Participatory action research as a means of achieving ecological wisdom within climate change resiliency planning

The impacts of recent extreme weather events as well as the evidence of our changing climate has sparked a new sense of urgency in resiliency planning in the Northeast U.S. Vulnerability to climate change impacts is not limited to the built environment, but rather extends to the socio-technical systems that include the perceptions, values, preferences and patterns of behavior of various groups of human stakeholders. To more fully incorporate the human dimension into resiliency planning we must elicit and apply the ecological wisdom (EW) of local residents and stakeholders. The complexity of EW has yet to be fully described; this paper does not develop a new definition, but rather, expands the definition of EW to include local knowledge of urban dwellers that can be tapped to more effectively inform resiliency planning. We present a recent example that demonstrates how participatory action research (PAR) methods can be used to gather EW that would not ordinarily be obtained by more traditional vulnerability assessment methods. Our case study is based upon the Alewife Disaster Preparedness and Community Resiliency Planning Initiative of the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Despite the limited scope of this PAR project, a surprising number of useful observations and recommendations were obtained, which could serve to enhance the ongoing resiliency planning of the City of Cambridge. Local stakeholders also suggested a number of what W.F. Whyte described as "social inventions" for strengthening the quality of disaster preparedness and community resiliency within the Alewife community. We highlight the need to give more attention to the human dimension of resiliency planning by better understanding how a variety of local stakeholders' experience climate-related disasters, perceive the effectiveness of alternative disaster preparedness and community resiliency strategies, and determine their willingness to contribute to ongoing resiliency planning taking place within their community.