The Ecological Restoration Movement: Diverse Cultures of Practice and Place

The purpose of this essay is to introduce and take a critical look at the emerging Ecological Restoration (ER) movement. The typical characterization of the ER movement is that it focuses on restoring ecosystems to pre-European settlement conditions, even in urban environments; thus neglecting social justice issues and alienating the disadvantaged people living in these environments. The restoration movement is often accused of redefining these spaces from a culturally and ideologically privileged standpoint—a standpoint with historical links to the exclusionary preservationist discourse of the mainstream environmental movement. On the contrary, I argue that the ER movement has closer ties to the Environmental Justice (EJ) movement than previously recognized. Toward that end, I present an ecocultural map of the actual and potential relationships between the EJ and ER movements. The map reveals boundary objects (instruments, ideas, techniques, landscapes, and actions that each culture has in common) that can serve as avenues of communication between these movements. This analysis also identifies two newly emerging cultures within the ER movement, which incorporate both restoration and social justice among their goals: the Indigenous Peoples' Restoration (IPR) movement and the Environmental Justice Restoration (EJR) movement. The IPR and EJR cultures represent examples of how the broader EJ and ER cultures can find common ground while redefining ecocultural spaces and restoring degraded ecosystems within urban and rural environments.