Conservation Psychology as a Tool to Amplify Environmental Justice Work
“We need to have a whole cultural shift, where it becomes our culture to take care of the Earth, and in order to make this shift, we need storytelling about how the Earth takes care of us and how we can take care of her.”
― Dr.
Introduction
I live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. When you walk down Nostrand Avenue, you can feel calypso music vibrating from the asphalt to the coppiced tree wells. Turn onto Park Place and the smell of roti and ozone follows you down the block. Honey locust and London plane trees throw dappled shade on flocks of starlings and charter school students alike. Even here, in the concrete expanse of Central Brooklyn, the urban ecosystem is vibrant. By telling the story of Central Brooklyn, I set out to inspire pro-environmental behavior in my community by tapping into my neighbors’ desire to do right by their home.
Note: A sunny day on a typical Central Brooklyn block - Nostrand Ave. in Crown Heights.
Central Brooklyn is a marginalized community, excluded from political and economic benefits due to its demographics - a largely low-income Carribean-American and Hasidic population. The neighborhood was made artificially resource scarce by racist zoning and financial policy (McPhearson, Kremer, & Hamstead, 2013). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the environmental and social inequities in play. While in lockdown, I witnessed my neighbors display an incredible level of resiliency. Without social service safety nets to fall back on, Central Brooklynites rose to the challenge and met the worst of the pandemic with a high degree of social capital - the relationships and networks that bond communities together. These are understood as social norms, trust in each other and in organizations, and mutual aid (Pretty, 2003). I was inspired to share this story of resiliency and community stewardship.
To tell the most authentic version of this story and affect change, I listened, learned, and altered my perspective. Central Brooklyn didn’t need to act with more of an environmental ethic, the people here have their own unique connection to the land and support a number of organizations doing strong environmental justice work already. With that in mind, I developed a master plan to amplify community voices and connect people to that robust network of organizations. I developed and executed this master plan in pursuit of a Master of Arts in Biology from Miami University and Project Dragonfly, through the Advanced Inquiry Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo. Project Dragonfly and the Advanced Inquiry Program seek to foster professional leadership and community partnerships in pursuit of a better, more collaborative, just, and sustainable future.
Note: Volunteers provide street tree care in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
My approach is based in conservation psychology, the study of the relationship between humans and the rest of nature. Conservation psychology aims to understand how humans behave toward and value nature in order to create sustainable behavior change and a pro-environmental ethic. The Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory (Stern & Dietz, 1999) posits that people will only act to protect what they value. Before an individual is motivated to act, they must first accept the values of a movement or cause (e.g nature has value). Once the values align, individuals are ready to comprehend threats to those values, and that their individual actions have the potential to restore or protect it (e.g. nature is threatened and you can help). Only then does an individual develop that personal norm, that obligation to act on behalf of the valued object or idea. Before engaging a community or individual, it is vital to determine where they are along the VBN continuum.
I decided to implement a Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) campaign in the Central Brooklyn community (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011). CBSM differs from general information or awareness campaigns in that it focuses on a specific change or behavior and designs a strategy to address it directly. CBSM builds a VBN assessment into its framework and uses that data to lay the foundation of a social action campaign. A CBSM approach begins by surveying or interviewing the community to understand how they value the environment, whether an environmental norm or ethic exists, and what behavior requires change. It was at this early stage in my CBSM efforts that I drew an important conclusion. Central Brooklyn doesn’t have a behavior problem, it has a justice problem.
I conducted an initial round of interviews in order to select a behavior for my master plan. I expected to focus on an end-state, non-divisible behavior like littering or street tree stewardship; behaviors that affect change directly when addressed. However, a qualitative analysis (Table 1) of the interview data revealed that Central Brooklyn has a strong pro-environmental norm already. Rather, the negative environmental behaviors in Central Brooklyn are not end-state or divisible but intersectional and influenced by a number of social factors. Environmental injustice, and a lack of access to services and aid, limits the community’s capacity to act on their pro-environmental norm (Middlemiss, 2010).
When we look at this community, we see one with a severely restricted capacity for sustainable behavior due to a lack of sustainable infrastructure, time, and money (Middlemiss, 2010). However, the interview data did reveal impressive social capital, pro-environmental norms, and organizational capacity at work. A strong environmental ethic and spirit of community organizing helps foster a far reaching network of environmental justice organizations here. Rather than select a traditional behavior for my CBSM campaign, I decided to tackle Central Brooklyn’s artificially limited pro-environmental norm and capacities by building a relationship with and amplifying the environmental justice organizations and the community they serve.
With a theoretical framework grounded in inspiring action through shared norms and community-based research (Heffner, Zandee, & Schwander, 2011; Langemeyer & Connolly, 2020), I developed a CBSM campaign. I began by honing my understanding of and abilities in conservation psychology and qualitative analysis. I conducted a community engagement lab to learn more about my community, partnered with a local organization to host a clean up event, developed a community aid directory, and laid the groundwork for a community-centered podcast. The goal of this master plan was to connect Central Brooklynites with organizations doing the environmental justice work relevant to their specific needs and to amplify their voices.
Foundations in Conservation Psychology
Conservation is a people problem. Only we have the power to restore what we have tarnished. To that end, it is invaluable to understand what motivates people. In order to maximize my ability to affect change in Central Brooklyn, I grounded my approach in conservation psychology, a relatively new discipline that applies tried and true psychological theory and practice to modern, urgent issues.
The Value Belief Norm Theory (VBN) proposes that in order to inspire action, people must first share value, understand the threat to that value, and believe that their actions will restore that value (Stern & Dietz, 1999). Meeting these goals activates the individual norm or obligation to act on behalf of what they value. The Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM) (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011) approach applies this understanding and builds off these norms in order to motivate change in a community. CBSM’s theoretical framework seemed like an excellent fit for my master plan and, thankfully, I already had experience with it.
Conservation Psychology Action Plan
For my Conservation Psychology course project, I chose to develop a CBSM approach to inspire pro-environmental behavior in the hiking community. At first, I considered focusing my master plan on hikers. I have been hiking my whole life and feel very connected to that community. My connection grew as a young adult while leading team-building wilderness experiences throughout the Adirondack, Catskill, and Ramapo mountains. As such, the hiking community seemed like a natural fit.
Using existing literature, I began assessing the hiking community’s biases, values, and norms and selected a behavior. I chose off-trail hiking, which can be very disruptive to an ecosystem by altering animal behavior patterns and destroying delicate resources (Larson, Reed, Merenlender, & Crooks, 2016). I identified the barriers to stopping off-trail activity as lack of access to natural spaces (resulting in lack of experience), lack of incentive, and lack of preparedness. To address these issues, I developed a two-pronged strategy. First, I designed updated signage to address the issues of preparation and incentive, tapping into language that played on the social imitation bias (van Vugt, Griskevicius, Schultz, 2014). Second, I devised a mobile application and social network that certified experienced hikers as Trail Trek Stewards and paired them with groups of inexperienced recreationists. The Steward would be responsible for arranging transportation for the group and guiding them in hiking fundamentals and Leave No Trace practices.
This project helped prepare me to implement a CBSM campaign in my own community. I never initiated a pilot of the program and, therefore, was unable to assess its effectiveness. That being said, it did allow me to troubleshoot and prepare for the challenges of a CBSM approach. CBSM calls for a four-step approach to identifying barriers and benefits to the focus behavior: 1) literature review, 2) observations, 3) focus group, 4) survey (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011). However, time and financial constraints made the focus group and survey impossible. Under these constraints, McKenzie-Mohr suggests replacing the focus groups and survey with an intercept survey, one that engages the audience onsite. I followed this approach for the hiking project which inspired my focus on interviews and qualitative data for my master plan. This trial run further cemented the foundational theory behind my master plan and prepared me to implement similar campaigns in my professional life.
Leadership Through Listening
With my hiking project as a reference point, I was ready to apply what I had learned to my master plan for Central Brooklyn. CBSM requires deep community engagement and active listening. This is the first step in determining the focus of the campaign. The Project Design and Assessment course provided me with an opportunity to hone my skills in qualitative data collection and analysis before collecting and analyzing interview data from the Central Brooklyn community. I developed a qualitative research project and co-authored an analysis paper on the impact of nature experiences on wildlife value.
Qualitative Analysis
We took a basic qualitative research approach (Merriam, 2009) and collected data from a digital survey, an electronic written prompt, and Zoom interviews. In total, we received 105 survey responses and interviewed six respondents. We used thematic coding (organizing qualitative data in categories to identify patterns) to analyze the survey responses. We created a priori codes (categories developed before conducting the research) based on the literature to categorize the participants. We inductively coded (themes derived from the dataset) categories of meaningful language. Our results showed that participants' value of wildlife was determined by both their experiences and the language they used to describe wildlife.
This project provided me with an opportunity to practice a number of skills that would prove to be essential for my master plan. I wrote questions and conducted interviews based on best practices of qualitative research (Merriam, 2009; Newing, 2010). I practiced using various coding methods to analyze qualitative data. This experience helped me determine my approach to data collection - inductive coding of interview and case study data. Experience with qualitative analysis and interview practice will serve me in my career as a science communicator by helping me identify patterns and themes to base my work around and evaluate its effectiveness.
Community-Based Research - Community Leadership Challenge
With these skills now at my disposal, I began my CBSM campaign in earnest. I used my Community Leadership Challenge to identify a target behavior, eventually deciding to forgo a behavior and tackle the injustices behind Central Brooklyn’s limited capacity for pro-environmental behavior. I began by establishing relationships in the community and building trust by engaging community members in honest conversations around their lives and their home. I wrote ten interview questions using the best practices described by Merriam (2009). I chose to use a semi-structured interview approach, allowing for relevant tangents or follow up questions (Newing, 2010).
I interviewed six people. I selected three random interviewees from Central Brooklyn and three interviewees based on their involvement in community affairs or their organizational affiliation. After the initial round of coding (Table 1), I realized my approach to the project needed to change. I went into these interviews expecting to identify barriers to pro-environmental behavior that I might be able to address. Instead, I discovered a barrier that was central to all the expected behaviors - historic environmental injustice (Figure 1). The interviewees displayed a strong pro-environmental ethic but named a lack of money, time, and external investment as barriers to acting on it. These responses put a spotlight on Central Brooklyn’s limited capacity to act on its pro-environmental norm (Middlemiss, 2010). Inspired by the responses from my community, I decided to research Central Brooklyn through a lens adjusted to the context of environmental justice. Before determining my next steps, I had to reorient my preconceived notions about my home.
Community Engagement Lab: Crown Heights, Brooklyn
In order to understand Central Brooklyn and help break down the barriers to acting on the community’s pro-environmental norms, I needed to hear from those who had seen the community change over time and who shared the social and environmental values of their neighbors. This would require social capital, the currency in which communities trade (Pretty, 2003). The best way to build social capital myself was to engage the community directly, listen actively, and foster the relationships I built. To that end, I conducted a Community Engagement Lab.
A Community Engagement Lab (CEL) is a way of deepening our understanding of a community by directly engaging with its individuals and organizations. CELs are based on the principles of a social-ecological system (SES) approach, one which holistically tackles environmental issues and accounts for the human dimension. SES calls for increased interdisciplinary integration of the natural and social sciences in environmental efforts and challenges conservationists to work intimately with their focus community (Virapongse et al., 2016). In this way, conservationists are better able to understand how the environment affects a community and how that community affects the environment.
I decided to hone in on Crown Heights as a case study in order to complete this lab under time and financial constraints. I started by profiling the urban ecosystem of Crown Heights using resources from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (EPA, 2016; CDC, 2020). Then, I conducted semi-structured interviews with three new community members in order to deepen my understanding of the environmental justice framework in Crown Heights. I went into those interviews with heat vulnerability deductively coded as the most urgent issue according to my literature review and understanding of EPA and CDC data. However, the three participants had dramatically varying degrees of concern in this area. While all three saw the value in heat mitigation strategies, the interviewees believed the strategies did not sufficiently address the underlying environmental injustices (Table 2). The codes I found after inductively coding this data were largely centered around litter and rats. For context, New York City slashed the sanitation budget in response to COVID-19 and the resulting financial woes. New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) service crawled to a standstill and marginalized communities, like Central Brooklyn, saw fewer pickups (Porter & Woodhouse, 2021). The understanding that this research brought me reinforced my focus on amplifying the work of Central Brooklyn organizations and the voices of the community, rather than a behavior rooted in environmental injustice and limited capacity. Furthermore, interviewee focus on litter and rats inspired my campaign focus.
Conducting this CEL taught me how to combine open-source, quantitative data with a qualitative analysis to understand a community as a whole. In my future work as a science communicator and educator, this will help me effectively adapt and target my approach to the community I hope to engage. This set of interviews reinforced my newfound understanding that engaging a community takes in-depth relationship- and trust-building. Based on my conversations, I did not allow enough time to build the authentic and intimate relationship required for this kind of work. This insight taught me to build in far more time for the process in future projects. Additionally, one of my interviewees, an organizer, shared a number of organizations at work in Central Brooklyn that would provide the foundation for my eventual community directory (Table 3). I would go on to engage and establish a dialogue with a number of these organizations. With my target set and understanding of the community strengthened and supported by interview data, I developed my CBSM campaign strategy.Campaign Methodology and Artifacts
The qualitative analysis of interview data revealed that while environmental injustice was the most urgent concern in Central Brooklyn, litter was not far behind. As such, I chose to build my CBSM strategy around litter as a visible and tangible impact of environmental injustice that was sure to motivate participation. My plan was to promote and host a clean-up event. The clean-up event would serve as a way to engage the community directly with a service organization, gather more data for the community aid directory, and build interest in a community-based podcast. When completed, the community aid directory would provide a resource for the community to connect directly with whichever organizations were most relevant. The podcast would provide an opportunity for community members to share their stories, reinforce their values and norms, and further amplify the work of the organizations rising to meet their needs.
Bklyner Opinion Piece - Authorship Challenge
The initial goal of my CBSM strategy was to promote my project and request participation and stories from the Central Brooklyn community. To that end, I submitted an opinion piece to BKLYNER, a Brooklyn-based news site that specialized in hyper-local coverage, stories that major news outlets would ignore but were important and relevant to the lives of Brooklynites. My article, How Your Story Could Save Brooklyn, covered a lot of ground. I painted an intimate portrait of Central Brooklyn. I discussed how COVID-19 exacerbated and shined a light on a number of inequities and injustices at play in the community. I offered tales of hope featuring the organizations that stepped up in a time of crisis and underscored the resiliency and creativity of Brooklynites. Amplifying the stories of these individuals, communities, and organizations is essential to ensuring their involvement at every stage of efforts to overcome injustice (Langemeyer & Connolly, 2020). Finally, I made a call to action. I asked readers to share their stories with me and to get involved with the organizations doing environmental justice work across the borough.
BKLYNER stopped publishing on September 10, 2021. Sadly, their small staff was burnt out and strapped for cash after two years of pandemic uncertainty, forcing them to shutter, so I never got to see my piece go to print. Ironically, these events served to highlight the very inequities I discussed in my piece. Without local news, environmental inequities and injustices go unseen and unchecked. Local news is an essential resource to communities everywhere and provides a megaphone to the unheard.
Clean Up Crown Heights Stewardship Event
To build off the social capital I built with my CEL, I solicited feedback from a number of organizations. The most interested organization was Clean Up Crown Heights (CUCH). This partnership was particularly important because of their focus on waste management and litter removal, the most referenced code from my qualitative analysis (Tables 1 & 2). By partnering with CUCH and focusing on waste management and litter, I hoped to engage the community and motivate participation with other local organizations.
Together, we developed a promotional strategy and clean-up event that included an education and data gathering component. I created a series of Instagram posts (Figure 2) to inspire participation and preview the content of the event. On the day of the event, I conducted a lesson on the typical waste management cycle as run by the DSNY and discussed the impacts of litter on human health, ecological health, and climate change. Along the clean-up route, I engaged participants in unstructured interviews and collected data. I wanted to evaluate their learning, determine their level of involvement with community organizations, and gauge their interest in a community-based podcast.
A total of 31 people participated in the event and we collected 25 40-gallon garbage bags of litter and one 30-gallon bag of recyclables. I spoke with 10 participants and a number of community members who observed our work. Participants rated their likelihood of attending future events at an average of 3.3 on a Likert scale of 1-5 (between likely and definitely). I shared my results with CUCH, which intends to use this information to enhance future events.
To further tackle the issue of waste management and follow up with our participants, CUCH and I developed a campaign to bring composting to the Crown Heights community. The goal of the campaign was to have Crown Heights included in the DSNY’s curbside composting service area by encouraging individuals to fill out the city’s online form. We sought to accomplish this with a social media and flyering awareness campaign centered on a QR code leading directly to the compost service interest form (Figure 3). These efforts are ongoing, and (to date) our QR code has 1,021 click-throughs, just surpassing the DSNY’s baseline for expansion of 1,000 interested addresses or households.
Community Aid Directory
While I worked most closely with Clean Up Crown Heights for my master plan, I engaged with a number of other organizations and kept track of their issues of focus and contact information (Table 3). I did this with the intention of building a directory of organizations, with an emphasis on environmental justice. I hoped to centralize their information to help individuals find the group that would best fit their needs. I hoped to measure the impact of this directory by surveying the organizations and determining if there was an increase in interest, requests, or membership.
I had initial conversations with a few organizations, but not many follow-ups. This was largely due to three factors. First, a number of organizations simply stopped responding after the initial correspondence or never responded at all. Those that I did have more extended conversations with are volunteer-based and didn’t have the capacity for partnership. Additionally, community engagement requires a degree of trust and relationship building that is difficult to accomplish in a short period of time. Many organizations have a healthy skepticism around academia and its relationship to established power structures.
I decided to temporarily hold off on publishing the directory and will wait until I am able to establish relationships with the organizations I hope to include in order to best represent them. I will continue to volunteer and establish feedback circles with the organizations to build the necessary trust for a healthy partnership. In my future work, I will begin the process of trust and relationship building much earlier on.
Community-Based Podcasting
The final element of my CBSM strategy was to amplify and center the voices of individuals in Central Brooklyn through a community-centered podcast, Stewardship Stories. This strategy is based on the VBN theory that giving an individual a platform will provide them tangible evidence that their actions can restore value to their social-ecological system and inspire them to further engage with organizations working on the issues most relevant to them (Stern & Dietz, 1999). I piloted an episode of the podcast using my own story of finding environmental stewardship and went through the process of building out the platform on PodBean, Instagram, and Gmail. I solicited stories for future episodes by asking listeners to comment on the post, email stewardshipstories@gmail.com, or direct message the Instagram handle @StewardshipStoriesPod. For the initial episodes, I also recorded the interviews I conducted for the qualitative analysis and the stewardship event.
For the first season of Stewardship Stories, I hoped to get at least five submissions and produce each as an episode with a goal of over 100 downloads. My pilot episode has over 200 downloads to date. Four of my interviewees gave me permission to publish their stories, two spoke with me on the condition of anonymity. I did not receive any other submissions. The lack of interview content forced me to rethink my approach.
I will continue to work on this podcast as an ongoing product of my master plan and CBSM campaign. As I continue to develop relationships with Central Brooklyn organizations, I hope to feature their membership as a way to establish a listener base and build interest in submissions. In future productions as a science communicator, I will start with a more reliable interview source and format in order to more quickly establish a foundation for success.
Conclusion
My master plan began as a dream to inspire pro-environmental behavior but concluded by amplifying the work and voice of a community already steeped in a pro-environmental ethic. VBN and conservation psychology helped me understand how best to inspire and build on this ethic. CBSM provided me with the framework to develop a campaign built upon community norms around the environment and social-ecological systems. I conducted interviews and a qualitative analysis of that data to inform my approach. I engaged the Central Brooklyn community through the written word, stewardship action, and social campaigns to amplify their voice and the work of the organizations that serve them.
I plan to continue this work in a number of ways. I will keep building my relationships with Central Brooklyn organizations in order to establish a feedback circle and promote their work through the community aid directory. I will continue to work with their membership to produce episodes of the podcast and provide community members with a platform to tell their stories and promote their work. I will use organizational feedback and interview data to continue to direct my approach and center the community. I see this as a cyclical process that I can use to keep amplifying the good work being done in Central Brooklyn and adjusting my CBSM framework based on community input.
My master plan and experiences in AIP as a whole have set me up for success in my future professional work as a science communicator and environmental educator. My coursework provided me with content knowledge in biology and ecology to inform the stories I tell. I can leverage my fluency in conservation psychology to inform the choices I make as a science communicator and in campaign development. I now have tangible experience researching, developing, and piloting a public engagement campaign. I have achieved all of this while centering justice in my work. I hope to use these skills and experiences to engage and educate the public towards a pro-environmental and just future.
I faced a number of challenges on this path, none more difficult than engaging the Central Brooklyn community itself. Communities affected by environmental injustice are understandably wary of outsiders and existing power structures (e.g. academia). This applies to the organizations serving these communities as well. To overcome this obstacle, I had to become a better active listener and learn to be a part of the solution without centering myself or my work. Even with my personal growth and adapted approach, building relationships takes time. Because change is slow, I had to be willing to reorient my idea of success and how I measured impact.
I believe I made real progress toward building a relationship with my community, amplifying their voices, promoting the work of local environmental justice organizations, and fostering a pro-environmental ethic in Central Brooklyn. I better understand my own strengths and limitations and how I can be a part of a solution-oriented, justice-centered community built on a pro-environmental ethic. I hope my master plan provides future environmental organizers, campaign managers, and volunteers a framework to foster a pro-environmental ethic in communities affected by environmental injustice through listening and amplifying the stories of the people and their planet.
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