Keith G. Tidball, PhDSenior Extension AssociateDept. of Natural Resources, Cornell University Associate Director, Cornell Civic Ecology Lab (CEL)Theme Leader, Environmental Dimensions of Human SecurityNew York State Extension Disaster Education Network CoordinatorFaculty Fellow, David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future

Global Ecosystem Depletion of Resilience

Social-Ecological SystemsPathologies of Management

Community and neighborhood Ecological disenfranchisement

IndividualLoss of ecological identity

Why are there more disasters?

Why are Earth systems suffering from depletion of resilience?

The Tidball “this explains everything” be-all-and-end-all root cause analysis

Why do pathologies of natural resource management persist?

Why does ecological disenfranchisement occur?

• How have we humans become ecologically “disenfranchised”?

• What kind of “othering” or disenfranchising, or marginalizing in its various forms is occurring to humans?

• How can we undo or reverse this process? • What clues might exist in “Red Zones” about

the above questions?

Relating to ecosystems Services • Tidball, K.G. (2014). A gilded trap of our own making: anthropocentric discursive

traps as barriers to transformation. Part of Resilience 2014 session “Tips or Traps? Advancing understanding to steer clear of impoverishment traps and tipping points”.

Hobson alludes to discursive traps in her analysis of competing discourses of sustainable consumption, and provides a jumping off point for further investigation of discursive traps. This line of inquiry is especially relevant to efforts to better understand barriers to social-ecological system transformations. Such barriers often include the presence of rigidity and poverty traps within systems of interest, but as this paper posits, some rigidity and poverty traps may be informed by and/or reinforced by discursive traps that exist in the social structures nested within social-ecological systems.

• Krasny, M.E., Russ, A., Tidball, K.G., and Elmqvist T. (2013). Civic ecology practices: Participatory approaches to generating and measuring ecosystem services in cities. Ecosystem Services. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2013.11.002

… suggest that civic ecology practices not only create green infrastructure that produces ecosystem services, but also constitute social-ecological processes that directly generate ecosystem services (e.g., recreation, education) and associated benefits to human well-being.

• Tidball, K.G., and Stedman, R. (2013). Positive dependency and virtuous cycles: from resource dependence to resilience in urban social-ecological systems. Ecological Economics. 86: 292-299. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.10.004

Lays out the importance of recognition of positive dependency as a precursor to the development of a heightened sense of ecological self and sense of ecological place in urban SES, and provides insights and suggestions for further research into civic ecology practices that may enhance positive dependency on and investment in ecological assets that contribute to positive ecological senses of self and place, and the importance of these to achieving sustainable, resilient urban futures.