Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ecology (Hardin 1985, 1991, Kates
et al.
2001, Müller
2003). Its practitioners, researchers and students get
involved, in the field, in both private and especi-
ally public domains of action, problem-solving and
intervention. They try to communicate, at national,
continental and global levels with decision-makers,
legislators and industries to help them take eco-
logical and other quantitative data provided by
scientists into account when taking decisions on major
ecological and environmental issues (Hollick 1981,
Palmer
et al.
2004). In addition to the three reasons
to restore given at the outset of this chapter, we must
recognize that we - as a global society - are quite
simply running out of fertile land, potable water, renew-
able energy and other vital resources. We need to find
new and sustainable ways to coexist with other
species within the limits of a finite, human-dominated
world (Hardin 1993, Sanderson
et al.
2002, Postel &
Richter 2003, Rosenzweig 2003). We need to learn to
live within limits and in recognition of the Earth's and
each specific bioregion's carrying capacity (Arrow
et al.
1995). We also need to control - or reduce -
our 'ecological overshoot' (Wackernagel
et al.
2002)
and instead adopt a truly long-term stewardship
approach to our planet's limited resources, paying care-
ful attention to ecosystem resilience and landscape
health.
Looking backward, restoration ecology has grown
out of theoretical and academically applied ecology
and conservation biology, and still relies heavily on
them. Looking forward, it is part of an emerging human
ecology, an eco-economy paradigm that builds on
truly ecological economics, and is the vital challenge
of securing sustainability for our burgeoning global
society and the biosphere. All three of the reasons
for ecological restoration cited at the outset -
biodiversity, sustainable productivity and long-term
stewardship of natural capital - as well as the over-
arching problem or challenge mentioned just above,
should drive societies towards much-increased invest-
ment in research, development and training in restora-
tion ecology, in the broadest and widest context of
the global pursuit for survival and sustainability. In
light of the recent report from the Ecological Society
of America (Palmer
et al.
2004), we hypothesize that
in many or most situations
restored ecosystems
offer better value and greater promise for the long run
than newly invented designer systems. The same is
probably true of the aggregates of ecosystems we
recognize as landscapes. Both types are necessary, no
doubt, but we would suggest placing top priority on
the former.
The ecological and environmental problems and
challenges we face today are planetary, local and
regional all at the same time (Dasgupta
et al.
2000).
The ultimate framework in which to teach and study
ecological restoration is that of our lonely planet
under pressure and human ecology in the immediate
locale where teaching and study are taking place.
Restoration ecologists and practitioners in Europe, and
elsewhere, should take up the challenge to play an
active, pragmatic role in trans-disciplinary research,
in actual restoration projects, and in advising the
public and public policy-makers in the critical years
and decades to come.
Acknowledgements
The authors warmly thank James Blignaut, Andy
Clewell, Sue Milton and Edouard Le Floc'h for long-
standing collaboration and especially for their con-
structive comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
We also thank Juli Pausas and Ramón Vallejo for
helpful discussions and comments during the chapter's
long period of gestation.
