Restoration otherwise: Towards alternative coastal ecologies

Abstract

This article considers how to rethink ecological restoration as a process tethered to ongoing formulations of racial and environmental justice. It is situated in the context of coastal Louisiana's wetland loss crisis and the state's unprecedented investment in large-scale wetland restoration projects as a technoscientific fix that comes at the expense of several small, Black and Indigenous bayou communities. Critical of approaching restoration as a practice predicated on loss and return, this article builds upon scholarship in Black and Indigenous ecologies and ethnographic fieldwork among Black coastal communities in southeast Louisiana to reimagine restoration as an intergenerational, socioecological set of practices grounded in cultivating cultural continuity and community care across time and space. Working with the Black feminist geographic concepts of the plot and the shoal, the article develops the notion alternative restorations—or restoration otherwise—around three reformulations of restoration: As a practice of cultural continuity, as a mode of cultivating self-reliance, and as a scientific practice of integrity and humility. It concludes by reflecting the ways Black ecological practices and values can shift the course of restoration science toward sustaining Black life in the era of climate change.

Desirable futures: Time as possibility, practice, politics

“…Time is a strategy used by the state and capital to discipline, coerce, and frame what is possible -from the management of minutes or even seconds in the workplace (Dimpfl, 2018), to the inscription of dominant time into the law (Joshi, 2023;Mills, 2014), from the structure of checkpoints and prisons which control and restructure time (Tawil-Souri, 2017), to the management of how we think of epochs, eras, or the future (Curley and Smith, forthcoming;Fagan, 2019;Whyte, 2021). Barra (2024) begins her article on "restoration otherwise," quoting Louisiana officials saying, "We have no time left to lose." This seemingly protective urgency justifies the abandonment of the Black, Indigenous, southeast Asian, and low-income communities affected (Barra, 2024: 2).…”

“…Can we repair otherwise, tell other stories? (Barra, 2024;Bruno, 2023;Bruno et al, 2024;Crawley, 2016;Lewis, 2024;Safransky, 2021;Thieme, 2021;Vasudevan et al, 2022). Eve Tuck's (Tuck, 2009(Tuck, , 2012Tuck and Yang, 2014) work on desire is central to the origins of this special issue and our Desirable Futures Collective.…”

Cities after planning

“…In the fourth and final contribution, Nikhil Anand (2023) brings attention to the sea as a space of urban life. Planning technologies tend to order the sea as temporally and spatially separate from a dry city.…”

More than just dying: Black life and futurity in the face of state-sanctioned environmental racism

“…In theorizing Black ecologies of care, Reese and Johnson (2022) underscore the ways mutual aid and other forms of mutuality and solidarity have long existed within “ongoing experiments in relationality that foreground Black life and ways of living in ecologies of neglect and terror” (28). Importantly, we cannot forget that there is also ecological care taking place in these spaces (Barra, 2023; Davis et al., 2019), and these modes of care inform each other shaping an ecosystem of care making living possible in “unlivable” spaces. This encapsulates the struggle for dignity, protection, and care for Black life in EJ communities.…”