The COVID-AM blog is a partnership between the UMI 3157 iGLOBES and the Institut des Amériques, coordinated by François-Michel Le Tourneau, Deputy Director and Marion Magnan, researcher at the Institute. About the blog.

by Hugo Rochard, PhD student in geography at the University of Paris, within LADYSS and LabEx DynamiTe. His PhD deals with environmental civic stewardship for nature in the city, in Paris and New York City.

As a major gateway to the North-American continent, New York was one of the first cities of the United States to be hit by the COVID-19 crisis. 

For many decades, it has been partially the role of more or less professionalized local organizations (Conservancies, Alliances, “friends of”, “stewards of” …) to take charge of natural public spaces, in cooperation with the city Parks Department. Even though they act on the public realm, a report published online by several local organizations on May 1st, reminds us that the functioning of half of the groups relies mainly on private funding. Prohibited from getting together in person for their stewardship mission, and threatened in their survival for some, these ordinary actors act henceforth online. Adapting to the challenges of COVID-19, local organizations are leveraging social media through assorted online platforms and the strategic use of online newsletters and petitions distributed through databases. In the grip of collective emotion, cut from the physical bounds, the civic groups are thus mobilizing differently to continue existing. The crisis reveals their interdependency and solidarity relationships but also, for some of them, their vulnerabilities. An abundance of research work from the USDA Forest Service illustrates the importance of civic actors’ networks in the exchanges of material (money, tools, plants, compost, staff…) and immaterial (knowledge, values…) resources. The acute nature of the pandemic in New York reveals the deep-rooted relationships between the public and private sectors and just how intertwined this partnership is in pursuit of good governance of the natural spaces of the city. 

Since last April, non-profit organizations used digital tools to collect and allocate funds, to try and offset decreasing funding from both city budget and private donations. At the beginning of May, one of the most influential advocacy group, The City Parks Foundation, undertook an emergency relief campaign to help struggling local organizations. The “NYC Green relief and Recovery Fund” enables micro-local groups to request grants up to 1 500 $ and to 100 000 $ for the largest organizations. Each year, this foundation offers a much-needed cash injection of about 150 million dollars towards local environmental groups working in more than 400 parks. There is also a more structural demand. For the second consecutive year, during the campaign “Play Fair for Parks”, more than 250 grass-roots organizations signed an advocacy document for a massive reinvestment in green spaces. So that is a whole economy - sprung from neoliberalism for some  - to save [1]. 

What is at stake is not only parks but also the environment in its multiple dimensions. In neighborhoods like Flushing (Queens), which is a multicultural poor area and a virus cluster, local organizations increasingly rely on solidarity and mutual care to face the economic crisis. Collectively these organizations seek personal donations and unified voice to justifying their role in the management of the living environment, the watershed, and the bay.