The philosophy of ecological restoration has focused primarily on three issues: the question of what to restore, whether and why restoration “fakes” nature, and how restoration shapes human-nature relationships. Using “M2W conversion sites” – former military lands recently redesignated as U.S. national wildlife refuges – as a case study, we examine how the restoration of these lands challenges existing philosophical frameworks for restoration. We argue that a contextual, case-based analysis best reveals the key ethical (...) and philosophical questions related to restoration at M2W sites, and that such an approach may be useful in developing more nuanced philosophical analyses of ecological restoration more generally. (shrink)

Restoration ecology has recently emerged as a branch of scientific ecology that challenges many of the traditional tenets of environmentalism. Because the restoration of ecosystems, “applied ecology,” has the potential to advance theoretical understanding to such an extent that scientists can extensively manipulate the environment, it encourages increasingly active human participation within ecosystemsand could inhibit the preservation of areas from human influences. Despite the environmentally dangerous possibilities that this form of science and technology present, restoration offers an (...) attractive alternative for human interaction with the environment. I outline the primary claims that have been made for ecological restoration, examine inconsistencies with restorationists’ philosophical position,and propose a reassessment of the definition of restoration that may aid in the clarification and development of a system of environmental ethics that recognizes human relationships with the environment as potentially symbiotic and positive. (shrink)

While the conceptual depths of Aldo Leopold’s land ethic have been limned by environmental ethicists, the relevance of his philosophy to ecologicalrestoration—an applied environmental science—is less well known. I interpret some of his contributions to ecological restoration by framing his work within an expanded evolutionary frame. I especially emphasize the importance of natural beauty to his thinking. Recontextualized as a manifestation of emergent evolutionary complexity, the beauty of nature is fundamental not only to strong ecological restoration, (...) but to reframing our own self-conceptualizations—that is, the human place in the larger order of nature. (shrink)

Ecological restoration and native landscaping are increasing, particularly in the American Midwest, where they form part of the area's history and culture of conservation. But practitioners rarely pause to ask philosophical questions related to categories of native and invasive or human control and harmony with nature. This article brings philosophy into conversation with practice, using members of Wild Ones Native Landscaping, a non-profit headquartered in Neenah, WI, as a case study. Philosophers and ethicists who are studying Ecological (...) Restoration and Native Landscaping can learn valuable lessons – in practicality, aesthetics and flexibility – from practitioners such as the Wild Ones. (shrink)

The value of ecological restoration has seen considerable criticism and defense in environmental ethics over the past thirty years. Proponents stress the human and ecological benefits of restoration projects at their best; critics characterize restoration as impossible, arbitrary, domination or delusional. As ethical debates on ecological restoration developed and sometimes threatened to devolve into scholastic quibbling, pragmatists contributed a welcome perspective, as Light and others urged that those investigating restoration attend to (...) its publicly relevant aspects. Most recently... (shrink)

This book explores the moral, social, and spiritual dimensions of ecological restoration. Gretel Van Wieren, a religion scholar, builds on the work of both critics and advocates of restoration to develop a balanced and well-informed approach to a controversial topic in environmental ethics. Ultimately she finds much value in restoration, as much for its ability to help build human community as for its contributions to ecological well-being. Restoration, she summarizes, is “the attempt to (...) heal and make the human relationship to nature whole” (2).While she holds a generally positive view of restoration, Van Wieren consistently faces the ambivalence inherent in human efforts to recreate wild habitats. Restorationists are faced, as she explains, with “the simultaneous realities that they are in some sense making up nature as they go… and that natural processes are in some sense other than and beyond the human mind” (20). By keeping both these dimensions in mind, Van Wieren presents a balan. (shrink)

The creation of new wetlands along rivers as an instrument to mitigate flood risks in times of climate change seduces us to approach the landscape from a 'managerial' perspective and threatens a more place-oriented approach. How to provide ecological restoration with a broad cultural context that can help prevent these new landscapes from becoming nonplaces, devoid of meaning and with no real connection to our habitable world. In this paper, I discuss three possible alternative interpretations of the meaning (...) of places and place attachment in these ‘new nature’ projects, and show how all three imply a different view on human identity and history. (shrink)

This important anthology organises key essays that outline philosophical perspectives on the rapidly growing practice of environmental restoration. While some argue that environmental restoration is a new paradigm for environmentalism, others maintain that it is just more human domination of nature. The ongoing debate will help to shape environmentalism in the 21st century. A concise introduction by William M Throop outlines a range of issues about the values, beliefs, and attitudes that inform our assessment of restoration. Non-technical (...) discussions of restoration projects place the issues in the context of current policy-making. For each issue, pro and con articles are juxtaposed to highlight areas of controversy. Leading environmental philosophers and restorationists, including Robert Elliot, William Jordan, Eric Katz, Steve Packard, and Holmes Rolston, are represented.This is the only anthology that focuses on the philosophical issues underlying restoration ecology. As such it will be of interest to students and professionals in the fields of environmental philosophy, environmental restoration, and conservation biology, as well as educated lay persons with an interest in environmental issues. (shrink)

The notion of reparation in ethical, political and legal discourse has become popular in recent years. Reparation refers to a category of actions for which there are morally compelling reasons to perform due to wrongful action in the past. ‘Reparation’ is often, but not merely, used in the context of collective responsibility. The debate around the concept has mainly focussed on humans, but the wrongs done to humans can be indirect, such as contaminating the soil or polluting the air, in (...) cases of which the quality of human life has been significantly deteriorated. In the paper, it will be examined whether the concept of reparation is applicable to characterise our responsibilities to the rest of nature? And can ecological restoration be understood as an exemplification of reparation? In restoration,ecological system or natural landscape returned to some historically existed condition. In the context of reparations, the scope of concern would be limited to those changes that involve human presence or activity. Reparation is to be understood as corrective action when one has done something wrong. Ecological restoration aims to restore a situation that has prevailed at some point earlier. To say that ecological restoration is also moral reparation, we must assumethat nature or non-human entities and processes be wronged in the morally relevant sense. There are, of course, reasons for being sceptical over this assumption and its practical implications. (shrink)

Discussion of ecological restoration in environmental ethics has tended to center on issues about the nature and character of the values that may or may not be produced by restored landscapes. In this paper we shift the philosophical discussion to another set of issues: the social and political context in which restorations are performed. We offer first an evaluation of the political issues in the practice of restoration in general and second an assessment of the political (...) context into which restoration is moving. The former focuses on the inherent participatory capacity at the heart of restoration; the latter is concerned with the commodified (primarily in the United States) and nationalized (primarily in Canada) uses to which restoration is being put. By comparing these two areas of inquiry we provide a foundation for a critical assessment of the politics of restoration based on the politics in restoration. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept of responsibility can and should ground an ethics of ecological restoration. It starts with William Jordan’s concept of restoration, namely the creation of mutually beneficial human-nature relationships. It builds a concept of responsibility using the works of Hans Jonas and Martin Drenthen, understood as a correlate of our technological capacity, as well as a relationship to the possibility of meaningfulness today and in the indefinite future. It is argued that we (...) are responsible in a deep sense for engaging in projects of restoration in order to ensure the survival of embodied meaningfulness in the world. (shrink)

Proponents of ecological restoration view the practice as a means of both repairing damage done to ecosystems by humans and creating an avenue to re-establish respectful and cooperative human-environment relationships. One debate affecting ecological restoration focuses on the place of 'exotic' species in restored ecosystems. Though popular, campaigns against exotics have been criticized for their troubling rhetorical parallels with nativism aimed at human immigrants. I point to some of the reasons why this critique of nativism persists, (...) despite protests that no xenophobic intent is evident, emphasizing the intimacy between social metaphors and claims about exotic nature. Language is but one facet of an entanglement of nature and society that ecological restoration strives to take seriously; however, restoration practice remains ambivalent toward this dichotomy permitting a longing for lost community purity that is embraced in nativism. Regarding defenses of nativism, I point out limitations of attempts to reframe the issue from a reactionary rejection of the foreign Other toward an argument for protecting communities from a process akin to 'cultural imperialism'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Political Theology of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott, and: Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration by Gretel Van WierenKevin J. O’BrienA Political Theology of Climate Change Michael S. Northcott grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 335 pp. $30.00Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration Gretel Van Wieren washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 208 pp. $29.95These (...) two excellent books, A Political Theology of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott and Restored to Earth by Gretel Van Wieren, offer distinct directions for Christian environmental ethics: Northcott develops a rigorous analysis of climate change as a failure of enlightenment rationality and politics, while Van Wieren argues that those who care about the earth can connect with it through the practice of ecological restoration. Northcott theologically defines a complex global problem; Van Wieren theologically engages a community-based solution. Each book advances Christian environmental ethics in important ways; considered together, they have much to teach about the content and methods of the field.Northcott’s A Political Theology of Climate Change argues that climate change is a “cosmopolitical crisis” and that Christians should embrace a more ecological and theological politics in response. Theologians and ethicists have long argued that environmental degradation has cosmological roots: The belief that human beings are separate from nature makes global-scale degradation and pollution acceptable. Northcott adds a nuanced political analysis, noting that modern politics is based on a denial “that the weather is political, or that politics influences the climate” (46). Enlightenment thinkers who laid the groundwork for contemporary political structures insisted that storms and floods were not divine responses to human behavior, so modern nation-states are premised on an ideological separation from nature. Climate change reveals the failure of such thinking, so the facts of climate change pose an inherently political challenge.Thus, failures to act on climate change are political failures. Mainstream politics cannot consider that economic growth is unsustainable because it is premised on ignorance about nature. Nations cannot collaborate to solve the problem because they have no common moral agreement “about the ends and goals of human life” (245). Any response to climate change that simply extends [End Page 198] the enlightenment project—by ascribing “rights” to the natural world, or by trusting existing secular political structures—is doomed to failure. Instead, climate change calls for a different cosmology and a different politics.Northcott argues that both can be found in the Christian tradition. Natural law thinking respects the relationship between human beings and external moral standards “set into the structure of the cosmos,” demanding careful accounting for the atmospheric consequences of human action (246). Virtue ethics teaches the ideal of politics as a “community of friendship and love,” nurturing practices of participation in the good life, lived with less consumption and less destructive energy (200).Northcott hopes that small-scale communities inspired by Christian cosmology and Christian politics will transition away from destructive practices and thereby demonstrate a new way of life to the world. His book concludes by reasserting that because climate change is a political problem, it is fundamentally a theological problem, calling human communities to “re-create the historic and customary connections between nature and culture, land and life, love for neighbour and nature which are central to the Jewish and Christian messianism of empire-challenging love” (316).In contrast to Northcott’s focus on political and philosophical failures, Gretel Van Wieren’s Restored to Earth seeks a “more positive, solution-oriented” approach to Christian ethics (viii). The book is about reconnecting humans with the natural world through ecological restoration, “the science and art of repairing ecosystems that have been damaged by human activities” (2), and it argues that restoration models moral life by creating physical, intellectual, emotional, communal, and spiritual connections with the natural world.Van Wieren begins with an interdisciplinary definition of ecological restoration and argues that views on the practice depend upon varied definitions of nature. She then moves to a nuanced account of restoration ecology as a spiritual practice (chapter 3) of community formation (chapter 4). Evocatively recounting a controlled prairie burn in Illinois on Maundy Thursday, Van Wieren... (shrink)

In this chapter we will use the case of beaver reintroduction in southern Scandinavia to illuminate the philosophical issues underlying the value of biodiversity. First, we rehearse some of the main types of argument relating to the practice of ecological restoration. This is followed by a description of the case study, and by a summary of what we take to be the main positions in the ongoing debate over reintroduction of beavers. We then interpret these different positions, asking (...) in each case how ‘biodiversity’ is being understood. In this way, we try to establish the causes of the disagreement. It is important to distinguish between disagreements caused by conflicting interests and disagreements caused by conflicting values. We shall focus on a special type of disagreement where there seems to be a genuine conflict of values pertaining to biodiversity. Finally, we show how the claim that biodiversity should be protected is made by several participants in the debate and taken to have remarkably different implications: the need to protect biodiversity has been invoked both in attacks on, and defenses of, reintroduction and other forms of ecological restoration. (shrink)

Should the process of ecological restoration be considered a type of moral reparation? In a recent issue of this journal, Ben Almassi (2017) has argued that ecological restoration should be understood as a moral repair, i.e., as "a model for rebuilding the moral conditions of relationships" (20). Ideas of restorative justice and moral repair are appropriate to address human injustice and wrongdoing. But these concepts are vacuous and lose their meaning when addressing the ethics of (...) human activities regarding the natural world because of the essential character of the restoration process: the replacement or substitution of new entities for pre-existing entities in an attempt to reverse the irreversible. At best, the idea of moral reparations to nature is a weak metaphor with no practical efficacy; at worst, it totally misconceives the relationship between human activity and the natural environment in the process of ecological restoration and provides yet another dangerous and disingenuous justification of human arrogance and domination of the natural world. In the guise of the act of moral reparations, humans are instead attempting to assume the powers of God, to control the natural and human world. My previous criticisms of the ethics and meaning of ecological restorations—especially regarding the substitution of new individuals and the artifactual nature of restorations—can be used to undermine Almassi's thesis of moral repair as a goal of ecological restoration practice. In addition an analysis of the Book of Job in the Old Testament demonstrates that not even God—much less humans—can restore and replace what has been destroyed. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore how ecological restoration reference models are produced and what work they do within an ecological restoration project. By tracing the genesis of two restoratio...

Critiques of ecological restoration have rested on the human/natural distinction. In opposition to the difficulties involved in that distinction, I provide a sketch of an evolutionary account of human existence. The instability of environments—beyond individual human control—conditions human life and sets the dynamic for human action. Human interdependence makes human monitoring of human interaction central. I interpret Leopold as concerned about the divergence between ecosystemic and economic value. In the face of reiterative prisoners’ dilemmas arising significantly from problems (...) of scale, the moral imperative is the creation of practices that tolerate ecosystemic degradation minimally and those only in the face of threats to human existence. Against this background, I show that the value of ecological restoration is ambivalent. (shrink)

Restoring Layered Landscapes explores ecological restoration in complex landscapes, where ecosystems intertwine with important sociopolitical meanings.

Faking Nature explores the arguments surrounding the concept of ecological restoration. This is a crucial process in the modern world and is central to companies' environmental policy; whether areas restored after ecological destruction are less valuable than before the damage took place. Elliot discusses the pros and cons of the argument and examines the role of humans in the natural world. This volume is a timely and provocative analysis of the simultaneous destruction and restoration of the (...) natural world and the ethics related to those processes, in an era of accelerated environmental damage and repair. (shrink)

In this volume leading international environmental philosophers further the debate about the value of nature, the concept of the environment, and the metaphysical, ethical, social and international implications of these concepts. Philosophers have to some extent neglected the study of nature and the natural environment, and this collection not only provides a long-overdue contribution to that study, but also points to inadequacies of much contemporary ethical and political theory. For environmentalists who are not philosophers, it will stimulate reflection on their (...) own concepts and principles. [Book Synopsis]. (shrink)

The widely-heralded arrival of the “Anthropocene” era seems to call the existence and value of the natural world into question. Is the world prior to human alteration of it something worth preserving? Can and should we attempt to restore ecological conditions prior to human disturbance? Ecological restoration has traditionally used the past as a reference point in establishing standards and assessing the value of restored landscapes. In many landscapes, however, the traditional notion of historical fidelity provides inadequate (...) guidance because contemporary and future social, ecological, or climate contexts differ, or will differ, radically from those that historically prevailed. Thus, some scholars recommend that we move toward restoration that looks to the future instead of the past. Others propose a “narrative ethics” that accounts for the past while allowing a place to evolve in ways that fit its unfolding story. Both futuristic and narrative approaches to restoration accommodate change and acknowledge a role for social values. However, both have been criticized as overly anthropocentric, and neither is strongly action guiding. Using examples of restoration at former military sites, I consider how we might develop an ethics of ecological restoration that acknowledges change while taking account of the past. (shrink)

The writings of William H. Whyte do not loom large in the literature of my field: environmental ethics, the branch of ethics devoted to consideration of whether and how there are moral reasons for protecting non-human animals and the larger natural environment. Environmental ethics is a very new field of inquiry, only found in academic philosophy departments since the early 1970s. While there is no accepted reading list of indispensable literature in environmental ethics, certainly any attempt (...) to create such a list would begin with Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and a more recent handful of senior scholars who had been writing on these topics early on, such as J. Baird Callicott, Val Plumwood, Peter Singer, Richard Sylvan, Tom Regan, and Holmes Rolston III (for a review of contemporary environmental ethics, see Light 2002, Palmer 2003, and Wenz 2001). (shrink)

I argue here that the centeredness of human experience as human is misrepresented by ecocentrists as identical with (or the cause of) human chauvinism, and that although centeredness describes an ineradicable feature of human consciousness, nothing necessarily follows from it other than what follows from any unique configuration of capacities and limitations. Appealing to the ways in which we use anthropomorphizing language, I argue that at the root of this misrepresentation is a failure to take seriously not only the perceptual (...) and epistemic centeredness of human experience, but the ways in which gendered and heterosexualized social norms have become naturalized among its features. Restoring human-centeredness to environmental conscience requires becoming clear about how centeredness is realized not only as chauvinism, but as heterosexism—not because any necessity governs this history, but because what makes enduring change possible is the development of an environmental conscience equally committed to the struggle for social justice. (shrink)

The present study aimed at investigating the heavy metals concentrations in the soils around “Larga de Sus” abandoned mine (Zlatna, Romania), evaluating the potential ecological risk of heavy metal pollution and highlighting ethical aspects related to risk assessment, ecological restoration, and soil remediation. The results of the chemical analysis showed that the soil in the study area is highly polluted with heavy metals since the average concentrations of Pb (32.4–2318.1 mg/kg), and Ni (321.6–562.8 mg/kg) in soil exceed (...) their corresponding threshold established by the Romanian legislation. The potential ecological risk index method developed by Hakanson was used to assess the potential risk of heavy-metal pollution. The results indicated that Pb and Ni showed severe and considerable potential ecological risk, while Cr had lightly ecological risk. In this case, remediation should be focused only on Pb or on all heavy metals even if they have lightly ecological risk? A scientific management technique cannot logically prescribe which choices should be selected. The interaction between human activity and the environment is complicated and difficult to quantify and risk management cannot and should not be based simply on risk assessment results. What is needed to make the right choice of the most appropriate alternative that fits our personality, culture, religion, and desires? The moral and ethical implications of ecological restoration and soil remediation (e.g. tolerance of uncertainty, responsibility, moral duty, etc.) have to be incorporated within the decision-making process in order to make optimum sustainable decisions and to achieve real environmental protection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 22-36 [Access article in PDF] Art or Nature?Aristotle, Restoration Ecology, and Flowforms Trish Glazebrook He to whom nature begins to reveal her open secrets will feel an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter: Art. 1Aristotle believed strongly in a distinction between artifact (technê) and nature (physis). He intended by "technê" more than is generally understood by the contemporary term "art," (...) for he meant anything produced by human intention. For example, for Aristotle medicine was technê in that the doctor produces health. The key point in distinguishing art from nature for him was that things in nature grow and develop on the basis of an internal principle of change, whereas artistic production requires an outside agent. There are some complications with the Aristotelian account: are the spider's web and the bird's nest art or nature? Aristotle can respond to this problem easily enough by arguing that spiders and birds create on the basis of instinct, while reason is requisite for artistic production. Yet some art may not meet this definition: artists may not always have a full conception of the work to be produced prior to its execution. Creativity can be emergent rather than intentional during the productive process, and may arise, for example, from the artist's interaction with the chosen material. [End Page 22]Despite these objections to the Aristotelian distinction, however, his analysis of the differences between art and nature can be usefully applied to recent debates in restoration ecology in order to argue that the human capacity to restore nature does not justify its destruction. Nature cannot be "faked," that is, recreated through art. Furthermore, the Aristotelian analysis has been influential historically by providing a conceptual basis for the technological domination of nature, as if nature were nothing more than matter upon which form can be imposed. Yet there are alternative possibilities in Aristotle's account that ecologically-minded art can bring to fruition. I will use Aristotle's analysis to suggest a potential resolution of the "faking nature" debate, and accordingly to show how contemporary, ecologically-minded art can promote an ideology of production that works with rather than against nature.Robert Elliot argues that restoration ecology does not justify environmental destruction, because faked nature (that is, nature re-created by human artifice) is not as valuable as the original. 2 I will call this claim, which is based on the idea that restoration is analogous to artistic production, "the Elliot view." I will first assess the Elliot view, and give reasons why I sympathize with his conclusions, yet find his arguments unconvincing. Second, I will present Aristotle's distinction between nature and art, with emphasis on his arguments that nature is goal-directed, in order to give content to the claim that nature has intrinsic value. Third, I will look at restoration policies and practices in the oil industry in Alberta, Canada, to establish a praxical notion of restoration, and to support Elliot's claim that nature cannot be faked. I have chosen oilfield restoration as a working example for the sake of the general methodological principle that praxes without reflections are blind, while reflections that transcend the lifeworld are empty; and specifically because Alberta leads the industry in restoration standards and practices. Finally, I will use Flowforms to argue that ecologically-minded art can demonstrate how production of artifacts need not affirm a logic of domination, but rather can open a space for an alternative conception of the human relation to nature. The Elliot View Elliot's view depends on distinguishing nature from art, and attributing a greater value to the natural. On what basis should we accept this value-hierarchy? The reasons Elliot gives are less than convincing. Ultimately his arguments rest on two points: that copies are not as good as [End Page 23] originals; and that even if an ecosystem's value could be fully restored, the value lost in the time between despoilation and restoration is irrecoverable. He simply finds "naturalness" to be more valuable than artifice. But he is not alone in... (shrink)

This paper examines the role of ethics in addressing aspects of ecological restoration in culturally-saturated landscapes. Do we have the ethical tools to respond to the complex questions that restoration poses? We can see valued landscapes, such as the English Lake District, as culturally rich or as ecologically denuded. This paper will juxtapose the demands of retaining rich cultural narratives and those of rewilding (which would allow for greater self-sustaining biological diversity and space for unrestrained nature). (...) Using the ethical theory of responsive cohesion, this paper will explore the cultural narrative vs wildness question in the context of the English Lake District. (shrink)

One of the central worries raised in relation to ecological restoration concerns the problem of authenticity. Robert Elliot, for example, has argued that restoration “fakes nature.” On this view, restoration is like art forgery: it deceptively suggests that its product was produced in a certain way, when in fact, it was not. Restored landscapes present themselves as the product of “natural processes,” when in actuality, they have been significantly shaped by human intervention. For Elliott, there seem (...) to be two sources of inauthenticity in ecological restoration: first, the restored landscape is inauthentic because its natural genealogy has been disrupted by the intervention of humans: it has lost its authentic natural identity; second, the restored landscape is inauthentic because it pretends to be something it is not: it obscures its own history. We argue that the first sense of authenticity is problematic; however, the second concern—about obscuring history—is important. Case studies involving the naturalization of former military lands can be used to tease out more fully the ways in which landscapes can be “inauthentic” by misleading observers about their genealogy. In such landscapes, it is not departure from “the original” per se that is the source of inauthenticity; rather, restored landscapes fail to be authentic when they deceptively obscure critical elements of their past. (shrink)

An old book by children’s author Dr. Seuss can be an inspiration to examine the ethical and ontological meaning of geoengineering. My argument is based on my critique of the process of ecological restoration as the creation of an artifactual reality. When humanity intentionally interferes with the processes and entities of nature, we change the ontological reality of the natural world. The world becomes a garden, or a zoo, an environment that must be continually managed to meet the (...) goals of human purposes. Geoengineering is a more radical and comprehensive example of this process of planetary management. Thus, as with ecological restoration, geoengineering reinforces the paradigm of human mastery and domination of nature. To counteract this dream of domination, we must, as Dr. Seuss instructed us when we were children, learn to live in the natural world with humility. (shrink)

Justifications for the environmental restoration of the Pumalín National Park, originally known as Pumalín Nature Sanctuary, in Chile can be analyzed from a philosophical and ethical point of view. The environmental stage to which the park should be restored is defined as a moral choice, rather than an ecological one, that is based on “climax” as an a priori value that supports and guides the main restoration actions carried out in the park. This climax is a pre-settling (...) or pre-colonization condition. Defined philosophically, climax is both an ethical and political value. For these actions, the ecosystem’s health can be treated the same as that of a human’s health: each society defines the criteria and the acme of health, as well as the valid efforts to restore it. (shrink)

Our environmental wrongdoings result in a moral debt that requires restitution. One component of restitution is reparative and another is remediative. The remediative component requires that we remediate our characters in ways that alter or eliminate the character traits that tend to lead, in their expression, to environmental wrongdoing. Restitutive restoration is a way of engaging in ecological restoration that helps to meet the remediative requirement that accompanies environmental wrongdoing. This account of restoration provides a new (...) motivation and justification for engaging in restorative practices in addition to the standard pragmatist justification and motivations. (shrink)

This innovative book takes a new look at environmental ethics and the need for ecological and biological integrity. Laura Westra explores the necessity for radical alteration not only of interpersonal ethics, but also of social institutions and public policy. In the process, Westra denies the validity of majority rule in environmentally ethical concerns. Issues discussed in the book include the link between ecological integrity and human health; an environmental evaluation of business and technology; biotechnology and transgenics (...) in agriculture and aquaculture; and the environmental ethics of the ancient Greeks and Kant. Living in Integrity is a valuable book for philosophers and environmentalists alike. (shrink)

Ecological restoration has been a topic for philosophical criticism for three decades. In this essay, I present a discussion of the arguments against ecological restoration and the objections raised against my position. I have two purposes in mind: to defend my views against my critics, and to demonstrate that the debate over restoration reveals fundamental ideas about the meaning of nature, ideas that are necessary for the existence of any substantive environmentalism. I discuss the possibility (...) of positive restorations, the idea that nature can restore itself, the meaning of artifacts, and the significance of the distinction between humanity and nature. (shrink)

Eric Katz’s insight about the relationship between causal history and value only generates a principled critique of de-extinction when conjoined with the diminishment claim, or the claim that human involvement in something’s causal history diminishes its value. The diminishment claim is a form of negative anthropocentrism. In addition to thinking about de-extinction as a form of ecological restoration, we could think of it as a form of environmental artwork. This reframing highlights the implausibility of the diminishment claim.

This is the first collection of essays in which European and American philosophers explicitly think out their respective contributions and identities as environmental thinkers in the analytic and continental traditions. The American/European, as well as Analytic/Continental collaboration here bears fruit helpful for further theorizing and research. The essays group around three well-defined areas of questioning all focusing on the amelioration/management of environmentally, historically and traditionally diminished landscapes. The first part deals with differences between New World and the Old World perspectives (...) on nature and landscape restoration in general, the second focuses on the meaning of ecological restoration of cultural landscapes, and the third on the meaning of the wolf and of wildness. It does so in a way that the strengths of each philosophical school—continental and analytic—comes to the fore in order to supplement the other’s approach. This text is open to educated readers across all disciplines, particularly those interested in restoration/adaptation ecology, the cultural construction of place and landscape, the ongoing conversation about wilderness, the challenges posed to global environmental change. The text may also be a gold mine for doctoral students looking for dissertation projects in environmental philosophy that are inclusive of continental and analytic traditions. This text is rich in innovative approaches to the questions they raise that are reasonably well thought out. The fact that the essays in each section really do resonate with one another directly is also intellectually exciting and very helpful in working out the full dimensions of each question raised in the volume. (shrink)

This article analyses the philosophical status and ground of biomimicry's most distinctive principle: nature as measure. Starting with the argument that this principle is ethically normative, I go on to compare the ecological ethic it embodies with Aldo Leopold's land ethic. In so doing, I argue that the ultimate measure against which the ethical rightness of our actions should be judged is the way of being of Gaia, which is to let be her present inhabitants. I then explore the (...) idea that taking as measure Gaia's way of being provides powerful responses to a number of longstanding problems in environmental ethics, including the question of its ‘centre’, duties to preserve and restore nature, and duties to present and future beings. (shrink)

This volume brings scholarly attention to the Midwest and to how broader concerns of environmental ethics manifest. Consisting of eight essays, a wide range of topics is covered, such as agrarian ethics and Stoicism, the Dakota access pipeline and Indigenous women's activism, philosophy of law and species classification, environmental justice and the Flint water crisis, hog farming and anti-microbial drug resistance, science education standards and climate change education, virtue ethics and ecological restoration, and environmental pragmatism (...) and the Clear Water Act; and more. Each accessibly written chapter brings multidisciplinary complexity to bear on this complex region. The authors include philosophers working in environmental ethics and other subfields of philosophy, and together with scholars in fields such as environmental sociology, American Indian studies, and environmental studies, they provide a fresh and necessary perspective on the American Midwest. (shrink)