Ecological Restoration Essay

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One of the strengths of ecological restoration as a landscape management practice is that, its capacity to engage people from all sectors of the community. Ecologically and socioeconomically, restoration is a practice that accelerates recovery of a damaged or degraded ecosystem, and therefore recovery of ecosystem services. Culturally, ecological restoration promises to renew the human relationship with nature. Traditionally ecological restoration emphasizes on goals that rejuvenate sites to its prior historical conditions, or its natural state. The concluding goal of ecological restoration is a sustainable healthy functioning site, whether that includes the site returning to its historical structure and composition or not. In recent times,

132). Based on that definition, sustainability theorists and philosophers have disagreed about what kinds of moral obligations we might have to future generations. Some advocate for weak sustainability, whereas, others advocate for strong sustainability.‘Weak’ sustainability is fundamentally anthropocentric oriented, with social equity and environmental protection regarded as less than to sustainable economic growth. Often, the focus is on constructing more efficient supplies in economies by including ‘ecosystem services’ into the market. ‘Strong’ sustainability, on the other hand, reverses the order of priority and gives antecedence to ecological scale over economic efficiency. Social equity, is best achieved by restoring ecosystem health, recognizing ecological tipping points and cultivating system resilience. New economic indicators of wellbeing and quality of life are advocated and market based solutions that impose monetary values on life and “ecosystem services” are rejected on moral grounds. The key idea of ‘weak’ sustainability suggests that natural capital and other types of capitals are perfectly substitutable. The key idea of ‘strong’ sustainability is that, the substitutability of natural capital by other types

Defenders of restoration, like myself, have insisted that humans can engage positively with nature in a constructive partnership that allows us to fulfill our moral obligation to correct damage that we have inflicted and to restore natural value. I agree with philosopher Andrew Light who has argued against ecological restoration being a “big lie”. Light has argued that there are different types of restoration, and we can distinguish between them. There are malicious and benevolent; malicious restorations are those that help to rationalize ongoing ecological damage. Benevolent restorations are those undertaken to remedy a past harm to nature without attempting to justify or rationalize such harm. (p.186 Hourdequin) I believe that restored nature can be of equal or greater value than undisturbed nature. Take a nature site that has been undisturbed, it is possible that this location can have invasive species with no natural enemies to limited their reproduction. Hypothetically, if restoration were to occur at this site, measures to fix an invasive species, like ivy, then the results of the restoration will be better. The restoration would be better for the rest of the species within that area compared to when it was undisturbed. Andrew Light also suggest