The Fung Fellowship: Innovative Solutions to Environmental Crises

The Fung Fellowship Conservation + Technology  track was launched this fall, creating new and exciting possibilities for third year students interested in conservation issues and design. In partnership with the Rausser College of Natural Resources, the C+T cohort is a space for students of all disciplines and backgrounds to work collaboratively with organizations currently on the frontlines of biodiversity conservation, emphasizing human-centered design skills and the user experience throughout the process. I joined the Fung Fellowship this fall, and have thoroughly enjoyed the hands-on learning experience via the design challenges, which are conservation challenges that allow us to design a solution.

The first Design Challenge we were presented with was about agricultural-based land practices. The use of waste-sourced materials in fertilizers and other soil improvement products can lead to heavy metals in the soil which impact human and environmental health. The question we had to work with was: How might we use technology to help farmers better understand the environmental impacts of fertilizers, and make more eco-friendly fertilizer choices? The partner organization was Save Our Soil. 

The second Design Challenge was about the implications of humans relying on wildlife and natural resources for economic livelihoods. From land use changing to hunting, human activities have resulted in significant losses of wildlife and healthy ecosystems. We were presented with these questions: How might we co-create sustainable income opportunities that a) decrease human-based pressures on wildlife species; and b) mitigate biodiversity loss as well as threats to human health and livelihoods? The partner organization was Wildlife Conservation Network  who helped propose the challenge question. 

While this question is both multifaceted and daunting, the C+T cohort eagerly dove into research. For seven weeks, students familiarized themselves with conservation in response to direct exploitation of resources (hunting, using species for medicinal purposes, overharvesting for food), including the intersection of peoples livelihoods, cultural traditions, and the role of government and policies. Groups conducted their own background research by reaching out to individuals and/or organizations knowledgeable in the area, interviewing experts, doing case studies, and then working together to create a solution. The process wasn’t easy, but students get to dive into the complexities of conservation issues, gain skills in collaborating with team members, and focus on human-centered design. 

On December 9th, all eight groups delivered six minute presentations to a panel featuring Tommy Sheridan, the Conservation Network Manager from Wildlife Conservation Network; Justin Brashares, Professor of Ecology and Conservation at UC Berkeley; and Shara Ticku, CEO & Co-founder of C16 Bioscienes. Groups were given the opportunity to work with three organizations: MarAlliance in Belize, which focuses on alternatives to gillnet fishing, Spectacled Bear Conservation in Peru, which involved finding alternatives to craft sales, as well as Conservation Through Public Health in Uganda and Cheetah Conservation Botswana, which both looked at alternatives to tourist-based incomes.

Let’s take a look at one of the solutions proposed by my group, who worked with Spectacled Bear Conservation. The indigenous communities in Northern Peru lack opportunities and resources, and so agriculture is their main economic livelihood. The Spectacled Bear, a keystone species native to the forest habitats of Peru, has become endangered as a result of these habitat loss and fragmentation from farmland. In an effort to provide an alternative livelihood for people in the community that doesn’t harm the environment or the bears, Spectacled Bear Conservation has created the Felti Program, which is an organization that offers community members an income from dry needle felting. However, COVID19 showed the vulnerability in the Felti program, and these communities need a new alternative livelihood.

My group proposed a short-term and long-term solution. Firstly, we decided to rebrand the Felti Program, to hopefully shed more light on the communities in Northern Peru. From background research, we found that during COVID19, online communities have seen a considerable spike in interest for DIY crafts, like needle felting. By rebranding, we can utilize social media to spread humanitarian-focused products. Using profits generated from this rebranding effort, we would buy a plot of demonstration farmland in a central area of their town, for community members to meet and learn from others as they tend the land together. In this plot, they can learn techniques to grow food densely, children can create bear-deterrent windchimes, and neighbors can share seeds of new crops to try. This plot of land is a flexible space for knowledge sharing between research teams and community members on sustainable agricultural practices. The hope is that over time farmers will be able to move towards resilient community-based farms close to their homes that don’t interfere with the bear’s habitat. With secure agricultural livelihoods and a resilient community center, the hope is that these communities will become less reliant on Felti funds and become educated about the bear and the ecosystems that rely on it. 

All the final products were extremely impressive. The students in the fellowship are engaged, creative, empathetic, and hardworking. I feel fortunate to be surrounded by these students-- they make me feel that the future of our world is in good hands. While sometimes environmental issues feel overwhelming, because of my peers, I know there is an endless world of possibilities, if we are daring enough to think out of the box and be risky. Where there is a will, there is a way. 

As the C+T cohort enters their second semester, the bar continues to rise as these exceptional students expand their perspectives. With all this being said, applications for the Fung Fellowship are now open for rising juniors for the 2021-22 year! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FxAt6jULtGyleMj3vXzLKZ1pG9OxhXun/view 

How Economic Zoning Promotes Environmental Racism

Disparities between the quality of life in different neighborhoods occur all across the United States, but one of the sharpest divisions is in our own community. In West Oakland, residents are expected to live seven years less than residents of the Oakland Hills. Higher rates of asthma, heart failure, and stroke all plague West Oakland — the result of environmental racism. Environmental racism is defined as “racial discrimination in the development and implementation of environmental policy.” This typically refers to the concentration of industrial-grade pollutants, oil refineries, heavily-trafficked freeways, and toxic waste sites in neighborhoods that have a majority population of color. The practice of environmental racism gets its roots from economic zoning, which was first established in 1926 and is still used today. 

Initially, cities employed racial zoning. Racial zoning allowed city officials to designate the houses in a particular neighborhood as only available to members of a particular race, thus effectively creating racially segregated sects of the city. Racial zoning was outlawed in 1917 by the Supreme Court Case Buchanan v. Warley on the grounds that such zoning infringed on the rights of homeowners to sell to whomever they wished. 

Almost immediately after the illegalization of racial zoning, city planners developed economic zoning. This was essentially racial zoning with codewords standing in for explicitly racial terms like “white” or “black.” These terms included “residential,” “commercial,” and “industrial,” among others. “Residential” fairly exclusively referred to neighborhoods with single-family homes, “commercial” meant businesses, and “industrial” referred to areas where large corporations conducted operations involving hazardous dumping and mass pollutant production. Laws restricted what types of structures could be built in which areas. Most notably, “residential” areas prohibited the construction of apartment complexes or industrial work sites within their boundaries. 

Due to a history of overtly racist legislation that enforced unequal job and housing opportunities, economic zoning laws facilitated de facto segregation. White families tended to live in single-family homes while black families tended to live in apartments or public housing projects. The restriction of “residential” areas to single-family homes thus meant that the majority of black families had to seek apartments in the “commercial” or “industrial” zones. 

As patterns of neighborhood racial flow solidified over time, with white people settling into residential areas and people of color, especially black people, being directed into industrial areas, the foundations for modern environmental racism were laid down. 

This is seen plainly in the modern racial demographics of Oakland. The Oakland Hills, zoned as a “residential” area, are almost completely white (76.4% white, 15.5% asian, 5.5% hispanic, 1.3% black, 0.3% native, and 1% other races or mixed). Meanwhile, West Oakland and the Oakland Waterfront, zoned as “industrial” areas, are populated by people of color (53% black, 22% hispanic, 15% white, 10% asian, and <1% native). The inhabitants of the Oakland Hills enjoy clean air, clean water, and easily-accessible green spaces. The inhabitants of West Oakland, on the other hand, have been subject to numerous environmental injustices over the years. A chemical spill from the AMCO Chemical Company, which stored bulk materials along Third Street and ceased operations in 1980, was only just cleaned up three years ago (the owners of AMCO abandoned the site, leaving the chemical spill to contaminate the neighborhood’s soil and water). Industrial operations in the Port of Oakland emit diesel into the air and increase asthma rates among local residents. The West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), one organization of resistance in the area, has threatened lawsuits and even brought a civil rights complaint against the city in 2017 for disregard to the health of West Oakland residents. WOEIP also, in that same year, published data on the rates of pollutants within various West Oakland neighborhoods (the data was collected in partnership with other environmental groups, Google, and University of Texas, Austin). Despite the active resistance by WOEIP and other grassroots groups, the toxic materials in the area leave West Oakland residents facing a myriad of health issues from which their white counterparts in the Oakland Hills are exempt. This is environmental racism in action. 

Economic zoning was not necessarily intended to concentrate industrial pollutants in communities of color, but it was certainly intended to protect white neighborhoods from those exact hazardous materials. Residents of these areas first became aware of the negative health impacts during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Factory strikes and City Hall sit-ins became a more common practice as people called for environmental accountability from the government and for the removal of polluting industries from neighborhoods. In 1999, California passed Senate Bill 115, which assigned the California State Office of Planning and Research with the responsibility of overseeing environmental justice programs. Though California has some of the most ambitious carbon-mitigation plans in the nation, there is concern over a lack of care shown to individual communities within the state’s borders — including West Oakland. Today, along with WOEIP, several groups actively resist environmental injustice, such as No Coal in Oakland and certain green jobs initiatives brought forward by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. (To learn more about how to get involved with any of these groups, click the corresponding blue link.)    

Ultimately, the environmental injustices enacted in West Oakland are the result of decades of racist city planning policy. Government officials knew communities of color would have less political clout and less economic power than white communities, and that it would thus be easier to implement industrial sites in those neighborhoods. Building a chemical storage site or an industrial loading zone in the Oakland Hills would meet strong resistance from the white residents, and it’s likely that the officials who proposed the idea would find themselves swiftly voted out. So, city officials designated communities of color as industrial areas and gave high-pollutant corporations a pass to set up shop. The resultant Environmental Justice Movement, as it lives today, is a fight for racial equality, adequate healthcare for all, and the basic human right to live with dignity.