Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ecosystem restoration or rehabilitation. Although
pathways were constructed to avoid trampling in
the rehabilitated areas, some areas were affected by
trampling, especially the areas of dune formation in
the beach. This fact, together with the early fixation
of the first constructed dune line, has limited the expan-
sion of that habitat. Social use of the seafront walk
has greatly increased, and the municipal authorities
have a very positive evaluation of the project. Social
perception of the rehabilitated ecosystem and the
designed landscape is probably only partial, as dis-
semination of the natural values of the dune ecosys-
tems has not been developed fully.
This project provides an example of an attempt to
introduce ecological restoration in peri-urban areas.
Advancing in this line would require further valor-
ization of the ecological aspects of the project, both
in the project-design phase and in the public percep-
tion through dissemination and sensitization cam-
paigns. Ecological economics assessments should also
be undertaken.
human needs while conserving the Earth's life sup-
port systems and reducing hunger and poverty'.)
In Chapter 16, we argued that the goal and indeed
the crucible of sustainability science must be long-
term, large-scale projects combining CMR. We note
that the World Wildlife Fund, in its Forest Land-
scape Restoration programme, has adopted this same
approach. The International Union for the Conserva-
tion of Nature, the International Tropical Timber
Organisation and other large organizations and con-
sortia also seem to be moving towards the same con-
ceptual approach. It remains to be seen how and if
legislative bodies at national and international levels
put the CMR into practice.
For ecosystem managers and scientists, and
environmental polytechnicians now in training, the
challenge will be to achieve greater integration of
restoration ecology models, results and principles in
the actual practice and contracts carried out by the
growing number of small- and large-scale operators
in the industry of ecological restoration. Very often,
at present, restoration (in the strict sense) is only
superficially or nominally applied in projects labelled
as ecological restoration or rehabilitation. This results
in unspecific greening, or revegetation, where little
or no reference is sought or made to pre-existing
ecosystems or even plant communities, and little
reflection is given to how things got the way they
are and in which direction we would like to see
ecosystems and landscapes moving. Often, very little
systems-approach thinking or planning goes into
the landscape design. Worse still, little or no rigorous
evaluation, nor even any monitoring, is undertaken
in many of these projects; as a result, useful feedback
is few and far between. This limits the possibility of
anyone having access and applying results, or lessons
learned, in other projects elsewhere. Opportunities for
testing theories and models are also lost to researchers
and students - the decision-makers of tomorrow.
Strengthening ties and promoting feedback between
the scientific community working in restoration eco-
logy and the restoration industry is thus needed
urgently, throughout Europe and globally. Great
strides are being made, as reflected in the burgeon-
ing academic and popular literature on ecological
restoration, and in the largely unpublished results of
innovative managers and eco-engineers. As suggested
above (see Fig. 17.1), we now need to move towards
17.5 Concluding remarks
For restoration ecologists, conservationists and envir-
onmentalists in general, this is a good time for ser-
ious reflection about the world, and the role of
people in the natural world. Not only are we enter-
ing a new millennium, we now see that we are more
than two centuries into a new and unprecedented geo-
logical period called the Anthropocene Era (Crutzen
& Stoermer 2000, Crutzen 2002). In this context,
restoration ecology and ecological restoration form
an essential component of what we may rhetorically
call our survival strategy, and which bears the more
precise term sustainability science , wherein non-
scientists and scientists work together to imagine,
develop, test and apply new methods, tools and
approaches to the enormous challenges ahead. This
new, integrative, broad-based science brings together
the natural sciences, social sciences, economics and
environmental technologies and engineering in the hope
of solving problems pragmatically and promoting
more healthy, durable and equitable socio-ecological
systems (Palmer et al. 2004). (Note that we follow
the definition of sustainability proposed by the US
National Research Council (NRC 1999), 'meeting
 
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