In late 2015, the City of New York fulfilled the promise of the “MillionTreesNYC” program by planting its millionth tree. While the program was designed primarily to make the city greener and more resilient to floods during storms like Hurricane Sandy, the project also served as a predominantly positive experience for thousands of volunteers, who then went on to become more involved in civic life in their communities. Since the vast majority of those volunteers came from white, middle class and affluent backgrounds it is hard to determine if the lessons of New York can be applied to other sectors of the population to increase civic engagement, especially among minorities and lower-income Americans.
Benefits beyond the environment
The MillionTreesNYC program is a public-private partnership that was created between Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration and a private nonprofit group, the New York Restoration Project. Of course, trees have many environmental benefits, including providing absorbing carbon, beautifying neighborhoods, creating shade, and preventing soil erosion. Yet we find another benefit: the initiative has also encouraged New Yorkers to get more involved in environmental projects of all sorts and become more engaged citizens overall.
To date, little research has been done on the connections between green initiatives and enhanced citizen participation. In our recent book, Urban Environmental Stewardship and Civic Engagement: How Planting Trees Strengthens the Roots of Democracy, my co-authors and I present findings from a two-year study of more than seven hundred volunteer stewards who got involved in the MillionTrees Initiative. The findings we present in our book are consistent with those from my research on other environmental projects in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC, which are known for their diverse populations. Nevertheless, the participants in all of these projects tended to be whiter, more highly educated, and more female than their communities overall.
Expanding benefits to historically less-advantaged communities
Beyond voting and religious activities, environmental stewardship was, according to these volunteers, the most important first step toward other kinds of civic engagement. Our study not only considers participation on the days volunteers plant new trees; we follow up with them a year later and find that planting trees and other types of environmental stewardship have encouraged them to be more active citizens across the board. Planting trees with other members of the community provides a gateway into greater levels of civic engagement.
Driven by the desire to give something back to their communities and to pass on an ethic of participation to the next generation, these volunteers see environmental stewardship and civic engagement as deeply intertwined, not separate kinds of activities. Environmental stewardship fostered and complemented other kinds of civic engagement.
Consider the explanation by a woman we call “Sharita” who is a 54-year-old African-American who lives in Queens. “I guess I started really doing them [tree plantings] because my daughter got old enough and I wanted to take her and be involved more in environmental activities…I just felt it was important to do something for the environment and this is a small thing I can do that isn’t just a simple thing of recycling. This is something a little more hands on.”
OR
Consider the explanation by a woman we call “Sonia” who is a 19-year-old college student: “I’ve always tried to be a little bit more conscious, and normally when I do volunteer activities I work with people, but I’ve been trying to get into the environment. So, I’ve just kind of been educating myself a bit more about why it’s important to take care of a park and why it’s important to plant trees.”
This finding is not restricted either to New Yorkers or to volunteer tree planting. Our preliminary research on volunteers work on urban farms or participating in environmental protests points to similar trends. Clearly, researchers and philanthropists alike should give more consideration to the many ways in which environmental volunteering can address troublesome civic deficits.
Strengthening the strong
People who participate in environmental activities are significantly more civically engaged than the general population – and, on average, they are more likely to be white and highly educated. From across the partisan spectrum, people who volunteer some of their free time to take care of trees and other natural resources are also more likely to attend town or school meetings or make their voices heard at community boards; and they are more likely than members of the general American population and other members of their community to sign petitions, participate in protests, engage in political discussions on the Internet, and vote in elections.Given the mutually reinforcing links between environmental volunteerism and civic participation for whites, women, and the better educated, we need to ask whether similar positive dynamics can be found – or set in motion – across the lines of race and class. Will planting trees and digging in gardens have the same civically encouraging effects for everyone? Can communities of color and low-income communities become more civically and politically engaged in part by mounting efforts to clean up and improve their neighborhoods? What can be done to reduce the ways in which the benefits of participation in environmental projects is restricted those who already enjoy a variety of privileges?
By more fully exploring variations by race and class, researchers will also be able to deepen their understanding of ways in which participation in environmental projects could yield benefits for communities and individuals – not just civic and political pay offs, but also benefits from healthier eating or spending less time in online activities.
Across the United States and around the world, cities and communities are mounting creative efforts to plant trees, protect watersheds, promote energy efficiency, and implement environmental improvements. Environmental benefits of these efforts are already quite well understood. Now it is time to learn much more about the ways green community projects can deepen citizen participation and enhance the strength and vitality of democracy in America and beyond.
Research to Improve Policy: The Scholars Strategy Network seeks to improve public policy and strengthen democracy by organizing scholars working in America's colleges and universities. SSN's founding director is Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University.