Green spaces in St. Louis, a conversation with Gerardo Camilo, PhD
Madeline Erdman
Green spaces have been popping up all around St. Louis, and for good reason. The Great Rivers Greenway and the 2 Acre Park are green spaces that are working to foster community, beautify the city, and combat the detriments of climate change.
Gerardo Camilo, who holds a doctorate in Zoology, is aprofessor at Saint Louis University. A Puerto Rican native, Camilo was raised in Rio Piedras in San Juan and attended the University of Mayaguez for his undergraduate studies. He received his doctorate from Texas Tech University and moved to St. Louis in 2003. His love for ecology and bees is intrinsic to Camilo’s personhood, he said, “I don’t recall a time when I was not into bugs and dinosaurs and lizards and nature…I never grew out of the bug phase,” For Camilo, his research in ecology and the environment intertwine with understanding the impact of green spaces in urban areas like St. Louis.
How do you define ecology?
Ecology is the study of the interactions among organisms and with the environment. Those interactions can be among themselves, or interaction with the environment. Like, how do you acquire water? How do you acquire food? And when you’re acquiring food, what happens when you end up with these two species that require the same resource so they end up competing against each other? And why in some situations, instead of competing, you’ll become mutualists. So it’s a very specific, methodological, mechanistic way of reducing nature to its various parts. But the best part I liked the best is assembling it all back together and seeing the really big picture. So, being a reductionist is a tool while my perspective is a very holistic perspective.
Why do you think green spaces are important for urban areas like St. Louis?
Well, I grew up on a tropical island. And you’re right next to the beach, and there’s a rain forest in our backyard full of fruiting trees and grandma had a bunch of orchids, and there was a lot of nature in and out of the house. It was very, very green. I collaborate with a professor in the philosophy department, Dr. Dan Hebron, who studies well-being and happiness. And one of the things that he has shown is that people that live in environments like that tend to have greater well-being and report higher happiness levels. So the data, and the studies, have shown over and over and over that green spaces, especially in urban environments, are a big bang for the buck. By the same token, you know, the human population, we’re about to hit 8 billion people. When I was born, there were less than 3 billion. So in another, essentially 28 years, we’re gonna be adding another 2 billion, so we’ll be hitting about 10 million people by 2050. And at the same time, a lot of people that live in rural areas are moving into urban centers. So cities are growing at a really exponential rate. The total amount of urban infrastructure across the globe has to double in 25 years. Imagine it took us 200 years to get here. And in the next 30, we have to double what took us 200 years. That puts huge amounts of pressure on the natural environment to provide all the ecosystem services that we require to live like clean water, clean air, food, and at the same time, for our psychological and emotional well-being. Then there is the aesthetic component of nature. My happy place is going back to Puerto Rico and being like next to the beach in one direction and then the rainforest behind me. Green spaces not only provide areas of leisure and entertainment and relaxation but are also super important: they provide food. Especially just north of here, where you have these massive food deserts. If you look at the map of where the community gardens and urban farms are in the city, they are in the Northside, where you have massive amounts of poverty, massive amounts of cardiovascular disease, massive amounts of health disparities and one of them being you have a lot of overweight people. And at the same time, they’re very malnourished. So it’s like a contradiction. It’s a paradox because how can a person be overweight in at the same time you’re you’re malnourished, you know, you’re lacking all nutrients and vitamins because you’re eating your meals out of the mini mart and you’re lacking on fruits and veggies.
What are some downsides to structuring green spaces in urban areas?
So, first you have to do it in the right places. You have to do it in places that the geography and the soil is appropriate, then you have to manage it. You cannot just toss a bunch of seeds or plants and hope for the best because that’s not how nature works. It requires thoughtfulness, and you have to include, engineers, scientists and ecologies that know the local flora and fauna. You need to have that kind of resources and that takes money and time and effort. The second, and I think more important component, is the social component. We have to be aware of inequities in education in power, basically you don’t want to impose upon people what they don’t want, even if you know that I am correct, and you’re gonna get a lot of benefit out of this. It has to be done in a way that is shared because you don’t fucking live there. You’re not dealing with these day in day out. And if all you want to do is, is to come and plant a bunch of pretty plants so people in enjoy the plants and the butterflies and then you disappear, we call that parachute ecology.
What is parachute ecology?
You parachute in, you do your thing, and you disappear. It is not just parachute ecology, its when we feel that yeah, we know a lot and we know what has produced many of these inequalities, but is very arrogant, almost, you know? That we can go into these neighborhoods and just impose our will, because I know what’s best for you.
How does race or class differences affect the environment in urban areas?
There’s a new class I’m teaching on sustainable happiness. The first week of class, we put our students in a van and drove them north of Delmar. The north of Delmar is 95% Black. The median income is $22,000 a year. How are you feeding a family with 22,000 year and that’s the median, there are people that are below that. Then we went along Grand, if you go like half a mile north of here longer and you’ll run into something called the Carter Carburetor Company. This was a carburetor company that was established in the 1920s, a little bit over 100 years ago, and it was operational until the late 70s. That company was there before there was such a thing known as the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], but they knew that you’re not putting a company that is going to use a lot of nasty chemicals in the white rich neighborhood. You put it into poor, black neighborhoods. And it’s one of the most polluted urban locations in North America. And now it’s still dreadful I mean, the building was leveled and they had to burn tons of soil and remove a lot of water from underground. But a lot of those chemicals are still dispersing through the bedrock in the north side and then when you have a flooding event like you had at the end of July, they get mixed up they come up, and the plants absorb them and then they find their way back to the surface. But they were injecting these chemicals into the soil for decades because who cares? We’re living the consequences of redlining and restrictive covenants that essentially has made the Northside a place of pollution of which the environment is unhealthy, and the people are unhealthy because of the consequences, not just of the environment, but of the way we treat it.
Why do you think beautifying communities is important?
So two things: there’s the obvious one. There is an immediate psychological effect on well being. And second, it also helps to start healing the environment. You plant native plants that start putting deep roots that can then allow for biodiversity, microbial biodiversity, starting invading the soils. And then you start attracting the pollinators and the herbivores which then attract the predators and now next thing you know, you have a functioning ecosystem. And it’s not going to be the same stuff you have there before, it’s going to be something new, but it’s functioning. That leads to, not only you, the immediate psychological well being, but also it translates into longer term indirect effects like now people want to take care of the environment or I have pride in living here.
What do you think is the most important thing we can do for the environment right now?
Ha! I have way too many things. I think education and awareness first. Most people call themselves pro-environment and they just don’t know what to do. Climate change feels like too much, the loss of rainforests and loss of biodiversity is too much. Alternatively, you can plant a few tomatoes so you get some bumblebees and you can make a positive effect. A bunch of little things add up, and I have the data to prove it. If we do it correctly, we can actually change and reverse the loss of biodiversity in urban environments.
This interview has been edited for brevity
