Allotment Gardens: Social-ecological Resilience
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on June 3rd, 2010
Source: Stockholm Resilience Centre
Image: beachcomber1954 via flickr CC
From “Urban gardens key in times of crisis“:
Allotment gardens have often been sources of local resilience during periods of crisis. During World War I the number of allotment gardens surged from 600,000 to 1,500,000 in Britain, supplying city people with food and other ecosystem services. The gardens were planted in parks and sports fields, and even Buckingham Palace turned up the earth to grow vegetables. After declining abruptly in the 1920s and 1930s, World War II saw a new explosion in the numbers of allotment gardens in cities of Britain and other parts of Europe.
The story above is told in a new seminal article (Social–ecological memory in urban gardens—Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services) by centre researchers Stephan Barthel, Carl Folke and Johan Colding.
The article, which is in press in Global Environmental Change, investigates where and how ecological practices, knowledge and experience are retained and transmitted in allotment gardens in the urban area of Stockholm. It is the first study ever to really analyse in-depth the concept of “social-ecological memory” as the carrier of ecological knowledge and practices that enable sustainable stewardship of nature. Linking back to the story of allotment gardens during the World Wars, the specific aim of the new study has been to explore how management practices, which are linked to ecosystem services, are retained and stored among people, and modified and transmitted through time.
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As concluded in the study by Barthel, Folke and Colding, these allotment gardens serve as “pockets of social— ecological memory” in the urban landscape and constitute a source of resilience for generation of ecosystem services while counteracting ecological illiteracy. Without such physical sites experiences of stewardship of ecosystem services, or “social-ecological memory” could easily dissolve. Now when we are entering the so-called urban millennium, with more than 50 % of the global population living in cities, planning for sustainability needs to take these green spaces — and the social-ecological memory they maintain — seriously into account.
Read the full article.
Read the report.
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