The Decline of Pollinators in Pittsburgh: Visioning the Future
Assignment #4: Designing for Transitions: Visioning/Backcasting/Assessing the Present | Carnegie Mellon University, Transition Design Seminar 2023 | Team Complexity: Nikita Khanna, Matthew Huber, Joanne Chin, Ilona Altman
Previously on the issue of the decline of pollinators in Pittsburgh, we mapped the wicked problem along different dimensions, mapped the stakeholders relations, as well as mapped the evolution of the problem through history. In this assignment, we look to the future and create a collective vision as well as explore milestones to strive toward.
The Importance of Creating a Shared Future Vision
An issue with the modern solutioning process is that our solutions do not have a higher goal in mind. The higher goal, in this case, is a sustainable future for pollinators. We are so stuck in our present that we don’t let ourselves dream of the myriad ways the future can be different. That job is often left to artists, but it really should be incorporated into how we think of our current system, so to give us direction.
This assignment has two parts. In the first exercise, we envision aspects of how our wicked problem has been resolved on five levels of society: household, neighborhood, city, region, planet. We start with putting down one feature of society we believe should be in the future at any level. Since any one feature inevitably affects/is affected by another level, we follow that feature up and down the strata of society. Digging deeper, most aspects are quite closely connected to multiple other aspects, but we attempt to categorize in order to reveal a sort of pattern.
Having envisioned the ideal landscape for a healthy lifestyle and growth of the pollinator population, we looked at established approaches and emergent practices that could help move towards the aspired environment in our second exercise. Through the process, we identified presently used practices such as pesticide usage and big agriculture techniques that should be dismantled to promote the health of pollinators. While certain methods need to be removed, positive initiatives that are helping improve the pollinator population such as government policies for financial assistance and technical support to farmers need to be maintained. Furthermore, we looked at current innovations such as Green Infrastructure and Smart Development that can ignite transition. Looking into the future, we noticed current trends that could create a positive impact in the future. The process helped us find insight to define the key milestones to develop the ideal state.
Our Future Vision for 2075
In our vision of a future where pollinators have ascended, we developed the following key facets to our narrative, that manifested from the scale of a household to the scale of the planet:
There is solidarity with pollinators
Starting from a planetary level, there is an international union called Bees and Pollinators Union for Zoological Solidarity that advocates for pollinator rights. Their political reach enters not just Pennsylvania, but right to Pittsburgh. Their endorsements are a key part to local politics, ensuring a voice for them and other unions they hold in solidarity. Local chapters are set up throughout the neighborhood, so people can meet, share resources, and celebrate nature. This appreciation for nature, of course, is ever-present at home, where families cultivate the knowledge and care for nature to pass down to further generations.
Food is local & organic
Starting from a household level, the food on the table comes from as close as it can get. That might be grown from the house, from neighborhood farms, or regional crops. Community farms are a popular center of activity, as neighbors can work together to produce plants they are proud of, which also provides pollinators the inner-city plant diversity they need. On a larger level, the city of Pittsburgh creates partnerships with local farms and incentivizes them to farm sustainably. Regionally, Pennsylvania supplies all of its communities with local food cultures. Internationally, cultures from this region and other regions are all celebrated for being where they are from, and are shared in a cosmopolitan manner.
Land is cultivated to support ecosystem health through native plants & conservation
Households use organic farming practices (no chemical pesticides) and commonly plant natives which support pollinator health. Neighborhoods have an abundance of native plant stores and there are community efforts to collect native seeds through networks of local seed / skill exchanges. Citywide, there are efforts to rewild the land supported by the local government, and a policy that requires native landscaping on public land, and incentivizes it on private land. Regionally, environmental personhood is established so that ecosystems and ecosystem groups (like pollinators) can have representation in court. On a planetary level, countries have agreed upon vast areas of the planet that are conserved, so that all areas of land and ocean are protected by either local or global law. Global actors face consequences if they pollute or exploit ecosystems beyond the regulated amount, which protects ecosystem health.
The economy is local, circular & regenerative
On a household level, people largely use products which can be composted or refilled, and tend to buy things minimally, preferring items that are crafted well and that will last a long time. On a neighborhood scale, people live in walkable areas where they can easily access any resources they need, including refilleries to refill household goods. Citywide, there are resources to support local small businesses in transitioning to more sustainable and equitable practices. Regionally, businesses are required to take and are supported financially in taking initiatives that ensure they are reducing harm to the environment, and increasing their positive impacts through regenerative and circular practices. They are also legal protections against planned obsolescence that encourage the creation of long lasting products, and all companies are responsible for the full lifecycle of their product. Globally, there is transparency throughout the supply chain. Every transnational company must disclose their supply chain and invest in the communities and ecosystem they are reliant upon.
Infrastructure supports circularity & policies restrict pollution
Each home has a separate disposal for pollutants like pharmaceuticals, batteries, that are collected on a household level for pick-up and proper disposal. Homes each have their own rain barrels in order to decrease pollution run-off into the watershed. At the neighborhood level, food waste is collected and made to create soil that is nutrient rich, and distributed to local farms, and green infrastructure both reduces neighborhood runoff and provides pollinators with habitat. On the city level, all waste produced by residents is internally managed, and the infrastructure for the treatment of water and management of pollution often incorporates nature-based technology. Regionally, all pollutants and their sources are monitored. If any group pollutes too much, there is social backlash and fines in place to discourage this. Globally, there are strict bans on certain classes of chemical pollutants and plastics, as well as standardized chemical thresholds that protect both the health of humans and ecosystems.
Ecological thinking permeates culture
On a household level, families pass down generational knowledge about caring for nature to their children. On a neighborhood level, neighborhood centers foster community, and create engagement through communal art experiences, communal kitchens, ecological restoration projects and other community work. Citywide, schools are place-based, and foster a sense of solidarity with others and with nature. Additionally, there are resources for all peoples to receive therapy and free mental health resources, which enables people to care best for themselves and ultimately, others. Regionally, education at a college level is subsidized, and all educational institutions must require coursework on ethics and ecology. Additionally, indigenous wisdom and knowledge is incorporated into curricula. Globally, all of the largest religions have now expanded their ethical considerations to include how people treat the land and ecosystems in addition to how people treat each other. There is a spiritual and ethical dimension to life that all people feel that affects the way that they treat the land and others, increasing the cooperation between different countries.
How We Will Get To Our Vision
We identified key milestones along the transition pathway to our desired future in our map. Key among them are the following:
Dismantling Industrial Farming Techniques
Farming practices such as extensive use of pesticides, clearing natural land for agriculture purposes, and growing one crop over a diverse variety of crops have had ill effects on the health of the pollinators and led to their decline. Although agriculture is crucial to human lifestyle, these practices can be carried out in an environment-friendly manner where not only the people but also non-human stakeholders are prioritized. Profit focussed businesses such as Seed Patent Owners, Pesticide Manufacturers, and HOAs need to be broken down. Removing such established structures would help people to reimagine their current processes and come up with innovative solutions that keep nature at the core.
Maintaining Environmental Initiatives
With increasing awareness about the decline of pollinators, multiple initiatives are being undertaken to promote pollinator health. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service offers financial assistance and technical support to farmers who implement conservation practices that benefit pollinators, such as planting cover crops and reducing pesticide use. Along with government associations, Non-profit organizations such as Pollinator Partnership work to promote pollinator conservation through education, outreach, and collaborative research. There is a need to educate those around us and provide an incentive to the current farmer to adapt pollinator-friendly techniques. Such institutions that are promoting pollinator health, need to be sustained moving forward.
Embracing Nascent Pollinator-Promoting Innovations
Though still nascent, recent trends in ecologically conscious landscape design direct us to a future where humans and diverse pollinators can productively coexist. At the local, residential scale, rain gardens and pollinator gardens rather than piped stormwater solutions and traditional lawn monocultures can offer habit and resiliency to pollinators interspersed with urban human populations. These solutions can be popularized through local gardening groups, publications, and educational outreach through major institutions. At the city scale, well understood green infrastructure strategies can be embraced through activism and education rather than hard civil engineering solutions that are the status quo. Stormwater management can build new habitat rather than destroy it. Land can be dual purposed in favor of pollinators. One example is the 60 acres of paved parking lot within an area zoned for public parks that serves the Pittsburgh Zoo. This parking can be consolidated into a structured garage or eliminated in favor of public transit and pedestrian/cycling access and the land given over to pollinator meadows. At the regional scale, new suburban and rural housing developments should be curtailed through land conservation easements, tax incentives for local, diverse, organic, agriculture, and zoning restrictions that promote redensifying urban areas, saving rural habitat. Eat Local and Farm to Table culinary cultures can be further promoted and incentivized to erode the hegemony of Big Ag and the industrial farming monocultures that impoverish rural lands of pollinator habitat.
Advancing Latent Visions of a Pollinator Future
Indigenous cosmologies hold respect and mutual aid between humans and nonhuman species as a matter of respect, highlighting practices that balance consumption with regenerative cycles. However, the dominance of the colonizing anthropocentric Western worldview with its accompanying technological solutionism has long suppressed indigenous knowledge and ideology. The extraction and control mentalities of colonizer land management has led to depletion, degradation, and decline, the products of shortsightedness. A more sustainable, long term vision can draw from indigenous respect to imagine a future replete with solidarity for non-human others and eventually a protective bill of rights that recognizes the needs and agency of pollinators and other species. We imagine building on existing labor movement infrastructure, though depleted, still prevalent in Pittsburgh, to unite disparate groups — local organic farmers, horticulture groups, NGOs, academics, activists, environmental agencies and educational institutions, etc. — into a singular movement, a union, to consolidate political power in favor of pollinator rights in various facets of political and everyday life. This group can work simultaneously on the broader project of shifting mindsets and worldviews, while also advocating for nearterm solutions.
The future is growing in the seed of the present
Walking the streets of Pittsburgh, one encounters glimmers of optimism. Little green signs emblazoned with magenta hummingbirds announce to all those who pass that here lies a pollinator habit, not just a backyard. Phipps, the Carnegie Museum, once merely catalogers of species, now offer ecological how-to-guides to bring back the bees. Newspaper articles announce a vaccine curing sudden colony collapse syndromes. New data indicates the first expansion of Pittsburgh’s urban tree canopy in decades. Yet for every advance, there is a retreat. Bulldozers clear forests for yet new developments in the suburbs. House flippers clear urban wilds for parking pads. Transnational corporations issue yet new patents on ever more aggressive pesticides, and advance ever more numerous seed monocultures. The status quo remains in power.
Bottom-up enthusiasm for pro-pollinator ways of living, microvisions for an ascendant pollinator future, roils at the niche level, yet vast entrenched systems bear down on the possibility of widespread adoption. Centuries of alienation from the natural world have rendered these systems nearly invisible. Individual property rights, scientific solutionism, corporate lobbying, an irrational faith in indefinite growth, all constitute a self-reinforcing regime that must be dismantled through autocatalytic feedback loops and perhaps the occasional cataclysm to free up space for a new regime of ecological prosperity. This is why we imagine a transition pathway that not only continues to foster existing bottom up pollinator innovations, but seeks a mechanism for broad and inexorable political action. Unionization, while at the nadir of its power, has a storied history of advancing rights, of transitioning them from slogan to legal status by leveraging collective power accumulated from amongst those disenfranchised as individuals. In a post pandemic America, unions seem to be having a moment, taking on Starbucks and garnering Instagram stardom. A more sci-fi version of this vision might postulate pollinator strikes and other anthropomorphising actions, but part of the empathetic process of solidarity with nonhuman others is meeting them where they are, understanding their different, but not inferior, agencies and intelligences. So instead, we envision a human and nonhuman cooperative, where humans advocate for pollinator rights as part of the union, while in turn recognizing the almost sacred benefits they receive in return. The union can promote DIY efforts, shifting the quotidian practices of everyday life; it can boycott, get out the vote, protest, all while mobilizing new political imaginaries . And so solidarity is both a practical mechanism for applying leverage to the system and also a visible advertisement for moving to an altogether more profound view of what we all mean to one another.
