{"id":136,"date":"2018-07-24T21:37:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-24T21:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prairiecommons.ca\/?page_id=136"},"modified":"2018-10-01T21:19:33","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T21:19:33","slug":"q-and-a-with-katherine-arbuthnott","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.prairiecommons.ca\/?page_id=136","title":{"rendered":"Grassroots organization focuses on collaborative conservation: Q and A"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI was in my quilting room, listening to the radio and\u2026it felt like I\u2019d been kicked in the gut.\u201d<\/h3>\n
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Interview and photos by Katie Doke Sawatzky<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published Oct 1, 2018 3:30 PM<\/p>\n

Katherine Arbuthnott has been a board member of Public Pastures \u2013 Public Interest since its beginnings in 2012. PPPI is a small group of Saskatchewan citizens that was instrumental in raising the profile of public pastures after the federal government announced it was shutting down the PFRA Community Pastures Program. For the past year I have been attending monthly meetings, held by the 10-member board in Regina with others skyping in from Saskatoon. The collective and grassroots nature of PPPI is what makes it unique. Despite operating on a shoe-string budget of $15,000 (funds are donated or fundraised), Vice-Chair Joanne Havelock estimates that through the 500 contacts on its mailing list, PPPI has a network of hundreds of thousands of individuals it can call on for support.
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Arbuthnott is a psychology professor at the University of Regina who specializes in conservation psychology. I took a graduate readings course with her in the fall 2017 semester. We discussed the phenomenon of social norms and how they motivate our behaviour when it comes to protecting and conserving the environment. Turns out that instead of doing what\u2019s right, in the end, we\u2019re more motivated by what our neighbours are doing.<\/em><\/p>\n

I asked Arbuthnott about PPPI and her research. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Katie Doke Sawatzky: <\/strong>Is your course on conservation psychology popular these days?<\/p>\n

Katherine Arbuthnott:<\/strong> Yes, it is. I get students from a variety of disciplines. Psychology students, of course, but I get lots of environmental studies students. I\u2019ve had biologists. I\u2019ve had people from geology. It\u2019s been very interdisciplinary, which is really one of the great benefits of the class because conservation psychology is really, we see ourselves as collaborators.<\/p>\n

The work we do really is to work with others to take into account the human decision-making side of improving sustainability.<\/p>\n

KDS: How would you define PPPI?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Really, a group of Saskatchewan citizens who are interested in maintaining the health of the native prairie environment and keeping it public. We started in response to the changes to the PFRA program, but really the heart of our interest was always about publicly owned native grasslands.<\/p>\n

KDS: How did you become involved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA: <\/strong>It\u2019s a flashbulb memory for me. I was in my quilting room, listening to the radio, and somebody came on to talk about (how) in the latest federal omnibus budget bill, there had been a clause about dissolving the PFRA, getting rid of the PFRA pastures, and devolving them to the provincial government, who planned to sell them.<\/p>\n

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\"We started to identify that this was going to be an invisible thing, unless we did something about it. That\u2019s how PPPI started.\"<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I felt like I\u2019d been kicked in the gut. It seemed like such a central part of my homeland. Physically, the landscape, but also sociologically. This was a program that, at least in my mind at that time, was the way that we publicly supported young farmers trying to get into the business without having to own a lot of land. It seemed part of our generational caring, for our rural families, farm families.<\/p>\n

I emailed (prairie naturalist) Trevor Herriot to say, I just heard this, it\u2019s horrible, we have to do something. We started to organize a seminar. I was a member of the university, so I could get space for us to meet. We met during Agribition, when people would be in town, just to talk about it. That\u2019s when we started to identify that there was a gap. People didn\u2019t really know, particularly in the urban areas, the history of (the PFRA). I\u2019m old enough to know how it\u2019s kind of woven into the fabric of the province, but my kids didn\u2019t know about it. We started to identify that this was going to be an invisible thing, unless we did something about it. That\u2019s how PPPI started.<\/p>\n

KDS: Did you have experience on the pastures?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA: <\/strong>I grew up in Regina and Saskatoon but I spent all my summers on my uncles\u2019 and aunts\u2019 farms between ages 10 to 18. They took their cattle out to pasture but I don\u2019t remember if they were community pastures. I knew what the PFRA system was, just being a citizen of Saskatchewan. It was somehow there, in my history.<\/p>\n

KDS: What about grasslands?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was 10 when my mom died and the first summer afterward we stayed on my aunt and uncle\u2019s farm by Paswegin, close to Wadena. It was a lot of work. We were always hauling wood and weeding gardens and watering, baking and cooking. I was used to a lot of private time and I didn\u2019t have any there, and I was still grieving. I wandered away, one day, when I was supposed to be weeding the garden, to an adjacent grassland. I don\u2019t know if it was a pasture or what, but there were tall grasses. I laid down in it, and people couldn\u2019t see me. I had a good cry, and when I was finished with that I noticed the lovely breeze and the grasses above me. I just kind of came to in the present moment in this grassland and felt at peace, really. I was by myself, and beautiful nature around me. I really discovered how healing that was. I was familiar with grasslands but I hadn\u2019t really looked so carefully at them as then.<\/p>\n

KDS:<\/strong> That\u2019s a lovely story.<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> It is. It\u2019s a central story for me.<\/p>\n

KDS: Going back to that meeting, the conference where everyone gathered before PPPI formed. Who was there? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

First Nations groups, pasture patrons, conservationists, researchers who did a lot of research on the prairies and artists like Branjimir Gjetvaj who did photography on the pastures. Pasture patrons decided to set up their own group, so they weren\u2019t members, but we had close alliances between our two groups. Our membership is pretty wide (and) is really anybody who\u2019s interested in native grasslands and public ownership of land as well. We\u2019ve supported quite a bit of research and events. It would help us if we had an income source so we could hire somebody, because we\u2019re all doing it off the side of our desks.<\/p>\n

KDS: Can you describe what the feeling in the room was like at the meeting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was really interesting because it was a collection of people that hadn\u2019t gotten together before, really. We didn\u2019t have common purpose up until that point. We were all alarmed about the situation and energized, like, what can we do about it? We had different perspectives on what was at risk. We had panels and presentations and then lots of discussion. I certainly was hearing voices I hadn\u2019t heard before, and I think everybody was. We were finding kind of common purpose around this, so it was hopeful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Katherine Arbuthnott has been a member of Public Pastures - Public Interest since 2012. Credit: Katie Doke Sawatzky.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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KDS: What are some of PPPI\u2019s successes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> There are the two big things. One is we\u2019ve managed to maintain conversational links between groups: pasture patrons, ranchers, First Nations groups, the M\u00e9tis. I think that\u2019s our biggest role, to be the bridge for conversation between groups that don\u2019t really trust each other or don\u2019t have easy access to have conversation with each other.<\/p>\n

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\"I certainly was hearing voices I hadn\u2019t heard before, and I think everybody was. We were finding kind of common purpose around this, so it was hopeful.\"<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Number two is, well, nothing has been sold. One of the things that came out of that first meeting was to slow the process down. Nobody knew what to replace (the PFRA) with. We needed some time to figure things out. I think we\u2019ve been pretty successful at that because the process did get slowed down. Both federal and provincial governments heard from enough people to know that there\u2019s public concern, and they couldn\u2019t just quickly rush ahead with these things.<\/p>\n

KDS: How were you able to make these things happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA: <\/strong>We\u2019ve had several letter-writing campaigns and we\u2019ve had a petition that went to the federal government. The federal government is still working on potentially having three of the big pastures down in the southwest corner become a conservation area. They\u2019re working with ranchers in the area and First Nations want to be at the table. We facilitated that to happen better. We have raised public awareness. People I think are more aware now of the pastures, the difference between private and public, why maintaining some commons, some public ownership, is a useful thing.<\/p>\n

KDS: And other things haven\u2019t gone as planned?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> All of the pastures now have been devolved to the provincial government so that\u2019s not been a success. We wanted to stop the process, but, didn\u2019t happen. But nothing has been sold, at this point.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not a good management model that has come forward for the former PFRA (pastures). It\u2019s all on the lease farmers with no resources for them to accomplish (pasture management). Of course they can\u2019t do it. They\u2019re busy farming and maintaining their family. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t want to do this other thing, it\u2019s just like, who can do three full time jobs at the same time? We haven\u2019t figured out a good way to facilitate that without taxpayer support, which is what the PFRA did.<\/p>\n

KDS: How has PPPI evolved? The divestment finished this year, so what are current projects you\u2019re looking at now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> We\u2019ve expanded our focus to grasslands, not just the farmer PFRA pastures, because the provincial public grasslands are in some trouble as well. We\u2019re interested, now, in all public grasslands.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve established pretty good connections with other organizations in other jurisdictions that are facing some of these same problems. There\u2019s organizations in the States where multiple groups have come together to try to preserve grasslands. Manitoba\u2019s doing things quite differently than we are, there\u2019s organizations in Alberta, so we have gotten better integrated with these other grassland organizations.<\/p>\n

As far as public awareness, we\u2019re now interested in, how do we get more urban people onto some grasslands so they know what it is we\u2019re trying to protect? We\u2019re thinking about ways to develop citizen-science projects, about ways to find places close to Regina and Saskatoon that are grasslands, to have more tourism kinds of things on those grasslands.<\/p>\n

Funding has, sadly, become one of our priorities. Trying to figure out how we can hire some people so we can have more stable attention to this without burning all of us out.<\/p>\n

KDS: I\u2019m wondering if PPPI gets at something more than maybe other conservation organizations do because of the collaborative model that it is.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My granddad was a homesteader. He was from Scotland, and his closest neighbours down the road were from the Ukraine, and that\u2019s how communities were. They had to rely on each other, and learn to work together, without losing themselves, because everybody maintained their own ethnic background. That\u2019s kind of a model for me of how it worked in Saskatchewan, because it had to work like that, because we really needed each other.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something of that in PPPI. We recognize that we can\u2019t do this on our own. As much as we love conservation, we have to think about the needs of the farmers. We have to think about the oil industry and the hunters and the artists\u2013 we have to figure out how do we do this all together, with this mix of sometimes contradictory sorts of needs. First Nations\u2019 treaty rights require public land, so that\u2019s really important. Plus, they know something about living on this land in a sustainable way that really lots of us don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I think we get that and we do our best to try to build that into our steering committees and projects. We\u2019re not perfect. We\u2019re mostly urban people and so we struggle with that a little bit, but it\u2019s certainly in our goals, in a way that might be different from more focused organizations.<\/p>\n

KDS:<\/strong> How does your research on conservation psychology helps you in your work with PPPI?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA: <\/strong>Environmental problems are caused and maintained by human actions. What conservation psychologists can bring is knowledge about behaviour change. How do we use our knowledge about behaviour change to frame things, to organize things? People have to adapt to whatever new system we come up with. They have to be willing to embrace it and so knowing something about people and how people change is useful to all of the other conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

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\"First Nations\u2019 treaty rights require public land, so that\u2019s really important. Plus, they know something about living on this land in a sustainable way that really lots of us don\u2019t.\"<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

KDS: This is what we talked about in our class. Can you describe things that work in getting people to change their behaviour to be more sustainable?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> As social creatures and we\u2019re very strongly influenced by the expectations and the models of our community. What do we think everybody else is striving for and how do we think other people are acting? We\u2019re not aware of how much that influences our behaviour, but it\u2019s probably the strongest influence.<\/p>\n

For example, cell phones became popular not because people learned about them \u2013 it\u2019s because everybody else had them, right? Anybody who\u2019s cool\u2019s got a cell phone. We will make changes really fast if our social expectations and norms change. So, paying attention to how do we make it a cool thing to be concerned about spending time in nature, as opposed to just a weird and geeky thing that makes you outside the norm of your society. How do we appeal to what people will innately be interested in, as opposed to, it\u2019s the right thing to do, it\u2019s the moral thing to do.<\/p>\n

KDS: That doesn\u2019t work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> That doesn\u2019t work. Claiming it\u2019s the moral high ground only works if you\u2019ve made it the social norm. For example, with the #MeToo movement, the moral standing has become the social expectation. Now people are claiming themselves to be feminists, and supporting of LGBTQ, etc., because that\u2019s become the social norm. That\u2019s what gives us status. Not because it\u2019s the morally right thing to do. It\u2019s been morally right for decades and it hasn\u2019t worked. It\u2019s just now become the norm.<\/p>\n

KDS: For the pastures, what does trying to change the social norm around that look like? Can you give me an example?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because there\u2019s this strong push in Saskatchewan right now to make farms bigger so people can make more money and to turn more and more native (prairie) into cultivated land, rural security is a problem. There\u2019s that homestead thing I talked about. Your farms are so big that your nearest neighbour is so far away. There\u2019s more to protect. Individual farmers are feeling more at risk, less secure. It\u2019s so sparse that we can\u2019t afford good policing over this whole area. So this is a tension now, between individualization and wanting more security, something that collectivity could offer us.<\/p>\n

One of the things the commons did was, we hired more people. There were more people living in an area, so it wasn\u2019t such a sparse population. So how can we get more people around that very sparsely used land? Well, one of them might be, there\u2019s more visitors. We welcome birders occasionally, or artists, or researchers, so that there\u2019s just more human activity around this common area that isn\u2019t in any way interfering with people\u2019s economy or the grazing. To nudge the social norm towards welcoming the presence of other people instead of the libertarian \u2018get rid of them,\u2019 in order to protect something you care about. That\u2019s citizen science, trying to figure out ways to get more urban people connected to specific pieces of land.<\/p>\n

KDS: I\u2019m curious what you think about American ecologist Garrett Hardin\u2019s idea of \u201cthe tragedy of the commons,\u201d that the commons doesn\u2019t work because self-interest prevails.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s research out there that shows it\u2019s not inevitable.<\/p>\n

Nobody thinks there\u2019s just a tragedy of the commons anymore. There\u2019s lots of research around what\u2019s called social dilemmas, that if there\u2019s something in common, each individual has two choices: to be competitive, in order to maximize their own best interest even though if everybody did that, it would wipe out the resource, or to be cooperative, thinking about the wellbeing of the whole collective.<\/p>\n

We know quite a bit these days about what factors tip us in one direction or another. Interestingly, we just choose to make the cooperative decision much more if we\u2019ve been recently in contact with a natural environment in some way.<\/p>\n

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\"To nudge the social norm towards welcoming the presence of other people instead of the libertarian \u2018get rid of them,\u2019 in order to protect something you care about. That\u2019s citizen science, trying to figure out ways to get more urban people connected to specific pieces of land.\"<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

KDS: That\u2019s something that you\u2019ve found in your research. Are there any other conclusions that you\u2019ve come to about contact with nature?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA: <\/strong>Over the last couple of years I\u2019ve been really delving into all of the research and it turns out that nature contact improves our health in every way it\u2019s been looked at. It improves our physical health. Nation-wide studies show people who live closer to a nearby green space live longer. Social health \u2013 we\u2019re just nicer and more cooperative, when we have recent nature contact. Our attention is sharper. If you\u2019ve been stressed and you have some exposure to nature, your body recovers much faster from that stress episode. There\u2019s no downside of nature contact. It improves our wellbeing and health.<\/p>\n

KDS: What do you want Saskatchewan residents to know about these grasslands, about the grasslands in the province?<\/strong><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Oh, boy. How do I put it into words? I want them to know that native grassland provides us with riches at a much more economical level than any other system that we could use on that land. On a long-term basis, our most economical strategy to maintain sustainability on the prairies is by maintaining as much native grasslands as we can. It\u2019ll save us a ginormous amount of money, it\u2019ll buffer us from weather extremes, and it supports our own health and community sense as well, if we let it.<\/p>\n

Read, hear, and see more:<\/em><\/p>\n

Voices of the Prairie: An Interactive Story Map<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Trevor Herriot, prairie naturalist and co-founder of Public Pastures - Public Interest, discusses how the grassroots group helped halt the sale of the former PF pastures and why Saskatchewan's grasslands are important to him.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview and photos by Katie Doke Sawatzky Published Oct 1, 2018 3:30 PM Katherine Arbuthnott has been a board member of Public Pastures \u2013 Public Interest since its beginnings in 2012. PPPI is a small group of Saskatchewan citizens that was instrumental in raising the profile of public pastures after the federal government announced it<\/p>\n

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