Lessons from the origins of community engagement
Written by Elliot Meyer
In early June, the eastern seaboard of the United States – some 60 million people – were exposed to the worst air quality on earth as wildfire smoke choked the skies. From the silhouette of Manhattan’s orange-hued skyline to the distinct smell of burnt boreal floating in the air of the nation’s capital, our daily lives again became a surreal existence beyond the bounds of normalcy. Yet as the ash from millions of burning acres of old growth conifers, thousands of miles away, dusted the steps of the U.S. Capitol, the truths of climate change were very real.
In its wake, this summer has been described as harrowing, record-setting, and unprecedented. But this is not the first-time mother nature brought the consequences of a modern world to the steps of Capitol Hill. This June echoed the spring of 1935, when the arid soils of the Great Plains blew thousands of miles in mighty dust storms to the feet of lawmakers in D.C.
The Lincoln Memorial shrouded in a dust cloud likely taken on either March 6 or March 21, 1935. Photographed by Science Service Photographer John Hugh O'Neill. Source: NCSU
A person walks near the Lincoln Memorial under a blanket of haze in Washinton on June 8, 2023. Source: Phys.org
Almost 90 years ago, in the wake of the Great Depression, the United States was confronted with the realities of an ecological crisis of continental proportions. A century of manifest destiny, coupled with the advent of the mechanical tractor and deep plowing, left the American prairies’ once-rich, black loam soils completely nutrient deficient. On the upswing of historic stimulus packages, the U.S. Government created the Soil Erosion Service (SES) under USDA, tasked with re-evaluating farming and tillage practices. Dr. Hugh Hammond Bennett was appointed to lead the SES.
As one of SES’s first actions, Bennett organized a coalition of conservationists and scientists across America’s public universities, who were closely aligned with local leaders and landowners through farming extension services. University of Wisconsin Professor Aldo Leopold was a principal guide to Bennett and the two set out to conduct the first watershed-scale study in the Coon Creek Valley of western Wisconsin.
The study brought together the region’s tightknit farming and business community, local leaders, and university scientists to co-develop solutions. In their experimentation, crucial farming strategies to solve erosion were developed, including contour-stripping, cover crops, buffer stripping, and lengthening growing seasons. By end of the project, 418 of the valley’s 800 farmers signed cooperative agreements to implement conservation farming practices.
Despite the success of these pilots, the future of SES was threatened by a loss of funding and political wrestling in Congress. Bennett famously saved the agency by timing his Congressional testimony with the arrival of the infamous dust storm of March 21, 1935. As the skies of Washington took on a copper color and the sun went into hiding, Bennett concluded his remarks. Congress decisively acted on the issues of erosion by permanently funding the Soil Conservation Service (now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service), guaranteeing the future of soil conservation in the United States.
As the D.C. skyline turned a copper hue once again, this summer serves as a reminder that business-as-usual is a bygone finality. We need the same kind of locally led conservation and political will to solve the global ecological crisis that is before humanity today.
The present calls us to make deliberate changes. However, the Dust Bowl’s mechanical plow reminds us that solutions will not be found in the convenience of technological innovation alone. It was Bennett and Leopold that understood the ecological crisis would be solved through co-development of community tailored solutions. As the scientific community was tasked with local partnerships in the wake of the Dust Bowl, we are called today to act as a climate extension service for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
George Mason University’s Virginia Climate Center (VCC) is rising to meet this call. Through the Local Climate Action Planning Initiative, we seek to bridge the scientific resources of public universities across Virginia with the knowledge and strengths of local communities. Central to our effort is community engagement – a methodical and deliberate approach to listen and build trust with the communities we seek to serve. This process takes openness, patience, honesty, and consistency to become a reliable and ongoing resource. The VCC is prepared to build solutions in the collaborative brilliance of local residents, elected officials, scientists, businesses, engineers, artists and creatives, faith leaders, advocates, and volunteers. This is the power of environmental justice through community engagement.
Author
Elliot Meyer
Elliot is a Community Engagement Specialist with George Mason University’s Institute for a Sustainable Earth and Virginia Climate Center.
