Tree Equity, Environmental Justice and Community Resilience

Earth’s trees provide abundant ecosystem services with profound implications for human health, economy, and culture. Likewise, human behavior impacts tree wellness, positively through careful stewardship and negatively through environmental degradation, deforestation, and climate change. This fundamental tree-human socio-ecological relationship is especially important in urban systems, where tree health and function are intricately linked to human health and livability--particularly, as we now advance past the first decade of a majority-urban human populace with all net future growth predicted in urban areas. However, past urban policies and programs have systematically excluded trees and their ecosystem services from lower-income and historically non-White neighborhoods--such as were established in the 1930s-’60s by ‘redlining’ and ‘urban renewal’ policies--leading to dramatic inequities in access to positive tree-human co-benefits that continue today. This research provides the theoretical foundation and process-based understanding needed to support evidence-based decisions and further research on vital urban tree-human dynamics, to enable the undoing of ecological and social inequities in the urban socio-ecological system.

Broader impacts are focused on (1) unique training opportunities for undergraduate students and faculty in interdisciplinary CNH research (2) engagement with underserved local communities, (3) outreach and co-production of research with urban forest managers and policymakers, and (4) development of a national network of researchers and practitioners to advance this work across the US. These approaches will help undo the legacies of past redlining-type policies across the U.S. to build more equitable and resilient urban socio-ecological systems, while also training the next generation of researchers and practitioners to build a more sustainable future urban environment for all.

Current collaborative project in Portland: www.pdx.edu/smarttrees.