passion for the land. We are proud to have the chance to work with him over the coming year as the new Kingsbury Browne Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.”
The Kingsbury Browne fellowship and award, given since 2006, are named for Kingsbury Browne, a Boston tax lawyer and conservationist who served as a Lincoln Fellow in 1980 and helped to form the LTA in 1982. Lloveras San Miguel was officially recognized at Rally 2020, LTA’s annual gathering of land conservation professionals, which this year attracted over 3,700 virtual attendees. During 2020–2021, Lloveras will engage in research, writing, and mentoring at the Lincoln Institute.
Previous recipients of the fellowship include Jane Difley, who led the society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests for 23 years; Michael Whitfield, executive director of the Heart of the Rockies Initiative, who has built partnerships among landowners, civic leaders, government officials, and scientists to protect iconic landscapes in the Rocky Mountain West; Will Rogers, head of The Trust for Public Land; David Hartwell, an environmental leader who has helped mobilize billions of dollars for conservation projects across Minnesota; Steve Small, a legal pioneer who paved the way to make conservation easements tax-deductible in the U.S.; Jean Hocker, a former president of the LTA and longtime board member at the Lincoln Institute; Larry Kueter, a Denver attorney specializing in agricultural and ranchland easements in the West; Peter Stein, managing director of Lyme Timber Company; Audrey C. Rust, president emeritus of the Peninsula Open Space Trust based in Palo Alto, California; Jay Espy, executive director of the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation; Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society; Laurie A. Wayburn, cofounder of the Pacific Forest Trust; Mark Ackelson, president of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation; and Darby Bradley, president of the Vermont Land Trust.
About the Lincoln Institute
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy seeks to improve quality of life through the effective use, taxation, and stewardship of land. A nonprofit private operating foundation whose origins date to 1946, the Lincoln Institute researches and recommends creative approaches to land as a solution to economic, social, and environmental challenges. Through education, training, publications, and events, we integrate theory and practice to inform public policy decisions worldwide.
About the Land Trust Alliance
Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization that works to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America. The Alliance represents 1,000 member land trusts supported by more than 200,000 volunteers and 4.6 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., and operates several regional offices. More information about the Alliance is available at www.landtrustalliance.org.
Photograph courtesy of Para La Naturaleza.
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Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Columbia University Press blog.
COVID-19 has presented new challenges for leaders at all levels, forcing many to reconsider their emergency management processes. What are the impacts of the current public health crisis on disaster preparedness and community planning, and what will it take to build a more equitable and resilient future? We sat down with Laurie Johnson and Robert Olshansky, authors of the Lincoln Institute book After Great Disasters: An In-Depth Analysis of How Six Countries Managed Community Recovery and companion Policy Focus Report to discuss the pandemic and the path forward. Johnson, an internationally recognized urban planner specializing in disaster recovery and catastrophe risk management, has advised local governments and others following earthquakes, landslides, floods, hurricanes, and human-made disasters around the world. Olshansky is Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and has published extensively on post-disaster recovery planning, policy for earthquake risks, hillside planning and landslide policy, and environmental impact assessment. Olshansky and Johnson also coauthored Clear as Mud: Planning for the Rebuilding of New Orleans, a book informed by their years on the ground after Hurricane Katrina.
Emma Zehner: What lessons from disaster recovery are most relevant to this pandemic? How is this public health emergency different from natural disasters you have dealt with in the past?
Robert Olshansky: With many disasters, we think about external factors, but the way this disaster manifests itself is in people. The threat, instead of a hurricane or earthquake, is every person we encounter, which sets up a different dynamic. The other unique aspect is the time delay and the exponential nature of the spread. These are counter to our normal cognitive processes. Masks seem to reduce the exponential factor, but the time delay is still there. So, yes, we have the ability to control things and in principal have the ability to change the trajectory of the disaster, but some of that is an illusion because the situation is so unusual.
Laurie Johnson: Yes, time is one of the four factors that governments can control. The others are money, information, and collaboration. This case is slightly different. With sudden onset disasters like earthquakes, you come to the disaster scene and begin to act. Right now, we can actually act while the pandemic disaster is unfolding and try to control how impactful it will be. This is also unusual because it is impacting all of the United States and most of the world at the same time. Historically, disaster management in the United States and many other countries has been built on the concept of mutual aid. We don’t have all of the fire trucks to fight all fires in California, so we rely on supplies from elsewhere. In the case of emergency management in the pandemic, we haven’t been as able to use these mutual aid principles. In every state and every city, supply chains have been impacted.
This has called for a different kind of collaboration. Most of the needed action is actually inaction, social distancing, which is counter to the idea of collaborative governance in the sense of empowering people to rebuild. Instead we are trying to empower people to do nothing, which is hard for leaders to get their head around.
It has also been interesting to note how public officials have defined essential services. To flatten the curve and keep people sustained, we had to consider and maintain a wider set of services than what we normally think about for natural disasters, in which essential services focuses primarily on mass care and shelter, water, and other basic infrastructure. In the pandemic, essential also included access (even if limited) to exercise and outdoor recreation, farmers’ markets and restaurant take-out services, for example.
EZ: To what extent has the pandemic prompted a questioning of standard disaster preparedness and management practices, especially spatial/territorial ones?
LJ: This pandemic has underscored the idea of local primacy in disasters and the importance of leadership at the local level. California is depending on county and city public health officials and others to really make things happen. I think it will be the same in terms of recovery. The civil protests have also pushed local leaders on how limited resources should be reallocated at the local level. So the pandemic has raised some good questions about the mutual aid management model, and reinforced the need for local primacy.
RO: It has become clear that the model of local primacy with resources from above is really the way that we need to do it. Now what is missing is a lot of the resources from above. One of those resources is technical guidance, which is the role that the CDC should play. Others include federal coordination, communication, funding to make social distancing feasible, funding to ensure that economic impacts are equitable, regulatory actions to scale up testing, and policy changes to spur production of needed supplies.
LJ: Also, during this pandemic, there is a whole structure of public health management that is not typically as dominant in natural disaster management. You have different leaders: the National Institutes of Health and the CDC, and state and local public health departments. On top of that, you have political leaders setting up their own task forces. It is definitely not as lean and efficient as when you have clear lines of authority through the emergency declaration process, but I think that a ton of learning has occurred.
EZ: Has the response to the pandemic provided new tools and ways of thinking for disaster planning? What responses do you point to as examples?
LJ: It was an aha moment for me to realize that we can be so much more deliberate in mitigating the impacts while we are in disasters that unfold with time (even wildfires and hurricanes in which the disaster event can last several days). We typically talk about resilience in terms of engineering, such as building barriers for floods, and adaptation. Those both typically happen either before disaster strikes or during the recovery stage. We don’t talk as much about resilience during the event. The decisions we make during the crisis can really affect our recovery trajectories differently. The same is true of wildfires and hurricanes, even though the event timeframe is more limited. Mass evacuation in real time can protect lives and also allow first responders to focus on managing the hazard, like firefighting, instead of evacuating people during the disaster. The evacuation process can really help set the recovery up. As we note in After Great Disasters, in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, people were evacuated all over the country, but there are things we don’t really know: How many got back and when? How many were able to establish productive and happy roots elsewhere? I now see that we do have more ways to design a good recovery in real-time with the decisions and actions we take as the disaster is unfolding. Another example is sea level rise, which has a slow onset with sudden shocks in the form of storms. We actually have ways we can mitigate the impacts of sea level rise so that those sudden shocks of storms aren’t as impactful.
RO: The pandemic has reinforced a lot of things for us, but it has also stretched our thinking a bit. It is hard to say we are doing well, but in some ways we have done a lot—such as the initial shutdown that saved our healthcare system from collapse, federal funding to lessen economic impacts, growing capabilities for testing and contact tracing, and unprecedented development of treatments and vaccines–and I think this can increase our self-confidence that we have the capacity to deal with huge events like this in the future.
LJ: In terms of notable responses, the response where I live in Marin County (California) has been very good even with some major challenges and setbacks. The county public health officials produce a video nearly every day that walks you through the decisions the county is making. Their data provides a lot of demographic and geographic details and regularly updated progress indicators give them a dashboard of information to use in determining when to back off with the next [phase of] opening. The whole process has been pretty transparent and helped people to better understand what the tradeoffs and risks are.
New Zealand, one of the countries we studied in our book, has also been very transparent. People understood where they were with that system. Their response has also been led by the national health officials and not by the formal emergency management structure. They defined different alert levels right away and set a framework of guidance and restrictions for people to follow before moving to the next level. There was clear communication from national leaders and health officials daily and restrictions on movement were strictly enforced. Perhaps it’s easier for a country that size. Nonetheless, I do believe we have much to learn from their and many other countries’ approaches.
EZ: What could we be doing better?
RO: Some of our favorite governance models are various kinds of councils and committees that were set up after these large disasters. Part of what we are missing now is transparency, communication, and explanation. Counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, all have dashboards of key pandemic indicators. Now they need to address how they are making policy decisions based on the data. I would like to see highly visible, explicitly defined councils at state and regional levels, so it is clear they have representation from all of the different stakeholders, are carefully listening to their views, and are making well-reasoned decisions based on multiple tradeoffs.
EZ: As we begin the COVID recovery, what can planning directors do to prepare for the next pandemic?
LJ: I am starting work on a local general plan update process now, and I think one of the things everyone has been rushing to deal with is how to work in a digital environment. How do you do both the day-to-day planning processes and the long-term planning, both of which need to involve the community? There are also big issues around equity that have been laid bare by the pandemic and we, as planners, need to understand which parts of our communities are successfully using online meeting platforms and other civic engagement tools and which are not because they don’t have access to smartphones or broadband. This is a good experience to help us strengthen and develop the tools that we need to do planning in a more expedited, online way. We are finding new efficiencies and it helps us in thinking about how we can streamline bureaucracy after disasters.
I do think some of our ongoing resilience work before the pandemic to protect against hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters is actually benefiting us right now. We have this pretty stable infrastructure that is supporting us in spite of all the demands that are being placed on the grid and on the internet in particular.
RO: Planners are very good at stakeholder involvement. In the pandemic, we need even more inclusive systems of broader stakeholder involvement, using various means of communication. We need those all the time after every disaster. Right now, I am able to attend a lot of meetings that I couldn’t attend before. We can use some of these tools that we have developed to expand the ability of a broader variety of stakeholders to communicate after all disasters. In the pandemic, all of these things have worked relatively well. In the case of an earthquake or hurricane, though, we expect to have physical infrastructure damage that can disrupt communication systems, so we need to continue to prepare to use multiple communication modes. As a result of this pandemic, we also appreciate even more the need to stay connected, and we should make sure our communications systems are going to be able to survive the earthquake and the hurricane as well.
LJ: I think planners are capable of seeing spatially and seeing systems: we are taught to think holistically. I would appeal to planners, as things come back online, to think about some of the problems that we had before this happened (congestion, traffic, etc.) and what policies we can put in place that will reduce some of those negative factors in our communities before the next disaster—but still not erode the economic and social vitality of our communities. To some extent, the civil protests are raising these questions. We don’t want to come back online without addressing the social injustice that we had long before the disaster. What did we learn during this pandemic that can be useful to this conversation? As planners, we are always studying the daily rates of this and the daily uptake of that, and we need to be providing that kind of information to the pandemic response and reopening conversations. How can we come back but reduce some of these negative daily things we know exist in our communities?
Emma Zehner is communications and publications editor at the Lincoln Institute.
Image: Map showing cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people from September 7 to September 21, 2020. Credit: Big Local News and Pitch Interactive COVID-19 Case Mapper.
Related
Scenario Planning in a Pandemic: How to Embrace and Navigate Uncertainty
Human Ecology: Design with Nature Now and the Pandemic
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Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on the Columbia University Press blog.
The American botanist Paul Sears called ecology “the subversive science.” Once we start to see the interconnections all around, our view of everything in the world changes. We begin to understand, and cannot avoid seeing, Aldo Leopold’s “wounds of the world,” the many deleterious effects than humanity has had on Planet Earth.
As the coronavirus was just beginning its deadly march across the United States, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day was celebrated here and abroad. Pioneers in environmentalism, like Sears and Leopold and Rachel Carson and Lady Bird Johnson, were honored. Carson, of course, gave us Silent Spring, her remarkable account of other interconnections that proved deadly. Soon after the arrival of the pandemic in the U.S., someone pondered publicly if we were living in “a silent spring.” But living in quarantine, I, like so many others, realized I was seeing, hearing, and smelling nature more intently. The noises of the city had changed but the city was hardly silent. As Toni Morrison observed, “at some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough.”
At my first Earth Day, the one 50 years ago, I first encountered the work of Carson and Leopold along with Ian McHarg, who had just published his manifesto Design with Nature. McHarg’s basic premise was that we should use ecology, the subversive science, as the foundation for design and planning. His influence was substantial but incomplete. To recognize the golden anniversary of the manifesto, and not only celebrate but extend his achievement, we published Design with Nature Now.
In editing the book, Richard Weller, Karen M’Closkey, Billy Fleming, and I emphasized the relevance of McHarg’s ideas for today. We invited people who knew him personally to reflect on his legacy and then collected twenty-five 21st-Century projects from around the world that exemplify “design with nature now.” The projects are organized around five themes. “Big Wilds” includes large-scale conservation endeavors, such as the Yellowstone to Yukon Initiative in North America and Africa’s continent-spanning Great Green Wall. “Urban Futures” features bold growth management programs, such as those for Oregon’s Willamette River Valley and the State of Utah. “Rising Tides” surveys adaptation and mitigation projects that take on sea-level changes as a result of global warming, such as proposals for New York City and the North Sea. “Fresh Waters” addresses ensuring safe drinking water for the planet’s growing population, such as plans for the Great Lakes and a wetland park in China. “Toxic Lands” considers how to transform highly polluted sites into useful areas for people and wildlife, with examples from the Ruhr Valley in Germany and London’s Olympic Park in London.
Large-scale landscape protection, metropolitan regional planning, coastline conservation, water quality management, and restoring polluted lands call on humans to adapt to change and plot better futures, and this work is all the more urgent as we face a warming planet. We humans are a resilient species, so the examples in Design with Nature Now are largely success stories. Perhaps now, more than ever, we need hopeful examples of design and planning.
As is now painfully evident, the coronavirus spreads largely through human contact; it takes advantage of our connectedness, our human ecology. It has laid bare many wounds in the world, as Leopold would say, from vulnerabilities associated with race, age, and poverty to inadequacies in our political leadership (hence the failure to act responsibly despite guidance from science). But design is an optimistic pursuit grounded in the belief we can do better, and ecology offers a framework for understanding natural and cultural systems. We need to be guided in our actions by a deep understanding of these systems. We have learned, and are continuing to learn, a lot from this pandemic. We should reflect on the wisdom we have gained from this experience and put it to productive use.
Frederick Steiner is dean and Paley Professor for the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Photograph: Repurposing industrial ruins, Emscher Landscape Park in Ruhr Valley, Germany, features a green corridor and pedestrian pathways and spans 177 square miles and 20 municipalities. The evolving park reflects regional planners’ years of work connecting existing green spaces to reinvigorate a landscape formerly polluted by decades of coal mining and steel manufacturing. This project was featured in Design with Nature Now. Credit: Emscher Landscape Park. Landscape Park Duisburg Nord. Photo © Michael Schwarze-Rodrian, Essen.
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Grecia emerge de una crisis financiera que duró una década, y la ciudad de Atenas lucha con desafíos importantes: medidas de austeridad impuestas por la Unión Europea, colapso inmobiliario, problemas permanentes de seguridad y migración, cambio climático y ahora la COVID-19. Kostas Bakoyannis, 41 años, fue electo alcalde en 2019, y prometió estabilidad y reinvención. Bakoyannis es hijo de dos destacados políticos griegos, y es el alto ejecutivo más joven electo para la ciudad, pero su experiencia es vasta. Posee títulos de grado y posgrado de las Universidades Brown, Harvard y Oxford, fue gobernador de Grecia Central y alcalde de Karpenisi, y trabajó en el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Grecia, el Parlamento Europeo y el Banco Mundial. Además, tiene cargos en la Agencia Helénica de Desarrollo y Gobierno Local, el Consejo Europeo de Relaciones Exteriores y la Red de Soluciones para un Desarrollo Sostenible de las Naciones Unidas. En una visita reciente a Cambridge, se reunió con Anthony Flint, miembro sénior del Instituto Lincoln.
Anthony Flint: Alguna vez usted dijo que no se centra en proyectos importantes, sino en la calidad de vida del día a día en una ciudad que intenta resurgir de un modo más progresivo. ¿Cuáles son sus observaciones acerca del triunfo de su campaña y la experiencia hasta ahora de estar al mando del gobierno local?
Kostas Bakoyannis: Creo que en toda campaña siempre es importante el mensaje, no el mensajero. Antes, las elecciones de Grecia involucraban a candidatos que hablaban al pueblo desde una posición de superioridad. Yo asumí otro enfoque y empecé a salir a caminar por los vecindarios. Escuché con atención y descubrí que la gente quiere una ciudad que vuelva a inspirarle confianza y optimismo. Ahora, estamos reinventando los servicios y la ciudad misma. Atenas tiene tres récords: el espacio verde urbano per cápita más bajo de Europa, la mayor cantidad de asfalto y la mayor cantidad de metros cuadros por vivienda. Queremos recuperar espacios públicos y en particular recuperar espacios de los automóviles. Estuvimos estudiando la circulación del tráfico, y planeamos cerrar partes del centro de la ciudad a los autos. Además, crearemos un sendero arqueológico alrededor de la ciudad.
En términos generales, es un sueño cumplido. Estoy dando todo de mí. Hace 10 años que estoy en el gobierno local; no se compara con tener un alto cargo. Un día, cuando recién daba mis primeros pasos en el gobierno local, estaba deprimido y pensaba que éramos un fracaso; luego salí a caminar y vi un parque de juegos recién inaugurado. No se trata de solucionar el conflicto entre Corea del Norte y Corea del Sur. Mejorar la calidad de vida es un cambio real, tangible, progresivo.
AF: Con los años, Atenas se vio afectada por el problema de edificios y vidrieras vacíos, grafitis, personas sin techo y una imagen general de ser oscura y sucia. ¿Nos puede contar sus planes para hacer una limpieza?
KB: Había un artículo muy bueno en una revista internacional acerca de la economía griega, pero arriba había una foto de Atenas, con dos personas sin techo durmiendo frente a tiendas cerradas llenas de grafitis. Ese es nuestro desafío. No olvide que estamos en una carrera global por atraer talento, tecnología e inversión. Y Atenas cambia día a día. Mencionaré algunos ejemplos. Adoptamos la teoría de las “ventanas rotas” de la conducta social [que sugiere que los signos visibles de delitos y decadencia invitan a más de lo mismo] y estamos coordinando labores con la policía. Contamos con equipos especiales y realizamos campañas para limpiar grafitis. Tenemos un programa llamado Adopta tu Ciudad, y sociedades públicas y privadas que ya rinden sus frutos. Estamos pidiendo a la gente que ama la ciudad y se preocupa por ella que venga a ayudarnos. Respecto de las drogas, se realizaron reformas. Hace poco, el parlamento aprobó una medida sobre espacios supervisados de consumo de drogas. Aún no operamos uno, pero nos preparamos para hacerlo móvil, para que no quede mucho tiempo en un solo vecindario. El gobierno local podrá operar dichos espacios. Estamos recuperando espacios públicos, como la plaza Omonia, un emblema de la ciudad, y creo que será un símbolo. Hay grandes expectativas acerca del espacio público . . . no se trata solo de obras públicas. Estamos fabricando una experiencia, más que un producto.
AF: Como parte de esa labor, generó controversia por desalojar ocupantes ilegales en el vecindario Exarchia, en un esfuerzo que incluyó incursiones al amanecer y reubicación de refugiados e inmigrantes indocumentados. ¿Cómo cumple con su promesa de campaña de reinstaurar la ley y el orden y reducir la inmigración ilegal, y al mismo tiempo mantener la sensibilidad ante las vidas humanas involucradas?
KB: Le daré un ejemplo: un individuo que se hacía llamar Fidel tenía un hostel en una escuela, la ocupaba y cobraba dinero. Movimos a los niños de forma segura para aprovechar disposiciones del servicio social. Los medios griegos tienen una fijación con Exarchia. Se convierte en un arma política para ambos extremos. Yo no lo veo así. Tenemos 129 vecindarios, y Exarchia tiene sus propios problemas. Mucho de lo que hacemos tiene que ver con persistir e insistir; es una cuestión de quién se cansará primero. Nosotros no nos cansaremos primero.
En materia de pluralismo, somos el canario en la mina. Sobrevivimos a la crisis económica, y hoy somos más fuertes de lo que fuimos en los últimos 10 años. Nuestra democracia es más profunda, nuestras instituciones son más sólidas. Aislamos a los extremistas. Nos enfrentamos al partido nazi-fascista Amanecer Dorado: fuimos a los vecindarios en los que tenía aceptación. No señalamos a la gente y le dijimos que hizo mal en votar a Amanecer Dorado. Le dijimos: podemos ofrecer mejores soluciones a los problemas que tienen.
Atenas es una ciudad griega, una ciudad capital y un centro para los griegos de todo el mundo. Dicho esto, Atenas está cambiando y evolucionando. Recuerdo haber visto a una joven negra en un desfile que sostenía la bandera con orgullo. Creo que estaba diciendo: “Yo soy tan griega como tú”. Queremos asegurarnos de que todos los que viven en la ciudad tengan los mismos derechos y obligaciones.
AF: ¿Cuáles son los elementos más importantes de sus planes para ayudar a Atenas a combatir el cambio climático y prepararse para el impacto inevitable en los próximos años?
KB: ¡Piense de otro modo! Se trata de trabajar de abajo hacia arriba. Lo más interesante de lo que está ocurriendo en términos de políticas públicas sucede en las ciudades: son verdaderos laboratorios de innovación. Las naciones-estado están fracasando. Hay demasiado partidismo, un ambiente tóxico, y las burocracias que no pueden lidiar con los verdaderos problemas; las ciudades están más cerca del ciudadano. Estamos orgullosos de formar parte de C40. Atenas desarrolló una política de sostenibilidad y resiliencia. Entre otras cosas, estamos trabajando en intervenciones ambiciosas, pero realistas, para liberar espacio público, multiplicar espacios verdes y crear zonas libres de autos. Para nosotros, el cambio climático no es una teoría o una abstracción. Es un peligro real y presente que no podemos esconder abajo de la alfombra. Exige respuestas concretas.
AF: Hace poco, tuvo la oportunidad de volver a Cambridge y Harvard. ¿Qué nivel de interés halló en el futuro de Atenas? ¿Hay cosas que aprendió de las ciudades de Estados Unidos? ¿Y qué puede aprender Estados Unidos de usted?
KB: Me entusiasmó y animó el nivel de interés, y agradezco que me hayan tenido en cuenta. Debo admitir que me sentí muy orgulloso de representar a una ciudad con un pasado largo y glorioso, y un futuro brillante y prometedor. Puede que vivamos en extremos opuestos del Atlántico, y en ciudades muy distintas, pero es interesante que nos enfrentamos a desafíos similares porque los centros urbanos evolucionan y se transforman. Y siempre es muy bueno compartir experiencias y momentos de aprendizaje. Las políticas para mejorar la resiliencia son el ejemplo más obvio. Y, por supuesto, luchar contra las desigualdades sociales es la prioridad de nuestros planes. Me alegra haber iniciado conversaciones prometedoras y provechosas que continuarán los próximos meses y años.
Fotografía: Kostas Bakoyannis, alcalde de Atenas. Crédito: Ciudad de Atenas.
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Por debajo de la necesidad urgente de urbanización sostenible y de alta calidad en China (un enfoque nuevo que se asienta luego de décadas de crecimiento sin control) está el asunto del dinero. Los fondos públicos solo pueden cubrir una pequeña cantidad de la inversión total necesaria para construir infraestructura baja en carbono en las ciudades de todo el país. En las zonas específicas de conservación energética y protección ambiental, algunos estiman que los fondos públicos estatales cubrirán menos del 25 por ciento de los costos (Bond Magazine 2018). En las ciudades de China, esto significa que es imperativo movilizar capital privado. Un mayor interés en los bonos verdes (cuya intención específica es financiar proyectos relacionados con la sostenibilidad) sugiere que esta herramienta de financiamiento podría ser una opción viable.
El Banco Mundial emitió los primeros bonos verdes oficiales en 2009. En los 10 años que siguieron, la emisión global acumulada en bonos verdes superó los US$ 521.000 millones. Hacia 2018, los bonos verdes representaban alrededor del uno por ciento del mercado global (Tay 2019). Después de emitir las pautas nacionales de financiamiento ecológico, en 2016, China se convirtió rápidamente en el segundo mercado más grande del mundo en bonos verdes; en 2018, la cantidad total de dinero recaudado mediante bonos verdes emitidos por el país (de los cuales no todos coinciden con las definiciones y estándares internacionales) fue de unos US$ 31.000 millones (Meng et al. 2018), y llegaron a casi US$ 22.000 millones en la primera mitad de 2019 (Meng, Shangguan y Shang 2019).
En general, los proyectos que más se benefician de los ingresos por bonos verdes son grandes, tienen amplios horizontes de inversión y dependen de tecnología comprobada; las líneas de metro y otros transportes no contaminantes son buenos ejemplos. Los ingresos por bonos verdes se pueden asignar a activos existentes, como una planta de energía solar en una ciudad, o a inversión capital futura.
En junio de 2019, la Nueva Zona Ganjiang de la provincia de Jiangxi emitió el primer bono municipal de China con una etiqueta “verde” (Red de Seguridad de China 2019). El bono seguía las reglamentaciones del Banco Popular de China, el banco central del país, y se emitió para financiar tuberías inteligentes de servicios públicos. La emisión se suscribió en exceso (12 veces), lo cual indica que los inversionistas de china están dispuestos a financiar proyectos ligados a infraestructura e industria sostenibles (ibídem).
Más al sur, en Shenzhen, dos bonos verdes sin etiquetar ayudaron a financiar un proyecto de Ciudad Internacional Baja en Carbono (CIBC) lanzado en 2012. CIBC es un proyecto de demostración insignia de la Sociedad China y Europea de Urbanización Sostenible. Cuando se complete, cubrirá más de 53 kilómetros cuadrados y exhibirá una serie de edificios ecológicos y tecnologías bajas en carbono (Zhan, de Jong y de Brujin 2018).
Las ciudades como Shenzhen, que ya tienen un PIB y un presupuesto municipal relativamente altos, pueden permitirse experimentar con métodos innovadores de financiamiento para sortear barreras y restricciones financieras. Muchas ciudades aún dependen de la venta del suelo como principal recurso municipal de financiamiento para inversiones capitales. Este es un problema grave, en particular para las ciudades más pequeñas, porque el valor y la cantidad del suelo, así como el nivel de interés del sector privado en el suelo, son inferiores que en ciudades más grandes. A menudo, los gobiernos locales más pequeños se deben conformar con vender suelo a una industria contaminante o no ideal, como una empresa siderúrgica. Las ciudades chinas que desean reducir la huella de carbono podrían observar ciertos aspectos de las labores de financiamiento de Shenzhen para diversificar el financiamiento y no recurrir a la venta del suelo.
Esta alternativa se validó más en noviembre de 2018, cuando un medio de financiamiento local de Wuhan emitió bonos verdes con ventajas fiscales y recaudó US$ 400 millones (Davis 2018). Los ingresos por bonos se asignarán para expandir el transporte público sostenible (Moody’s Investors Service 2018).
Los funcionarios municipales pueden aumentar la eficacia y la viabilidad de los bonos verdes si ofrecen incentivos como subsidiar las tasas de interés; reunir distintos activos ambientales (como inversiones en energía solar, agua y limpieza de contaminación) y formar bonos más grandes para atraer a grandes inversionistas; y adjuntar indicadores mensurables para crear responsabilidad y transparencia (IISD 2018). El monitoreo, los informes y la verificación también son parte esencial de los bonos verdes.
Los bonos verdes son un instrumento de deuda que puede aprovechar capital privado para proyectos orientados a prevención contra eventos climáticos; como tales, resultan naturalmente adecuados para las necesidades de las ciudades chinas cortas de efectivo que intentan lograr la transición a ser bajas en carbono. En adelante, es casi seguro que los bonos verdes tendrán una función más importante en el sector financiero de China y el mundo.
Extraído y adaptado de “Green Bond Financing and China’s Low-Carbon City Development” (“Financiamiento por bonos verdes y el desarrollo de ciudades bajas en carbono en China”), por Carl Hooks. Tesis de maestría, Universidad de Pekín, 2019.
Fotografía: Los bonos verdes ayuradon a financiar la construcción del sitio de demostración de la Ciudad Internacional Baja en Carbono (CIBC) en Shenzhen. Crédito: Instituto Paulson.
Referencias
Bond Magazine. 2018. “王琰: 关于我国发展绿色市政债券的探讨” [Exploración del desarrollo de bonos verdes municipales en China]. 中央财经大学绿色金融国际研究院 [Instituto Internacional de Financiamiento Verde de la Universidad Central de Finanzas y Economía] (blog). 24 de octubre. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/z9-3ndosGAIwxSmNNYFDOQ.
Red de Seguridad de China. 2019. “江西赣江新区发行全国首单绿色市政专项债” [La nueva área Ganjiang en Jiangxi emite el primer bono verde municipal del país]. 新浪财经 [Sina Finance], 21 de junio. http://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/relnews/hk/2019-06-21/doc-ihytcerk8306348.shtml.
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