Forging just ecologies: 25 years of urban long-term ecological research collaboration

Abstract

We ask how environmental justice and urban ecology have influenced one another over the past 25 years in the context of the US Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) project. BES began after environmental justice emerged through activism and scholarship in the 1980s but spans a period of increasing awareness among ecologists and environmental practitioners. The work in Baltimore provides a detailed example of how ecological research has been affected by a growing understanding of environmental justice. The shift shows how unjust environmental outcomes emerge and are reinforced over time by systemic discrimination and exclusion. We do not comprehensively review the literature on environmental justice in urban ecology but do present four brief cases from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, to illustrate the global relevance of the topic. The example cases demonstrate the necessity for continuous engagement with communities in addressing environmental problem solving.

Shifting forward: Urban ecology in perspective

“…Not all power relationships are obvious, and tacit racism (Rawls and Duck 2020 ), caste (Center for Human Rights and Global Justice 2007 ), and class (Robertson and Westerman 2015 ) differences affect how different social groups experience environmental benefits, amenities, and hazards. It is a persistent challenge for planning and governance to achieve equity of opportunity and security from hazards, given the similarities of social hierarchies in urban situations around the world (Grove et al 2024 ).…”

“…This might include differentiating access and use of different spaces (sharing instead of excluding), allowing and learning to appreciate variation and unpredictable change over time, and relations built on respect and reciprocity rather than utilitarianism (e.g., Salmón 2000 ). That is, we must attend to all sorts and outcomes of nature-people relationships while recognizing that different social groups and Global North and South places will experience different such relationships (Pickett et al 2024 ; Grove et al 2024 ). Partly, this is a challenge of reconciling notions of artificial and natural.…”

“…Frantzeskaki et al ( 2024 ) detail how synthesis and integration can promote conceptual and theoretical advances or identify and contribute actionable knowledge to solving societal problems. Grove et al ( 2024 ) show how synthesizing historical, policy, social, and environmental knowledge can help understand the persistence of racial and other social injustices in urban places and help social movements overcome them. Pickett et al ( 2024 ) point to some of the past syntheses that have advanced urban ecological science and practice and the opportunities to extend the horizon of such syntheses.…”

“…The four papers in the Special Section describe shifts in the breadth of kinds of evidence the field needs to embrace (Andersson et al 2024 ); the transformation of urban ecology from a curiosity-driven to an action-oriented field (Frantzeskaki et al 2024 ); a shift from urban structure and form to various kinds of relationships with which the science must engage (Pickett et al 2024 ); and finally, an evolution toward addressing injustices and inequities in urban places around the world (Grove et al 2024 ). Each of the four papers represents a synthesis within its scope of interest.…”

“…In this way, urban ecology will need to shift in a way that more explicitly considers issues of equity and justice as critical to how science is produced. This includes going beyond researching how knowledge influences or is considered in policy and planning (Grove et al 2024 ). The “shifts” capture and present the plurality of the ways that urban ecology is evolving and question the positioning of cities as ‘problems’ that need to be dealt with, areas of deprivation, and resource consumption distant from ecological value.…”