Talking Trees with Davey Tree

What is Environmental Justice? - Know the Importance of Trees this Earth Day

April 22, 2021 The Davey Tree Expert Company Season 1 Episode 15
Talking Trees with Davey Tree
What is Environmental Justice? - Know the Importance of Trees this Earth Day
Show Notes Transcript

Josh Behounek, business development manager for Davey Resource Group, discusses what exactly environmental justice is and what we can do to help.

We're celebrating Arbor Day all month long with the Davey Planting Project Giveaway! We want to promote tree planting this Arbor Day, so we're giving away tree seeds to anyone and everyone who is interested! All you have to do is email a mailing address to podcasts@davey.com and you'll receive your complimentary seeds in the mail along with planting instructions.  You have until the end of the month to send us an email for your seeds. *Seeds can only be mailed within the U.S.

In this episode we cover:

  • What is environmental justice? (1:13)
  • What Davey is doing for environmental justice (3:32)
    • Tree equity in Holyoke, MA (6:36)
    • Level the Planting Field in South Chicago (10:35)
  • What homeowners can do (12:57)
  • Future of environmental justice (14:19)
  • What attracts Josh to this work (15:01)

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.

You can learn more about environmental justice on the United States Environmental Protection Agency website Josh mentions.

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company

Doug: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each episode showcases one of Davey's certified arborists sharing advice with everyone about caring for your trees and landscapes. We'll talk about everything from introduced pest, seasonal tree care, deer damage, how to make your trees thrive, and much, much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more, because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. Welcome back tree and nature lovers.

Before we talk about the important work being done around environmental justice, don't forget to send for your free tree seeds as part of the Davey Planting Project in celebration of Arbor Day. All you need to do is send us an email requesting the seeds to this address and it's podcasts that's plural @davey.com. Let me spell it. P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S @davey D-A-V-E-Y .com. You've got until April 30th and we'll get those seeds right out to you. We're joined this week by Josh Behounek. He's a business development manager for the Davey Resource Group and we're talking about a very important topic called environmental justice.

Josh, when I think environmental justice, that sounds like a win-win. It sounds like a positive thing but then I start thinking, what exactly is environmental justice? What does that mean?

Josh: Doug. Thanks a lot for having me here today. You're right, it is a win-win and it's a big important topic that's out there. It's been around for a while but here lately, it's gotten a lot of buzz and it's gained a lot of momentum and a lot of steam across the country and the world. We're excited about it for sure.

Doug: Can you define exactly what environmental justice is for me?

Josh: I think there's a couple of definitions out there but the one that I liked the most that seems to encompass the most with it is by the EPA. I'm just going to read it for you real fast because I pulled it up here. According to the EPA, Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.

Doug: In the real world, what are we trying to do when we say environmental justice? What can Davey do to help that?

Josh: In the real world, what we're trying to do, what we're trying to say is that in our communities and throughout our countries, everybody should have access to the environment equally, regardless of where you live and what your income is or what your color is that everybody should have access to trees and nature and should have them available to them. Not only from a equality perspective, but from a bigger picture and a health perspective so the benefits perspective of the trees. In the real world, I think that's what we're trying to accomplish with environmental justice.

I just got to say that Davey's really excited about being in the environmental space and working around environmental justice space and working with it.

Doug: In what ways are they doing that? How can we promote environmental justice?

Josh: That's a great question, Doug. Davey is an employee-owned company and we're really proud of that. It's something that we have been around for 140 years, we want to be around for another 140 years. We recognize and accept the responsibility and challenge to be leaders in this space in environmental justice. I think we can help in a number of ways just off the top my head, I thought of a couple ways that Davey is actively working for environmental justice communities and environmental justice. I can go into those if you want, Doug.

Doug: Yes, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Again when I think environmental justice, I want to help. I want everybody to have a great park, be around trees. We'll talk a little bit about that. Tell me what you think Davey can do to help?

Josh: I think Davey is uniquely positioned to help and I think it really comes down to two main ways we can help. I think we can help first with the workforce part of it and the idea of getting BIPOC people into Davey Tree and into the industry. The other way we can help is through the projects and through the work that we directly do. I'll just give you two of these examples. On the first aspect of environmental justice and the workforce part, we have a project with American Forests and Tazo that we call the Tazo Tree Corps, where we're actually committed to hiring BIPOC individuals within five BIPOC majority cities as part of a paid tree planting workforce.

We're really hoping to challenge the concept that only White men can go into this field or can have a career in urban forestry or arboriculture. We're really excited about that type of an initiative to get training and development into interested individuals that want a long career in this field.

Doug: Let me stop you for one second. When you use the term BIPOC. What exactly does that mean?

Josh: Oh, yes, sorry Doug. BIPOC it's an acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous and People of color.

Doug: We want everybody to be involved in the tree industry. That's the idea, which is awesome.

Josh: Exactly.

Doug: Tell me about some of these projects that you're working on.

Josh: We're really excited about these Doug and we have a number of projects across the whole country but I thought of these two that I thought would be really highlight the concept of environmental justice. The first one is an ongoing project that we're doing at Holyoke, Massachusetts and we're actually contracted by the city to create a tree equity plan. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time this has ever been done anywhere in the world on creating a plan solely focused on tree equity in the community.

This is a really good example of how Davey can help with environmental justice because we're uniquely qualified to put together an interdisciplinary team of experts to tackle this tough question of how do we create a tree equity forest. Because of our experience, and community urban forestry and our national footprint and our bandwidth, we really understand the trees and how to grow trees and where trees should grow and why you should do it. Because of our talent in our team, we're able to hire and work with local partners as well.

For this project, we were working with a local Holyoke group called Community Circle and they're assisting us with Spanish translation and interpretation as well as facilitating the public participation. Now, that's really critical, because they really know who to engage in the community and how to offer unique incentives to get people to their participation, including things like daycare, and stipends, and other incentives to get them to actually show up and tell us what they think and what they want out of an urban forest.

Doug: I think what's interesting there is that when we hear tree equity, again, we're thinking, oh, that's completely positive but without somebody who knows about trees and where they go and which ones should be where, you can have great intentions, but you need the expertise also.

Josh: You need the buy-in from the residents, from the locals. Just because you plant a tree somewhere it's up to them to help care for it and steward it through its life. There's a lot of misperceptions out there, across all communities about some trees. Some people are scared of trees, some people look at trees. There was a great research paper done in Detroit, that looked at the fear of trees, and a lack of trust of the city of Detroit because they had a bunch of standing dead trees. The homeowners were sitting there saying, "Hey, the city can't even take care of what they already have, why would I want another tree that's going to become another burden for me and the city. They can't even do what they're supposed to do."

There's a lack of trust there between the city and the homeowners. Sometimes there can just be a lack of awareness as to why you would want a tree. That isn't just a racial issue. It's a communication issue when you're talking whether it's language barriers or financial barriers or just education barriers. These are things that our local partners can really help us navigate because it is so unique to each community.

Doug: That's fascinating because just living out here in the suburbs, all I think of is a positive on trees. I'm not looking at the negative of trees and that's just, again, part of the project of working through with the local community.

Josh: You're exactly right. Look, I'm someone that loves trees. I've always loved trees. I'm like, more trees the better, but that's not the reality for everybody, Doug. We've got this other really cool project that we're doing in the south Chicago and the wards eight and nine right now. We're really tackling this problem of homeowners that have big dead trees on their property but can't afford to get rid of them. They're a liability, they're a hazard, but just like a lot of people can't afford to put a new roof on their house, they can't afford to fix their driveway, they can't afford to replace these trees that they never planted or that they just inherited.

We're working on a project that's funded by the US Forest Service and it's being managed by the nature Conservancy. It's called Level the Planting Field. What we're doing is we're going in with a local nonprofit, local church called Imani Village. They're training these local tree advocates that are from the community to understand the benefits of trees and to go out into the community, into these wards, meet homeowners where they're at, help them locate dead trees or dying trees or hazardous trees that need to be pruned, get their permission to remove the tree or prune the tree and then replant the tree. It's this long process.

Davey is part of the team that is going in and doing these really technical expensive removals on these tight, small properties in south side of Chicago with power lines everywhere and all sorts of infrastructure issues. Our experts are going in and doing these really technical removals, taking this worry away from homeowners and getting them excited about a new tree and getting them excited about the regeneration on their property, increasing their property values and all the benefits that we all love that we experience in the suburbs of wherever. It's such a rewarding project. Part of what we're also doing with our recruiting and our technical training team is we're talking to these advocates and giving them a career pathway and saying, "Hey, look, this is the type of work that you can do if you want a career in this industry and look at all the good you can do and look at how much fun you can have and oh, yes, you can get paid for it." It's a really exciting, rewarding project.

Doug: What do you think a regular homeowner can do to help in environmental justice or can they?

Josh: I think there's a couple things that a regular homeowner can do anywhere in the country. The first thing you can do is plant a tree. One of the best things about trees and what we're talking about is no matter where you live, we all benefit from your tree planting. It helps clean everybody's air. It helps to reduce urban heat island. It helps to mitigate carbon. There's always the benefit of trees. No matter where you live, if you plant a tree, prune your tree, preserve your tree, it helps everybody. Then if you have enough trees or for whatever reason, you don't have the ability to do that, I would encourage you to donate your time or money to a local nonprofit that is in this space. Almost every single city has one, whether it's a local tree board or a big sophisticated one like Tree Pittsburgh or a National Arbor Day Foundation, you can work your time or money into these places and plant trees and donate trees and water trees and no one's ever going to turn you down. There's a need and a desire for that. It's a very rewarding to do that.

Doug: What would your fantasy be for the future with environmental justice?

Josh: This is where I like to change my title, Doug, sometimes to theoretical arborist where I get to just play this fantasy land. If I'm Josh, a theoretical arborist, I would love to see every community 100% stocked where every single planting space is taken, every city has achieved their canopy goals, and we all live in these beautiful, shaded urban forests. That's what I'm aiming for and that's what I go for. That would be my fantasy.

Doug: You're getting me excited, Josh. This is thrilling. I can tell from the passion in your voice that you're into this. Why is it for you? What is it that attracts you to this type of work?

Josh: Oh, yes. You're right, Doug. It is something that I'm passionate about. It's what I get excited about is and there's this common joke in the industry in the forestry industry that you don't go into this field to get rich. I always have a hard time with that one because I want to get rich. I think you can still have a really great career. I've been fortunate to work for Davey for this is my 20th year. Personally, I went into forestry because I love being outdoors. I quickly realized that I loved that how much people love being outdoors. I love working with the people and the trees. I'm really obsessed with this idea of the intersection of trees, people, and technology.

I really get excited about right now in this day and age where we're at where we can answer and solve some of these really hard problems around environmental justice or climate change, stormwater, or whatever it is. I like to think that trees are the answer or part the answer for that like we've talked about before. While trees can't solve all the injustices both prior and present, I do think they can be part of the solution and they can and help improve the health and the quality of lives of people.

Doug: Josh, I don't think anybody could say it better than that. Congratulations on what you're doing and keep it up because it's just wonderful.

Josh: Thanks, Doug. I'm excited and I'm happy to be here talking about it.

Doug: Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees Podcast from the Davey Tree Expert Company. I'm your host Doug Oster. Next week, we'll conclude our month long celebration of Arbor Day with a fascinating interview with Dan Lambe, the president of the Arbor Day Foundation. Don't forget to email podcasts, that's plural, @davey.com, P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S @davey, D-A-V-E-Y.com for your free tree seeds as part of the Davey Planting Project. You've got to April 30th and we'll send them right out to you. As you heard Josh say and as we always like to remind you on the Talking Trees Podcast, trees are the answer.

[00:17:32] [END OF AUDIO]