Moon River
The bank teller slowly leaned forward until her face was almost touching the plastic divider between us. She paused and then asked, “Why do you want to open a bank account?” I explained that I would be in Taiwan for six months, that my employer, Fulbright Taiwan, needed to pay me here. She looked at me with suspicion, “No, why did you choose this bank instead of another bank?” I nearly laughed at the recognition that this was a “how did you find us” kind of question instead of a more fundamental “why are you, a foreigner, trying to open a bank account here in Taiwan.” I replied, “Oh a friend recommended it.” She nodded seriously and told me to take a seat and wait some more. Half an hour later she came out flanked by a few colleagues and explained that they couldn’t do it, that I needed a 1 year visa instead of a 6 month visa in order to open an account here. As I left, I realized that three weeks ago I would have been frustrated by the waiting, by the lack of guidance and clarity, by the wasted time. Instead I felt pleased that I had accomplished the ceremonial kickoff, the sacrificial first attempt. I had not expected to open an account that day. In fact, I made it much farther than I anticipated. They did, after all, allow me to take a number and begin the process of waiting.
I stopped at an ice cream shop in Dongmen a short walk from the bank. The interior was cramped, dark, cool. A couple was sitting side-by-side at the window, eating ice cream, eyes fixed ahead, looking out at the street outside. A cover of Moon River that I hadn’t heard before was playing slightly too loudly. There wasn’t room to sit so I stood outside in the bubble of air conditioning and muffled sound that spilled from the doorway. The tinny echoes of Moon River reminded me of the summer of 2021 when I first moved into my apartment in the East Village, weaving through piles of cardboard boxes, playing Moon River off my phone, unpacking my clothes onto the dusty, sunny floor.
Disciples and Discontents: Notes on Nature-Based Solutions
Some evolving thoughts on NbS and practice. See cited papers at the bottom for more.
Researchers—typically from urban planning and related backgrounds—categorize Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) in certain ways. For example, In Mapping the effectiveness of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation by Chausson et. al., the research team divided their literature review of NbS studies into Protection, Restoration, Management, Created Ecosystems, and various combinations thereof. Within the broader discourse, NbS are studied, evaluated, and recommended based on their efficacy to address certain goals. They usually fit within those rough project categories.
The most popular research informs policymakers and politicians who set goals around these measures and then define ways to implement them in the most cost-effective and timely manner possible (I have reason to believe there’s significant bias toward projects that are tied in some way to election cycles as well as to raising a country or region’s status to an outside audience).
Practitioners (designers and allied professions) are hired through some process (RFP, internal dept, etc) and tasked to implement the project. Selection is generally made through some combination of a demonstrated ability to complete similar existing projects and a proposed ability to complete the selected project in the most cost-effective and timely manner.
Practitioners design the project based on their expertise and ideas based on the client-defined scope. Then they incorporate feedback from stakeholders including community and expert consultants. More often than not, consultants including ecologists and hydrologists are hired to review a design and make suggestions and edits rather than being actively involved in the design process from the start.
The project is built. Researchers then measure the impact of the project and study it as a source of data to further refine their understanding and definition of Nature-Based Solutions. A feedback loop starts to a emerge. The ways that Nature-Based Solutions are defined—the labeling of some interventions as NbS and others not—is based, in part, on what gets built. The way that NbS are categorized is also dependent on researchers’ understanding of practice. The very idea of nature as something that can be created and maintained while also being wild and untouched and in need of protection is fabricated by those who fabricate place itself. The imaginary of nature and the natural becomes a process and an outcome, an aspiration and its unruly subject, two distorted mirrors facing each other. Combined with the aforementioned political goals that muddy the waters of project scope definition, trends like a fixation on native plants and the proliferation of sometimes ill-conceived tree planting regimes begin to make sense. In the Chausson et. al., paper, the research team reports that the greatest number of NbS case studies fall into the “Created” category. The reason for this, to me, is obvious: built work gets flagged as a ‘solution’ and studied as such. If a tree falls in a forest, can you still see it?
Flippancy aside, many NbS are incredibly effective, both in cost compared to their grey infrastructural alternatives and in results. But there seem to be a couple of things that haven’t made their way out of the paper world and onto the land that particularly interest me. These are:
The effective translation of complex socio-ecological contexts into new projects is rare. This intersects with the implementation of indigenous practices and what’s sometimes called “ecological wisdom.” These are well-studied and documented but rarely show up legibly in proposed built projects.
One-off large projects seem logistically easier to implement than many small projects. This relates directly to the next point:
Time continues to be a major design and implementation issue. Maintenance, management, projects that evolve or transform over time, projects that roll out in more than a few phases, decentralized and dispersed work are all very difficult to key to funding cycles, political desires, and public expectations.
Where do we go from here? How can NbS be more responsive to socio-ecological contexts, less-top down, more effective, efficient, and implementable at a scale that matters and is also possible? How can the pipeline of policy research to implemented design improve and be meaningfully shaped by complementary research from the sciences (both environmental and social)?
More on these questions and others to come.
Two papers that shed some light on NbS and their implementation:
Chausson A, Turner B, Seddon D, et al. Mapping the effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions for climate change adaptation. Glob Change Biol. 2020;26:6134–6155. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15310
Austin G. 2014. Introduction. Pages 1-14 in Green Infrastructure for Landscape Planning: Integrating Human and Natural Systems. New York: Routledge
Weather Report
The weather has become very slightly cooler. The change is subtle, almost imperceptible: the difference between sweating and being drenched in sweat. In the evenings the temperature drops into the mid-80s. A breeze that feels like breathing comes and goes. My mind is lighter, more optimistic. The heat is less crushing, more like a fact than an adversary. It strikes me that this condition is the inverse to how I feel in New York in early spring, substituting blinding heat for bitter cold. By spring, I’m fatigued by the claustrophobia of avoiding cold, by the dashing from one indoor place to another. Those first warmer days are not comfortable but not treacherous either. It’s possible to walk and enjoy walking. Today, rather than marching ahead, eyes fixed on the next source of air conditioner, I looked around, paused, and followed my gaze in a new direction.