Centuries old beliefs that humans are separate from nature need to be moved aside to deal with the increasingly urbanized world.
Keith Tidball, associate director of the Civic Ecology Initiative at Cornell University, addressed the Syracuse Center of Excellence symposium, "Creating Resilience in Sustainable Communities," Tuesday morning.
City dwellers now outnumber those who live in rural areas, Tidball said. That requires looking at ecology in urban areas.
Studies, he said, show that city dwellers consider urban forests - trees - as important parts of their communities. Research done after Hurricane Katrina found residents in the hard-hit ninth ward found trees landmarks to discovering where their homes once stood. Surviving trees, he said, also offered hope that the community could come back from the hurricane's damage.
Tidball said Rene Decarte's view that humans were separate from nature needs to yield to Aldo Leopold's insight that "humans are part of the landscape."
Humans are so much a part of nature, Tidball said, that those who live in cities may be as dependent on their ecology as those who are economically dependent on natural resources. Research, he said, show that while lumberjacks may be dependent on trees, "city residents my have another type of resource dependency, psychological."