Drs. Max Lambert and Chris Schell published their book, Urban Biodiversity and Equity, describing the importance of embedding environmental justice and equity approaches to urban biodiversity science and conservation. Check out the recent coverage of the book release by the Rausser College of Natural Resources here.
Below is a short excerpt from that interview with RCNR:
What inspired you to create this book?
Max Lambert:
We were invited to put together a book on urban ecology and biodiversity. We knew there were other books out there, but we knew we wanted to write a book through a different lens: specifically, we’re building off a Science paper led by Chris that centers equity and justice as the primary axis for conservation work. That was our guiding principle for taking this from journal publications to something that people can hold.
Christopher Schell:
This is something that Max and I have been discussing since 2018. After our Science paper came out in 2020, Max contacted me to discuss what it would look like to expand that paper as a larger volume. We connected with folks who reached out about the paper and others whose work spans the urban-ecological spectrum to coalesce their contributions into a book that integrates equity throughout.
We didn't want to fall into the trap of thinking that academic institutions somehow have a hold on all this knowledge. Max led our efforts in trying to convey how applied this field is and emphasize the field’s interconnectedness. We were excited to get folks who could span what it looks like to think of these theoretical applications in biodiversity science in relation to a city.
Lambert:
And because urban ecology has blossomed so much as a field during the past 20 years, we spent a lot of time determining what topics we knew we wanted to emphasize in this book and what we would put on the back burner. We also wanted to bring in people from different backgrounds, walks of life, career stages, or parts of the world who can tie the threads of equity and justice together with this science.