Civic ecology is a community-based approach to facilitate change.

It is an approach to foster sustainability

through civic engagement. In this way of thinking, institutions must engage and empower people to
participate in inclusive and collaborative decision-making. It emphasizes self-organization for health and
sustainability. Civic ecology depends on adaptive management strategies, which emphasises flexibility and
responsiveness to unexpected changes.

In order to develop communities in a sustainable way, citizens must organise themselves and participate in
constructive dialogues. These dialogues can include education about ecology; if people better understand
ecological services, then they can create more effective sustainability solutions. People can discuss what they
can change on an individual level, and how they can organize themselves to advocate for changes on larger
scales. People can work together to create and enforce sustainability solutions, which will protect resources
for future generations and ensure their well-being.

Civic ecology envisions a transition from traditional management styles to an adaptive management method.
This adaptive management style promotes innovation through flexibility and responsiveness to unexpected
changes. Another important transition is from externally-directed, and top-down management techniques to a
bottom-up management style that allows individuals and communities to self-organize. This is important
because each individual community has specific needs that cannot always be understood or solved by
outsiders. Individuals and small communities can have the autonomy to create their own sustainability
solutions.

Currently, people tend to be disconnected from their food. Oftentimes, people do not think about where their
food comes from or recognize themselves as a part of the agri-food value chain.
To understand the agri-food system, people need to grasp the relationships and interactions that occur from
farm to table, rather than just the end product: food. Civic ecology emphasizes that we cannot create
effective change alone. This means that people need to work together and share knowledge about current
problems within the agri-food system and possible solutions. Education is a powerful tool to facilitate
positive changes.