Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
anthropogenic climate change. Thanks to this bundle
of attractive pluses, ecological restoration is indeed
taking on an increasingly central role in national and
global environmental policy (Calmon
et al
. 2011 , Wu
et al
. unpubl. MS). Yet things are still moving far more
slowly than global environmental conditions demand.
Our new economic and ecological thinking must
contribute to a paradigm shift in our political and eco-
nomic cultures, engendering laws and legally bolstered
economic incentives for restoration; the 'market' alone
will fail to stimulate progress at the rate so clearly
needed (Aronson
et al
. 2011 ). Further - reaching legis-
lation is needed to ensure that 'mitigation' and com-
pensatory ' offset ' measures involving restoration are
required from public or private developers whose
projects cause unavoidable environmental harm. Res-
toration scientists have an obligation to communicate
this imperative to the general public, and assist in
forming lobbies demanding such measures. Given the
scale of environmental crises on our planet, some
degree of political engagement is not just an option for
restoration scientists, it is a necessity. To assist this shift
to participation in public affairs, the overarching
theme of our topic has been the search for transdisci-
plinarity, the topic of the next section.
Whether you are a scientist, professional or volun-
teer practitioner, an effective interface that communi-
cates between restoration science and society is vital to
achieving effective and lasting restoration. In this
section, we wish to stress some of the thorny problems
and obstacles that can arise from the poor quality of
communications among scientists, between scientists
as a guild and in society at large. So we now consider
a number of problems in communication and consen-
sus building - not to mention the ideological, economic
development and information divides we have already
identifi ed - that can hinder the process. These prob-
lems are of course not restricted to restoration ecology,
but are encountered in all transdisciplinary projects.
We perceive three main causes of problems in com-
munication: (1) lack of transparency among ecologists
about codes of conduct, (2) poor interdisciplinary
cooperation (i.c. between ecologists and social scien-
tists) and (3) lack of cooperation and feedback among
scientists and the most deeply affected stakeholders.
We discuss these issues in this chapter, in conjunction
with a case in point from the Netherlands studied
by Swart and van Andel (2008). That involved a
government-initiated study intended to help solve a
confl ict between biodiversity conservation and restora-
tion and biological resource exploitation in the Dutch
part of the Wadden Sea (Box 22.1).
22.2.2 Transdisciplinarity
Transparency a bout c odes of c onduct
To be successful, ecological restoration must be
approached by a team of scientists from different disci-
plines working in concert with engineers, managers,
professionals of all sorts and of course ordinary citi-
zens, be they farmers or city dwellers, as appropriate to
the context in which the project or programme is
undertaken. How can this take place?
In Chapter 13, we learned about a beautiful example
of transdisciplinarity, namely, the Fire Learning
Network that focuses on 400 000 ha in western North
America, in a context where land ownership and man-
agement responsibilities are highly variable, and there
is a very long history of political and resource use con-
fl icts. A Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration
(CFLR) Program was set up to encourage the collabora-
tive, science-based ecosystem restoration of priority
forest landscapes. A similar programme is underway in
the Atlantic Rainforest region of coastal Brazil (see
Calmon
et al
. 2011). Other examples exist, but much
more effort and much more synergy are needed to see
them spread and multiply across the globe.
In Chapter 2, we explained the difference between
curiosity - driven science and problem - solving science.
Let's come back to this issue. Figure 22.3 illustrates
different ' modes of science ' , including curiosity - driven
science (what we call ABC science), applied science,
contextualized science and politicized science. Not rec-
ognizing the societal context in which a research
project is embedded may cause misunderstandings
about the codes of conduct agreed on. People in the
various fi elds of science are taught different codes of
conduct - or none at all; they acquire different methods
for examining questions, and develop differing core
values, and core logic and psychology about what they
are doing. This range may also occur within a specifi c
fi eld, such as ecology. Curiosity-driven scientists, in
ecology and other disciplines, in principle learn to
respect the 'ethics of science' that were nicely formu-
lated by sociologist Robert Merton (1973), as follows:
1.
Communalism, that is, the notion that scientifi c
knowledge is a common value based on the need
