The story of stewardship and ecological restoration

Abstract

This chapter seeks to reorient the restoration movement towards a relationship focused activity, away from the singled minded focus on the scientific practice of meticulous replication of past ecosystems. That is, instead of simply prioritising the restoration of particular landscapes or ecosystems as a matter of natural fact, ecological restoration should be concerned with imbuing the human/nature relationship – across the different scales at which these relationships occur – with characteristics that will allow each to flourish. The central claim, is that this necessary reconciliation can be facilitated, maintained and built upon if the human/nature relationship is rooted in the idea of stewardship values. From individual landowners to states, from small communities to the global one, stewardship can help restore the balance between humans and the natural world. This is because of both the deeply entrenched and cross-cultural ethical values that are embodied in the concept of stewardship and because of its focus on collective participation in the task of caring for the natural world. Viewed as a movement towards better stewardship relationships with the natural world, restoration can therefore have both a backward-looking, and a forward-looking focus. In short, restoration should be as much about achieving a restored relationship to our environment, as it is the state of the environment itself. This relational turn in the restoration movement, is intended to provide a firm foundation for resistance to exploitative human/nature relations and in so doing to embed restoration practices across political, social and legal scales as well as geographical ones. Thus, the ostensibly scientific practice of restoration becomes accessible across communities and can begin to rebalance the disorder of the Capitalocene/Anthropocene era.