Restoration, Ecological Citizenry, and Ziggurat Building in Iraq - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 9

Iraq and the aspirations of the one-time marshland dwellers toward their restored
former homeland (Al-Khayoun 2007), it is these expanded criteria that become para-
mount. Only in a place where one had the illusion that humans and nature existed
in entirely separate realms of morality and practice (see Cronon 1996 to understand
the reality of the situation) could one make a case that restoration only involved
technical criteria (Light 2004; France 2007b). The expanded criteria speak more to
the process of restoration rather than the product, and this is exactly what compre-
hensive restoration design is all about (France 2007a).
The Chicago Wilderness Project (Gobster and Hull 2000) is one of the most
engaging and important restoration projects. Debates that surfaced concerned dif-
ferent opinions about what is “natural” and what is manipulated, and to what lengths
restoration should go in order to obtain an impression of former times—as, for exam-
ple, the controversial issue of removing oak forests to set the clock back to a time
of grasslands. Perhaps the most important development of the restoration was the
fact that much of the work was done by volunteers, not professionals (Light 2004).
Indeed, thousands of individuals participated in the project, creating an incredible
network of motivated advocates. The act of restoring the grasslands became an exten-
sion of nature in their urban lives, especially for those who did not have backyards.
By getting their hands literally dirty, these people became more closely connected
to the land around them. There is a certain kind of value that is captured in these
sorts of voluntary intensive endeavors in contrast to professional restorations where
a hired firm comes in from afar (Light 2000, 2007). So even in terms of Higgs's
efficient criteria, if a restoration project takes longer to be completed through the use
of volunteers, the benefits outweigh any potential disadvantages (Light 2004). In this
regard, thinking about the process rather than the product as being the most impor-
tant attribute resulting from any restoration project can lead one to reach different
conclusions regarding the success of that project (France 2007a).
MORAL ISSUES INTRINSIC TO RESTORATION
For all environmental endeavors in general, there are issues of professional ethics
prescribed by the organization to which one is a member, individual and social ethics
concerning how one makes personal decisions in the public and private realms, and
ethics between the species such as those having to do with the possibility of destroy-
ing certain parts of nature in order to restore other parts (as, for example, the loss of
agricultural plants when restoring the Iraqi marshes for migratory waterfowl). Light
(2004) asked what specific moral issues were involved with ecological restoration.
It is first important to ask the difficult question as to what actually is meant by
“restoration.” There is a big difference between restoration, which arguably has to be
targeted to a specific moment in the past, and gardening, which some have likened
to restoration. But the question is whether restoration has to go back exactly to the
situation that was there before; or can it be just a typology rather than an actual token
of the ecosystem that existed previously (Light 2004)? Also, is restoration the same
as mitigation, as for example constructing replacement wetlands for those destroyed?
In the end, is restoration really anything that makes you feel happy? Recognizing
that broad definitions are problematic, the Society for Ecological Restoration tried to