Three Approaches to Restoration and Their Implications for Social Inclusion

Abstract

Building on the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade advances global restoration on an unprecedented scale. Research increasingly points to the need for greater social inclusion in restoration projects, yet the approaches that favor such inclusion remain opaque in practice. In this paper, we identify three restoration approaches that figure in the international agenda and analyze these through the lens of social inclusion. We argue that: (1) restoration aimed at bringing ecosystems back to a previous state, or "return" restoration, favors natural science at the landscape scale over social inclusion at the community scale; (2) restoration seeking to recreate functional ecosystems in locations away from where the degradation has occurred, or "reorganization" restoration, fails to adequately address historical inequities and perpetuates legacies of exploitation; and (3) "resilience" oriented restoration is promising but remains theoretical, and risks instrumentalizing marginalized communities and their lands as experimental sites for restoration. Though both "return" and "reorganize" restoration face substantial criticism, these approaches continue to play a central role in the major paradigms and practices that enliven the global restoration agenda. To improve prospects for social inclusion in the global restoration movement, we advance that the movement must evolve beyond productivity-based inclusion schemes and address the role that international initiatives play in perpetuating systems of exploitation. Finally, we argue that "resilience" restoration offers the most promising pathway towards meaningful social inclusion when it can empower community members to participate in restoration as agents of change and co-experimenters.

The Dilemma of Scale: competing imperatives for global restoration

“…(2) Restoration is a fundamentally social-ecological undertaking, and failure to approach it as such often brings harm to communities and ecosystems alike (Sigman & Elias 2021).…”

Community‐led peatland restoration in Southeast Asia: 5Rs approach

“…Based on these studies, we propose a community-led peatland restoration approach to be applied at the PHU level, as shown in Figure 1, which acknowledges the active driving role that the local community has to play in each component of the approach, beyond Revitalization (R4), and in an additional component Reporting and monitoring (R5). by 2030 (Sigman & Elias 2021). Despite substantial progress being made on several fronts, the problem of peatland degradation and resulting transboundary haze pollution in Southeast Asia has yet to be brought fully under systematic control, and requires restoration approaches to be formulated appropriately for immediate and wide-spread application.…”

The role of participatory scenarios in ecological restoration: a systematic map protocol

“…There currently is no systematic understanding of how participatory scenarios are being used in ecological restoration, including the geographic and spatial scope through which they are applied, the types of restoration projects they are being used for and the restoration outcomes they are addressing. Moreover, despite calls for the need to include of a broad range of outcomes and indicators there is insufficient evidence this is the case [37]. We will fill this research gap by mapping the existing evidence from participatory restoration scenarios to examine how restoration outcomes are explored using participatory scenarios and how participants are involved in the scenario process.…”