Abstract:
In this thesis, I explore the potential of community gardens (CG) to alleviate social and environmental injustices and thus inspire diverse ethnic peoples to participate in environmental action. To explore the processes by which CG might contribute to these goals I took a critical environmental justice perspective to a case study of Gardens4Health, an organization that supports diverse ethnic peoples to establish CG in South Auckland. A more in-depth study of two gardens run by Sikh and Tongan volunteers was also conducted to help offer insight into how participants’ cultural beliefs and practices shaped their experiences in the garden. This approach helped to supplement the previous literature on pro-environmental behaviour in which peoples’ relationship to the environment has often been studied in a decontextualized and artificial fashion that offers little practical insight into how ethnic peoples might best be engaged in environmental action. I collected information about Gardens4Health and the experiences of volunteers in the gardens using semi-structured interviews, observations and archival methods and subjected these materials to a critical discourse analysis. I identified three practices participants felt were important to Gardens4Health’s success in engaging diverse ethnic peoples in gardening. These were ensuring gardens were driven from the bottom-up, giving gardeners autonomy and respecting their cultural knowledge. The high priority participants placed on the social and cultural benefits of CG also suggested that community-level, rather than individual-level, initiatives may be an effective way of engaging ethnic peoples who endorse more collectivist values in environmental action. Volunteers also felt Gardens4Health’s work alleviated everyday environmental injustices through providing participants with culturally relevant spaces to cultivate traditional foods and engage in recreational activities and increasing their levels of participation and recognition in environmental decision making processes. Participants’ narratives also suggested that CG have the potential to enable environmental action on other issues, through increasing communities’ cohesiveness and organizational ability. However, lack of funding represented a major threat to the ability of Gardens4Health to deliver these benefits. It was also unclear whether participating in CG would contribute to Sikh and Tongan volunteers acting to protect the “environment” according to conventional Western understandings of the term. This was because volunteers held quite different cultural beliefs in regards to the meaning of the term “environment” and the relationship of humans to nature. More research is needed to understand how diverse ethnic peoples’ cultural beliefs and practices shape their views of the environment and willingness to engage in environmental action.