Experts talk equity in land management

Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation called for South Burlington to increase Indigenous access to land during a discussion hosted by city council and the planning commission last week.

Climate change, food and housing insecurity topped the conversation at the joint meeting Aug. 3, where Stevens was joined by four other panelists to address and brainstorm answers to some big questions around land equity.

Balancing people and nature

Part of Stevens’ presentation focused on how people can better incorporate balance into land and resource management by giving less emphasis to the human perspective in terms of the landscape.

“Be conscious of what you’re planting, how it fits into the greater network of living things,” Stevens said. “If you go out and clearcut, are you saving seedlings to replant? Or are you cutting them down to cut costs?”

The Abenaki nation views nature three dimensionally, he explained, not as a place they owned but as a space shared with other living plants and animals. This mindset can help maintain good stewardship of the land, he added, as well as help curb human-created climate change.

“When people are not connected to the source, they tend not to care about it because it’s somebody else’s problem,” Stevens said, but “if it’s everybody’s problem” then people will be more inclined to share in stewardship.

In tackling issues of not only food insecurity, but food sovereignty, Stevens works with local colleges, businesses and state and local agencies to increase land access for Indigenous people.

Food security is a major issue, echoed fellow panelist Chief Richard “Dick” Menard of the St. Francis/Sokoki Band of the Missisquoi Abenaki Nation. While they manage food shelves with volunteer help and grow much of their own produce, he said it’s still a struggle.

Much of Menard’s work focuses on decreasing gaps in service and treatment across spectrums of health, human and social services for Abenaki people.

“Part of what South Burlington can do is give us access to the land to be able to gather nuts, medicines, food,” Stevens said.

Access and affordability

For panelist Pablo Bose, a professor at the University of Vermont who also works on refugee resettlement and is a member of the Burlington Reparations Task Force, connectivity and transit are integral to why some people choose to resettle in certain places over others.

“In order to have a welcoming and a livable community, it has to be one in which people can access all kinds of different opportunities,” Bose said. But it’s not just about convenience, he emphasized.

Through his work resettling refugees in Vermont, Bose has observed negative consequences in education and employment when transportation isn’t easily accessible.

“Tilley Drive is an excellent example of this,” Bose said. “When medical facilities move to Tilley Drive, that’s very accessible if you have a car, but really not if you don’t.”

Fellow panelist Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, a professor at the University of Vermont and a climatologist by training, also pointed to Tilley Drive as an area where accessibility is lacking.

“A lot of our medical facilities are literally on the outskirts of South Burlington — what does that mean for everybody to be able to access those facilities if they do not have access to a car?” She asked. “Could we be providing shuttle service?”

Elizabeth Mackin, a recent graduate from the University of Vermont with degrees in environmental studies and political science, spoke to her experiences as a young person struggling to find housing in Vermont’s tight market.

Besides the lack of available housing stock, which she and numerous friends have experienced post-graduation, Mackin pointed to weatherization as a hidden affordability factor. Heating costs can skyrocket during Vermont winters if a building’s efficiency is not up to par, adding to the cost of housing and weighing heavier on folks living paycheck to paycheck.

Her budget for other living expenses like rent, transportation and food were negatively affected by enormous heating bills, Mackin said.

As weather continues to become more extreme, one can expect those costs to fluctuate in sync.

‘Here with a vengeance’

“The climate crisis is not something that is off somewhere in the future, it is something that we need to talk about in terms of future generations. It is here with a vengeance,” Bose said, noting how climate change intersects issues like transportation and affordable housing.

For Dupigny-Giroux, who also serves on the Vermont Climate Council, human vulnerability is most important to prioritize when thinking about the changing climate.

From extreme floods to droughts to wildfires, disaster tends to weigh more heavily on vulnerable populations, such as elderly communities, children, low-income communities and communities of color, she said.

One community brought to the forefront during major heat waves earlier in the year were people who do not have a home, Dupigny-Giroux said.

“So, when you hear things like ‘shelter in place,’ or ‘go to a cooling center’ — do we have cooling centers that are publicly available, that everybody knows where they are, so that we can take care of all peoples?” She asked.

In 2020, the state of Vermont counted 261 people who were homeless in Chittenden County, many of whom were being housed temporarily at the Holiday Inn in South Burlington. But that program ended in June due to building renovations.

Like Stevens’ encouragement to think about the environment as a shared responsibility, Dupigny-Giroux recommended tackling issues related to climate change in a regional way.

“South Burlington, Burlington, Colchester, Winooski, Shelburne are all intertwined. So, when we’re thinking about some of the things that we need conversation-wise, I’m going to propose that it be a multi-jurisdictional approach, because one town or one city may not have the resources to do the heavy lifting by itself,” she said.

In July, the South Burlington city council approved a resolution to reduce carbon emissions and counteract climate change through policymaking, finding unanimous compromise after months of some residents begging for action. Policy-wise, this could affect anything from writing and adopting regulations to creating capital budgets to forming citizen committees.

The resolution also calls for city council to form a committee to work with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission and the Vermont Climate Council regarding climate action plans.