Page 11 - Caring_for_your_community

El Charco BG Sottovico BG Oxford BG
Cranbourne BG Wuhan BG
Missouri BG
ITD-HST Culiacán BG KEW
(Marianne North)

Auroville BG Balkan BG Brooklyn BG Hørsholm
Medellin BG Morris Arboretum
KEW MSB Ljubljana BG
(Citi Entrepreneurs) Arboretum

ENVIRONMENTAL APPROACH TO SOCIAL APPROACH TO
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

Figure 2: Spectrum of BG’s approach to project development

The focus of Oxford BG’s programme, Growing Along with work with social issues’ (see page 20). This attitude was echoed
the Botanic Garden, was primarily social. The garden staff by a member of staff involved in the Citi Entrepreneurs project.
wanted to improve their education provision for adults with He believes there are three ways to approach conservation:
learning difficulties by offering an accredited course that would ‘You can either do it by the government, you can either do
improve the skill set of the participants, making them more it by conservation projects, or you can make it a sustainable
independent and, in some cases, employable (see page 11). enterprise which then becomes self fulfilling. And all three
In Wuhan BG the focus was also on using the garden’s pool of of those are important. So we were tackling the sustainable
scientific knowledge, skills and resources to tackle a social issue: enterprise on farm’ (see page 13).
the effects of dust haze caused by local pollution on people’s
respiratory health. By showing the Wuhan community how The conception of both projects came from an
to grow plants known to improve air quality, the garden has
helped the population to live in a healthier home environment environmental perspective, yet in practice there is a
(see page 12).
strong social focus. This can be a very effective way of
In these cases the work of the gardens successfully highlights
the importance of plants to human existence and the projects meeting conservation and environmental goals. Working like
are in line with the mission of the institution, but plants and
gardening are a means to achieve the social ends. Both gardens this highlights the relevance of conservation to the participants,
identified a social issue and found ways in which they could
use their gardens and their staff to tackle it. as well as linking their lives and/or livelihoods to sustainable

It works the other way round, too – you can use a practices, ensuring the continuation of conservation beyond the
project addressing a social issue as a tool for a specific
environmental or conservation goal. At Auroville BG, the end of project funding. It effectively generates environmental
primary aim was to address the decline of the Tropical Dry
Evergreen Forest, one of India’s most endangered forest types. stewardship within the local community. k
However, in order to tackle this, they first looked at the socio-
economic difficulties faced by the community. They began
providing educational programmes that, while promoting the
conservation of the area, also taught people how to use the
forest to improve their health and livelihoods. A member of
staff from Auroville BG explained: ‘We are approaching it from
a situation where we are trying to solve a problem... I think it
a bit silly to say that we didn’t have the social in our mind, but
definitely the passion we were working from was around the
environment. But the way to protect the environment [is] to

CARING FOR YOUR COMMUNITY | A MANUAL FOR BOTANIC GARDENS 9