Restoring Babylon - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 19

worn-out built assets. As a result, a trillion-dollar “restoration economy” has arisen
because there's just as much money to be made restoring our world as there is to be
made from sacking it (Cunningham 2002).
Perversely, restoring damage from sudden catastrophes is far easier to fund than
preventing politically connected companies from doing the damage in the first place,
or restoring damage that took place over an extended period. Look at the hundreds
of billions of dollars flowing toward the U.S. Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina:
an expense (not to mention the human and wildlife suffering) that could have been
largely prevented with a fraction of that amount spent on ecological restoration and
infrastructure renovation that had been recommended since the mid-1990s. But even
that entrenched political behavior is changing. Our new knowledge of the precise
costs of restoration is empowering a new generation of legal tools to both prevent and
restore damage. We're seeing a rise of restorative fines and deposits, and they are no
longer based on arbitrary amounts, making them far more defensible in court.
The business, nonprofit, government, and academic leaders of this restoration
economy have already proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that restorative devel-
opment is the only possible path to sustainable economic growth on a finite planet
with a growing population (or even with a static population) (Cunningham 2002). In
fact, it's the only practical path forward even if we had a shrinking population, due to
the vast global inventory of damaged and depleted natural resources, the vast global
inventory of decrepit, demoralized communities that are plagued, in turn, with vast
inventories of derelict buildings, crumbling infrastructure, dying (or fleeing) indus-
tries, and poisoned properties.
RESTORATION: THE GREAT INTEGRATOR
It would be presumptuous and foolhardy to prescribe the specific courses of action
that Iraqi leaders of business, academia, citizen groups, and government should take
in order to restore and sustainably develop their nation. But the right guidance and
vision at the right time could work wonders.
One of Iraq's primary restoration agendas must, of course, be watershed restora-
tion. As long as the nation remains largely dependent on Turkey, Iran, and Syria for
its water, it can never achieve a meaningful restoration of the marshes, much less
sustainable economic independence once the oil runs out. But watershed restoration
is far easier to fund and accomplish if it's integrated with agricultural, infrastructure,
ecosystem, brownfield, and fishery restoration (Cunningham 2002). What's more,
taking large areas of arid land back to the savannahs, marshes, and forests they
were before deforestation, tilling, and overgrazing ruined them (in many cases, many
centuries ago) is both possible and practical today through integrated revitalization.
Such renewal strategies integrate along two axes: the four stakeholder groups (busi-
ness, academic, government, and citizen/nongovernmental organization), and the
eight sectors of restorative development (ecosystem, watershed, fishery, agricultural,
brownfields, infrastructure, heritage, and catastrophe damage) (Cunningham 2002).
Tools devised by the Revitalization Institute, such as the Integrated Revitalization
Guide (www.revitalizationinstitute.org), will help them collaboratively devise a sus-