Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration

CHAPTER 4: Regenerating Communities of Place: Public Restoration Values

113 ChaPter four l Regenerating Communities of Place Public Restoration Values Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the earth. —Thomas Jefferson K ey ecological, spiritual, and moral dimensions and implications of restoration practice and experience have begun to be sketched in previous chapters. Beyond these, however, there are communal and social aspects in restoration practice that need to be explored. Restoration, as we have seen, is a group activity, often involving a cadre of practitioners—restoration ecologists,landscape architects, volunteers, land managers, farmers—working collectively to implement particular goals and objectives. And although restoration efforts today run the risk of technological drift—that is, of becoming a practice dominated by professional restoration firms and scientific experts—they nonetheless continue to involve considerable numbers of volunteers. As I stated in the introduction, more than any other environmental activity in the United States, restoration projects rank highest in number of volunteer hours logged. In this chapter we continue to expand our understanding of the types of values that ecological restoration can generate within participants and society.In particular I examine some of the communal values restoration activities can generate in relation to particular communities of people. I propose that insofar as ecological restoration efforts are characterized by the ethical principles of recognition, Chapter four 114 participation, and empowerment, they are public participatory activities for the good of the community; they can,therefore,positively contribute to the formation of good ecological community. Further, I argue that participatory forms of ecological restoration can promote additional social ecological values that may create a deepened sense of place in relation to particular natural and cultural landscapes. In closing I provide two examples of ideal restorative communities of place based on the ethical norms proposed. I begin by critically examining some of the main ways in which restoration ethicists have understood the notion of good ecological community in relation to the practice of restoration. PersPeCtiVes on Good eColoGiCal Community Moral philosophers and theologians have thought long and hard about what constitutes good forms of community. They have wondered, for example, whether certain ethical norms, such as justice, should define democratic societies and, if so, what kind of justice and for whom. More specifically, foundational questions have been raised in regard to political liberalism and whether it overemphasizes the principles of individual autonomy and freedom to the neglect of collective empowerment and action. Further, ethicists have debated the positives and negatives of economic globalization and the ways in which it affects the formation of (or misformation) of local community. Environmental ethicists too have examined issues related to the norms of good community. Here questions have centered on whether certain models of community might shape human patterns of action that are better or worse for promoting healthy natural environments. Some environmental ethicists have argued for a devolution, for example, of local forms of government, in the ways in which political and economic communities are organized, proposing instead forms of government and production that are “closer to the ground” and closer to home. Still others have argued for improved forms of civic environmental discourse and collective decision-making processes. And some have questioned the model of community altogether, arguing that principles of unity and harmony intrinsically minimize and homogenize difference—within human and biotic communities alike. Restoration philosophers in particular have emphasized the ways in which good restoration inherently forms social as well as ecological values in relation to particular natural landscapes. Most notably, Andrew Light and Eric Higgs are once again in the forefront of thinking regarding restoration ecology and ethics. Light and Higgs have proposed that participatory forms of restoration can foster a democratic culture of nature, strengthening civic engagement in the environmental stewardship of local natural lands. Here I critically analyze and extend their 115 Regenerating Communities of Place theories of good restoration and community, based on the consideration of several justice-oriented concerns. At the outset it may be helpful to recall the history behind Higgs’s and Light’s proposals regarding restoration’s inherent democratic potential. Shortly after philosophers Robert Elliot and Eric Katz published their anti-restoration arguments in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively, Higgs and Light began developing...