Restoration ecology has grown in political prominence in the past decades with the United Nations General Assembly's declaration of 2021-2030 the "UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration" representing a highly visible vindication for the discipline. That said, questions of environmental justice, economic practicality, and ethics need to be considered when climate change and environmental degradation are factored into restoration projects. This article builds on previous calls for a paradigm of ecological restoration which looks toward the future, and not the past. Future-oriented restoration projects should: (1) examine how restored ecosystems will affect local and disadvantaged communities; (2) assess whether the restoration goals will improve human health and safety; (3) evaluate how financially feasible the goals are from a systems perspective; and (4) strive for transparency of the values that inform such projects. The concept of sustainability and how it applies to restoration ecology will also be discussed.
The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration promises to educate society on the many ways ecological restoration projects can benefit humankind. One avenue of possibilities for restoration ecology lies with concerns of environmental justice. The concept of futuristic restoration, which posits a paradigm of ecological restoration that is future-oriented, aligns well with calls for policymakers to address the circumstances, processes, and systems within which environmental inequalities are typically produced. This article offers three policy arenas where futuristic restoration can be employed in order to further environmental justice goals: (1) Land conservation prioritization; (2) Urban development plans; and (3) Mine remediation projects. The temporal dimension of sustainability and how it pertains to restoration projects will also be addressed.
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