Contact! Contact! Nature Preservation as the Preservation of Meaning

Abstract

In this paper, I reinterpret the conflict between rewilders and those who want to preserve traditional agricultural landscapes. By showing that underlying both positions is a common outlook in which nature preservation can be described as a primarily interpretative act geared towards the preservation of meaning by establishing a successful contact with external reality, I hope to refocus the debate away from the current stalemate. Too often, the debate ends in a dispute about what counts as 'real nature'. By interpreting nature preservation - whether it is directed at rewilding or at preserving old agricultural landscapes - as an act that is a response to nature's meanings, we will refocus attention on the real issue underlying preservation: articulating the ways nature is meaningful to us.

On the Possible Existence of a ‘First Law of Environmental Stewardship’: How Organisations Bring Volunteers Together in Social and Geographic Space

“…natural areas, and doing an activity (enhancing the environment and helping the community) with members of the community, together (Hards 2011). Indeed, their relation to nature, as in sense of place or place identity, may have been a driver for action (Gooch 2003;Deliège 2016).…”

Harmonising with Heaven and Earth: Reciprocal Harmony and Xunzi's Environmental Ethics

“…For Nuyen (2011), if nature has inherent value, then it has an noninstrumental moral standing that makes it necessary for nature to 'be preserved at some cost to human interest' (p. 554). This may involve efforts at rewilding or the maintenance of agricultural landscapes (Deliège 2016). More generally, it requires us to avoid taking actions that are harmful towards nature and to preserve its existing state in good condition.…”

Rewilding in Layered Landscapes as a Challenge to Place Identity

“…I presented rewilding as the effort to put the human history of controlling nature in perspective and make room for more natural autonomy. But my interpretation of rewilding was firmly based on the assumption that rewilding is a thoroughly human, reflexive endeavour 'geared at preserving meaning' (Deliège, 2016) of the landscape palimpsest.…”

“…The Dutch biologist Victor Westhoff introduced the concept of 'semi-natural' to characterise these small-scale pre-industrial agricultural landscapes (Westhoff, 1970), and pointed out their exceptional ecological value. He argued that, in order to maintain them, continued intervention is demanded: 'if nature was simply left to run its course, then heaths and marshes, for instance, would degenerate irrevocably and lose their biological diversity' (Keulartz, 1998: 160; also see Deliège, 2016).…”