i sat down with professor josh cousins at suny-esf and talked about this topic. cousins, who has a ph.d. from the school for the environment and sustainability at the university of michigan, teaches community planning & sustainability, sustainable urban development, and an environmental energy auditing course. urban resilience, according to cousins, is “ultimately a social concept. we developed it, we created it, and we use it as a metaphor to describe something we see in the natural world.

“it has this positive connotation along with it in terms of applying that metaphor to a city; thinking about how a robust ecosystem is able to bounce back from certain shocks and stresses. so when applied to a community or city, how can a city respond to different shocks and stresses? whether it’s a hurricane or an economic downturn, etc.”

this resilience is really important when we’re thinking about what we want a sustainable future to look like. with rising sea levels and more extreme weather-related disasters, resilience is crucial in how our cities can bounce back from these shocks and stresses.

the main question isn’t if we should make strides for our cities to be more resilient, but rather: resilience for whom? with any policy or social change, certain groups always seem to be excluded. obviously we want our cities to be able to bounce back from environmental stresses, but if this happens only in more affluent areas of the city, for example, is the city truly resilient?

an important way to combat these disparities within urban resilience, according to cousins, is to “start at a local, grassroots level and try to incorporate (a diverse group) within planning processes. give them the resources at the grassroots level to do that, rather than initiating that from a top-down drive.”

many cities are implementing a resiliency leadership position, which cousins argues isn’t a bad idea, but there needs to be an emphasis on encouraging citizen-led change through local movements. those who live within a particular area of a city are the most knowledgeable about the day-to-day resiliency strengths and weaknesses, since they are witness to it every day. this aspect cannot be acknowledged and utilized enough.

a lot of general greenspace development, according to cousins, has been linked to gentrification and displacement because as more projects work to make an urban area appear more green, certain groups are pushed out of their familiar urban environments. this also plays into that question of: resiliency for whom? the adverse effects that green space planning might actually have can be significant. sometimes certain amenities can bring certain disservices. for example, something like tree planting might result in added labor for a community that might not have the capacity to maintain new trees. the result is an environmental benefit that may turn into a disservice to the community in the long run.

resiliency is crucial in order to create societies that thrive and react to growing environmental concerns. but resiliency also must be sure to include low-income communities and communities composed mainly of minorities.

said cousins: “resilience is here to stay whether you like it or not. you have to engage with it. overall, more resilient futures are better futures.”

q: many people cringe at the idea of parasitic insects. what is it about parasites that interest you so much?

a: i think what i find so interesting about parasites is the fact that they challenge my assumptions about how the natural world works. i learned about biology, i learned about all these kinds of ecological interactions; predator and prey, and how animals evolve, defenses against predation, or competition. all of that sort of fits into a framework of how i understand the world. and these parasites come along and then give examples of things that don’t really fit that framework, and all of a sudden i realized wait a minute, the level of complexity that’s possible in nature is far beyond what i thought was possible. it’s not like i thought i knew everything about nature ahead of time. but you feel confident in saying ‘yeah, i see this hawk chasing after a squirrel. that fits into what i know of how the world works.’ and then you read or hear about how these parasites are manipulating their host, and you think that makes no sense. and i found that really interesting. it’s so novel; it’s so interesting to me.

q: how do you think photography can be used as a form of environmental communication and why might this be more effective than, say, a scientific paper?

a: photography has this advantage because we are very much visually oriented creatures. so much of our biology is based around the fact that we have such good vision. i think our brains are already well-built to take in imagery; it’s automatically stimulating for us. so, you sort of have this built-in advantage. in that sense, i think it takes a lot less effort to grab somebody’s attention. now, when it comes to changing somebody’s worldview, and inspiring their curiosity, and all those things, it takes more than just the image to do that. it takes a story, it takes context, and a better understanding of what your audience’s assumptions are. a photograph by itself can’t do all that, but it’s an amazing way into somebody’s attention. i didn’t really recognize that until i was having a conversation with my editor over that story, and he really defined my objective for that story. like, you’re not going to teach everybody about every step of this process. the magazine is only going to give you one page, one photograph. and your job is to get people to stop flipping through the magazine and read the caption. and i’ve really seen that as what the role of photography is more broadly. you can’t necessarily give somebody an entire biology lesson with a single photograph. but you can get them to be at least interested to learn about it on their own, or to listen to you talk, or to read the paper or read the article. i just think it’s this window into a larger subject.

q: in your talk “beauty and the bizarre,” you talk about photographing the emerald wasp. could you talk a bit about their relationship with cockroaches and the possible relation to parkinson’s disease? what exactly does the emerald wasp do?

a: the emerald cockroach wasp, or the emerald jewel wasp (another common name it’s known by) hunts cockroaches. but these cockroaches are larger than it, like many times. so rather than try to overpower it or kill the cockroach, it has figured out a way to immobilize its prey. it does that by leading its stinger into the back of the cockroach’s head. its stinger has special sensors that can actually detect where in the brain its stinger is, and it finds the part of the brain that is responsible for the motivation for movement in the cockroach. it then injects a venom cocktail that disrupts the dopamine activity of that part of the brain. and that’s a general way of describing a process that’s actually more complex than i understand. i know that it involves something that disrupts the dopamine activity. what that means is this cockroach can still move, but it can no longer decide to move on its own. so the wasp removes its stinger, and then it grabs the cockroach by an antenna, and by pulling on the antenna, that stimulates the cockroach to move. but if it lets go of the antenna, the cockroach can’t run away. so it’s this way of getting around the fact that its prey is too large. but it also doesn’t want to kill the prey because it’s not going to eat it itself, it’s going to actually feed it to its babies. it’s going to bury it alive with a single egg that can feed on this living cockroach that stays fresh, because it’s not dead.

so i visited the scientist frederic libersat in israel who studies the action of this venom. i went to the lab, and i photographed this. i had done some research on this biology, but i didn’t realize until after when i saw that professor give a lecture at a conference where he said “you know, we’re actually working with parkinson’s researchers to try and develop a better treatment for this disease by studying the wasp.” and that’s because the dopamine-disrupting activity of this venom has a similar mechanism to how parkinson’s works in humans. and what i don’t understand is how close that gap is. so on the one hand, it’s insane that our own brains and cockroaches brains share similar neurotransmitters. it kind of points to the common building blocks of all of the animal world, and the biological world more broadly. i don’t know how far along that collaboration is, or what the near-term implications are. i don’t know that they’re necessarily going to market with a new drug based on this, but i think the idea that they can think about the activity of this disease and the system from a mental perspective. it’s almost like a model system where the activity of this neurotransmitter and the chemistry of the cockroach’s brain is far simpler in terms of its effects on the cockroach’s behavior than our own super complicated brain and super complicated disease. so it’s a way to simplify a system and think about how to approach the much more complicated problem.

q: what’s next for you?

a: for the immediate, i’m very much trying to organize my life and take a break. but i am in the beginnings of my next project on jellyfish and using that as an example for how to think about complexity in the biological world. parasites is another example of this; it’s creatures that have something to teach us about how the world works. everybody knows about jellyfish, but even i’m just scratching the surface of how intricate and beautiful and complicated they are. to look at this thing that just looks like a bag of goo and to understand how it sees the world and has survived longer than almost any other animal on the planet, through mass extinctions. this is a cool thing that we could probably learn something from. so that’ll be the next project for me.

dr. melissa fierke is one of the people who first started the movement “bike lanes on euclid” by creating a club through school and reaching out to people in the community. this grassroots movement took about 6 years to come to fruition, forcing local officials to make bike lanes on euclid a reality. people from all around this area have been able to reap the benefits of a more bicycle-friendly street. there are signs on almost everyone’s bikes reading “bike lanes on euclid,” and there’s even a band here on campus named after the movement. almost every student feels very connected to this cause. this situation has proven that persistence and community-building are crucial to creating infrastructure that can then make positive environmental change.

lichtenstein recently sat down with us to talk about his work with esf and his thoughts on sustainability. our conversation was edited for clarity and space.

q: what does sustainability mean to you?

a: you know, when you ask that question, the first thing that came to mind are my grandkids. it is really about leaving this place better for them so that they have promise. that their future has promise. i believe it is our obligation to be stewards of this place, wise stewards of this place, but to leave it better than it was when we first came here… for me, sustainability is making sure that the environment is sound enough that life as we know it now can continue to prosper, and that includes human life. and sustainability is about being resilient and it’s about regenerating. so how can we regenerate communities? how can we make our communities even better than they are today? and that really is the human factor.

q: could you talk about the goals that the suny chancellor has for sustainability of all the suny campuses?

a: sure. those goals are not in place yet. we have a draft set of goals that… a group of us produced from a number of different suny institutions, and presented to the chancellor for potential adoption by the chancellor to all of suny, which is 64 campuses. this was only shared with her about 4 months ago and they have not (yet) been adopted. there still needs to be a lot of discussion around them to make sure that they’re really viable. we started with a document that was a menu-item list of things to choose from. they have to be phased; a lot of things in there are not going to happen overnight and really relate to major cultural and policy shifts that have to take place. it’s just like the challenges we face here at esf with sustainability: you try to tackle the low-hanging fruit first, those things that are easily achievable, start to show some results with those things, get people to buy into it. then start to take on the more difficult things. and that’s, i think, where suny is. having said that, that suny does not have formal sustainability goals, we do have a chancellor that is all about sustainability. how can we help suny with what we know, and how can they help us as we try to accelerate more on that sustainability paradigm?=

q: so what do you see as esf’s biggest sustainability goal right now?

a: well, the college operations need to be more sustainable. we need to get to 100% renewable energy… so operations, waste, waste management, recycling, there’s a lot to do. more sustainable grounds, and grounds-keeping. we still use quite a few chemicals, and we still use gasoline-powered lawn mowers; i’d like to see us move to plug-ins and things like that. so those are all obvious things. those are things we need to do on the operations side. but i would say we don’t spend enough time on the social equity piece of sustainability. we have accessibility issues for a lot of our facilities—those students and staff and faculty that are less than fully abled— if we have one of our elevators go down, which happens constantly.

gender inclusive spaces, such as bathrooms. we’re making progress, but there’s so much more that we can do. the whole social equity piece is really critical, and when people think about sustainability, they don’t think about that. but i’m working very close with our chief diversity officer, our title ix officer. i think there are gender inequality issues here still, big time across the board: student, staff, and faculty. that’s a huge focus for us. and that might not be something that we get credit for, and points in our sustainable tracking rating system. but that’s not what you do this for. sustainability is about people. that’s when you asked me about my vision of sustainability, it’s really about people and creating a more equitable space for people.

q: while i do think esf has a long way to go in terms of sustainability, i think about universities across the country that don’t even think about sustainability at all. i was wondering if you had any advice for those types of universities.

a: we have an obligation, i think, to do exactly what you’re implying here. and that is to help others come along, particularly schools that may not have any kind of environmental focus at all. we need to take christina johnson, our chancellor, and we need to figure out how to spread her message and engage with others on her message from other academic institutions. because here’s a person who has undeniable qualifications that nobody can contend. and if somebody from that stature is out there talking about this, that’s critically important. so that’s why i think if we can get these sustainability goals in place for suny, and start in new york state. start to impact the rest of the institutions in new york state that aren’t doing much in this area. then start to position suny, the largest public institution of its kind in the country as an example. and it can influence everything. so yes, we need to do work to help others. and that’s what i’m excited about.