Practicum Essay: Experiencing Fordham Through the Lens of Deep Ecology
As a city whose population accounts for 2.7% of the United States population (Bloomberg 2007: 23), the population of NYC poses great problems those other less populated ecosystems. For example, mass transit uses the highest gasoline consumption out of any city in the nation. Since 2007, the rate at which NYC consumes gasoline is the same rate as the national average was in the 1920s. Concentrated pollution, especially is less socioeconomic parts of NYC, including the Bronx, is also a huge concern that encompasses our discussions on environmental justice ethics. Including, but not limited to one the of the case studies I evaluated in my presentation on the waste transfer stations on "the upper east side", when really this site is much closer to Harlem. In turn, because of the larger population density, NYC produces much pollution per square mile, which means that greater policy and sustainability is necessary in order to preserve the city.
The Goals of plaNYC, as outlined from this diagram on their website.
Since 2007, Mayor Bloomberg generated PlaNYC, in an effort to up the anti our NYC's sustainability in the face of these growing environmental problems. According to PlaNYC's website, "New York City's sustainability agenda prepares our city for a changing climate, a growing population, aging infrastructure, and an evolving economy with increasing inequality. In order to ensure quality of life for generations of New Yorkers to come, PlaNYC programs help create housing for a growing population, provide clean and reliable energy, and improve transit capacity". One of PlaNYC's largest projects is ensuring that all New Yorkers live within a 10 minute walking distance of a park by the year 2030. To do this, they are transforming underutilized plots of land into public spaces, like playgrounds and parks.
In the past seven years, this aspect of Bloomberg's proposal has been quite successful. Over 109 acres of parkland has preserved and transformed into green spaces by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and the hope is for this number to continue to grow.
Although not necessarily a public space, St. Rose's garden at Fordham University in 2012, chose to follow the current trend in NYC and transform an underutilized plot of land on campus into a community garden and organic food co-op for Fordham students and staff.
St. Rose's Garden viewed from the rooftop of the Fordham parking garage.
I originally started volunteering at St. Rose’s because my best friend, Emma, took me along to a meeting spring of my freshman year. As a freshman and sophomore, I had the privilege of working under Jason Aloisio, PhD student in Biological Sciences, who founded St. Rose's garden along with Elizabeth Anderson. Together, they implemented St. Rose's garden in April of 2012, when they cleared a plot of land on the edge of campus, behind the Ram Van office, and installed 8 raised beds and filled them organically-rich soil. The intended purpose was to provide an outdoor classroom, laboratory, and social space for Fordham students. I feel like St. Rose's Garden continues to meet these original principles.
Last Cabbage of the Season!
Since spring of 2012, the beds continue to be used to grow vegetables (and some fruits!) for students to harvest and implement into their diets. The opportunity to experience farm-to-table, and understand the processes by which our food grows and where it comes from. This year we grew several varieties of tomatoes, asparagus, mint, carabano peppers, basil, collard greens, carrots, beets, lettuce, several varieties of kale, and some melons and cabbage. Where our variety increased, our crop yield was not as substantial as years passed, but this could in part be due to the added variety. Some new items, like the melons and cabbage, were not as successful as others, like the beets, carrots, and tomatoes. The lucky student volunteers, who participate in garden up-keep, get a share of the crop yield, and the same goes for additional food from the CSA.
Farm to table: Garden Club Thanksgiving (minus the bacon and the cookies!)
The Family.
As the communications manager, I have the role of providing outreach through the use of social media, to get more members of our Fordham community involved, and to encourage community supported agriculture and sustainability. After reading our College Sustainability Report Card I am really surprised to see that in student involvement, we were graded with a C. Because the survey was performed in 2011, before St. Rose's was founded, student involvement has hopefully increased, but still a large percentage of the Fordham student body does not get involved in campus and city sustainability and I hope that I can provide more students the opportunity to get their hands a little dirty. By advertising opportunities and providing fun programs, outreach and involvement will increase. Although I have not been meticulously recording my hours, I have been working ~2-3 hours per week since I arrived at school in late August (17 weeks).
~2.5hrs * 17 weeks=42.5 hours of practicum service
These last few weeks of the semester have required less work to be done, so we have been spending less time in the garden and more time planning our hoop houses and bed arrangements for next semester.
St. Rose's is winterized! A first attempt to garden year round.
We currently have installed one hoop house in an effort to grow vegetables through the winter. Root vegetables will probably be the most successful, as they will be growing underneath the warm soil, but currently we are attempting to grow broccoli.One problem we are running into is how to keep this space heated at night. During the day, sunlight seems to be generating a significant amount of heat, which is trapped inside the tarp, but at night we are afraid this heat is lost and the plants are freezing, preventing growth.
Broccoli Seedlings being planted. So far they are still alive!
At one of our most recent meetings, we each planted some leftover seeds from last season, and took them how with us. After lots of love many member's baby seedlings have begun to sprout and members have been planting them in the hoop houses in hopes they will continue to thrive!
In addition, we are hoping to secure speakers and Fordham professionals to come in and talk about their specialties, which will provide an opportunity for students learn and engage in the garden come the winter months. We are continuing to grow our compost for winter, and Danielle has been able to work with Rodrigues’s coffee house on campus to get their used coffee grinds for the compost. SODEXO, unlike years past, has been very unhelpful, and refuse to work with us. Hopefully, the compost will decompose enough for us to use it come the springtime.
The compost looking yummy per usual. If I were a worm, this would be heaven.
In all, St. Rose's has allowed me to apply my knowledge from my sociology classes and environmental science class to be a better environmental citizen.
For the final part of my practicum essay I will perform a case study on St. Rose's using the deep ecology worldview. To do so I will use Naess' principles outlines in his essay The Shallow and the Deep, Long Range Ecology Movement.
The first principle requires us to evaluate whether St. Rose's is preserving biodiversity. Are coexisting and complex relationships preserved and supported through this project? Although we are not preserving, per say, the whole original space, as we have built beds and other infrastructure, I do believe that preservation of natural environmental relationships are supported. Birds constantly occupy the space, and pollination by insects obviously occurs, which is how our plants have grown successfully. The worms and decomposers occupy the compost and the soils in our beds, and sightings of rodents and rabbits have been common. The ecosystem seems to be thriving, although I do not have a comparison of what the ecosystem looked like before the plot was occupied by St. Rose's...
The next contention for evaluation reviews the exploitation of class. Because membership is limited to only the Fordham community, one could argue this project is class limited, as other citizens of the Bronx community are refused access to our garden. It is hard to tell whether or not an anti class posture is violated by the garden, but we have made a large effort to allow groups to use our space. Whether is be other students from local high schools, or women from the women's shelter, we try to have programs for the community beyond our gates, but this still poses limitations on our membership, as they are not members, but just guests it seems....
The next principle, is similar to that of the first, are we reducing pollution, yet increasing a problem of a new kind? it seems this is not the case. Not only are we recycling our food scraps (via the compost), which produces no problems except for rodent invasion. We are also growing our own food thereby decreasing carbon emission due to food transportation, and because we do not use pesticides, we have little to no ecological footprint.
Next we must evaluate whether or not we are posing different disturbances to the environment that we did not previously consider. The original production and building of the garden in 2012 could have definitely posed disturbance on the original community, especially where the planting beds were installed. But overall, the occupiers of the original space had the potential to return to their original habitat after the two-week installation. So because the disturbance was only temporary, and minimally evasive, I do not think that any disturbances occur now, besides increases treading of humans over the land.
And the final contention of the evaluation asks us to identify the local autonomy and decentralization of the project on the community in which it is installed. Many times, Naess explains, local interests are dropped for the bigger interests. Due to the fact that St. Rose's is so small scale, this principle is irrelevant.
From this evaluation, it seems that St. Rose's poses limited disturbance and risk to the environment in which it occupies. The only principle that it violates is the exploitation of class, as St. Rose's does not allow membership from the full Bronx community; you must pay tuition or teach at the university to become a member, which is quite limiting to many persons. It would be very difficult to try to fix this problem without violating our contract with the university as a club. A potential compromise could be to host more local events, where we offer our community space to be used for different programs open to the public.
In conclusion, St. Rose's provides a space that "advocates the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and advocacy for a radical restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas" (Wikipedia), and ultimately betters our community, especially for the members that participate.
Works Cited
Bloomberg, Michael. "Inventory of New York City Green House Gas Emissions." PlaNYC (2007): n. pag. Web. <http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/ccp_report041007.pdf>.
https://www.facebook.com/StRosesGarden?ref=br_tf>>
<< http://fordhamsustainability.wordpress.com/st-roses-csa/>>
<<http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/html/sustainability/sustainability.shtml>>
<< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology>>
Naess, Arne. "The Shallow and the Deep, Long‐range Ecology Movement. A Summary∗." Inquiry 16.1-4 (1973): 95-100. Web.