Re-greening Paris, with Nathalie Baumann

This weeks guest is Nath Baumann, urban ecologist with the Swiss Green Infrastructure Consultancy & 

Lecturer at the Zurich School of Applied Science (ZHAW).

Nath joined me to talk about her more than ten years work in the regreening of Paris and in particular the initiatives under Mayor Anne Hidalgo to widen access to the benefits of nature as part of increasingly urgent efforts to transform the city into a beacon of circular and ecological design. The conversation was framed around La Recyclerie, an urban farm, repair cafe, sharing hub and restaurant but we covered a lot of the great initiatives and developments around Paris - and even touched on the way systems thinking is shaping its relationship with the agricultural areas beyond its periphery.

LINKS

Nathalie Baumann: www.greeninfrastructureconsultancy.ch/locations-people/

ZHAW: https://www.zhaw.ch/en/university/

La Recyclerie: https://www.larecyclerie.com/

Reinventer Paris design competition: https://www.designboom.com/tag/reinventer-paris/

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I'm delighted to be joined this week by Henri Brocklebank, Director of Conservation Policy & Evidence at Sussex Wildlife Trust. In an episode recorded in early February 2021, I talked with Henri about kelp as a climax habitat and the new bylaw (just) passed which will restrict trawling off the Sussex coast in the Channel to 4km offshore. 

We talked about how the bylaw will help restore the 200km2 forest lost to human activity

- why kelp is such a big deal for not just inshore waters but the local culture and economy and the livelihoods of the fishing fleet

- How the English channel formed and how its shallowness has influenced its biodiversity - including the mammoth tusks dredged by the trawlers which have done so much damage 

- offshore wind and how to do marine actively sensitively

We also talked about how to value nature, and why marine environments have been slower to be included in investable models of habitat restoration like peat, mangrove and trees.

LINKS

Nature Table - https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/discover/woods-mill-at-50/nature-table 

Tiny Recorder: https://www.facebook.com/TinyRecorder/

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Harini Nagendra is Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University in Karnataka, India. Her work explores the evolving relationship between people and nature in Indian cities, with publications including Nature in the City, Bengalaru in the Past, Present and Future (2016) and Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities(2019). We explored the way that ancient and more recent human activity helped shape the region's ecology and in particular the way that Bangalore's development has been informed by the need to manage scarce water resources - but also how the particularities of indigenous culture have lent a deeper everyday connection with and understanding of nature - and what (and how) we can learn from the way these challenges are being met.

Talking points

- the role nature in rapidly urbanising countries/densifying cities

- animism and the spiritual connection with nature

- how to engage with indigenous approaches to ecology, and how they improve upon colonial attitudes 

- ecological memory and forgetting in indian cities

- how resource (water) scarcity and human activity to compensate for it has shaped Karnataka’s ecology and the regions’ priorities for modern GI interventions

- medicine, food and scent as drivers of our experience of nature in the city

- why citizen restoration movements rather than municipalities are the key drivers of ecological enhancement 

- how the pandemic story is unfolding in India, and the implications for social urban development

LINKS

Prof Harini Nagendra - @HariniNagendra

Robin Hobbs - Farseer Trilogy via bookshop.org

The Nature of Cities

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