ETHICS IN SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICSESEP

2005: 3–15 Published April 4

THE ECOLOGICAL CHALLENGE

There is a growing belief that the global ecologicalcrisis which confronts humanity today is one of themost critical turning points that human civilization hasever faced. The causes of this trend are believed bysome to lie in environmentally destructive propensitiesthat create ecological imbalances. The basis for theseimbalances can be ascribed to many forces, but can belargely reduced to a few central trends, the intensity of

human consumption multiplied by sheer human num-bers, combined by the lack of will to change, or worse,to fundamentally understand how our behaviors todayare producing tomorrow’s problems. None of theseforces appear to be receding as global population andhuman consumption continue unabated with societiesmore inclined to watch, register, and witness thesetrends than to actively seek solutions. Global popula-tion is projected to continue to increase, but fewdemographers are certain if and when human popula-

© Inter-Research 2005 · www.int-res.com*Email: peter.leigh@noaa.gov

PAPER

The ecological crisis, the human condition,and community-based restoration as an instrument

for its cure

Peter Leigh*

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Habitat Conservation, 1315 East-West Hwy, Bldg 3, Rm 14729,Silver Spring, Maryland 20910, USA

ABSTRACT: We have entered an unprecedented period in human history. By the vigor of our con-sumption and procreation, the human species has modified our global environment at wide regionaland global scales. At the close of the twentieth century, global warming, biodiversity losses, ozoneand freshwater depletion, to name a few, are now recognized as human-induced wide-scale environ-mental transformations. In spite of admirable efforts to arrest some of these processes and restoreenvironmental vitality, the pace at which humans modify their environment continues with consider-able intensity. The future health of the biosphere for sustaining all life may be drifting close to themargins as environmental crises increase within a single generation. These destructive propensitieshave deep cultural and psychological roots that divide us from the rest of the environment. Signifi-cant social change is needed for improving our collective relationship with the earth. Humans, withour unique capacity for self-reflection, are beginning to understand that the underpinnings to ourcurrent ecological problems lie within our attitudes, values, ethics, perceptions, and behaviors. Newways to reconceptualize our unity with the biosphere, understand downstream impacts, and linksocial behavior with environmental transformations are increasing with corresponding intensity.Community-based restoration is a powerful means for facilitating this trend, by reconnecting commu-nities with their landscape, empowering citizenry, and fostering an environmental ethos based onecopsychological health.

KEY WORDS: Ecopathology · Environmental civics · Empowerment · Social change · Community-based restoration · Ecopsychology · Biodiversity · Ecosystems

Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisher

The next century will, I believe, be the era of restoration in ecology. Edward O. Wilson, 1992

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tion will stabilize and at what level; projections varywidely from 7 to 15 billion inhabitants by the end ofthis century.

War, disease, and technological constraints wereonce powerful controls to population growth. It is diffi-cult to view these controls in a positive light and yetwith advances in agriculture, the emergence ofmachinery, and medical innovation, global populationshave risen with exponential swiftness. Influenza tookthree quarters of a million Americans in 1918, and pos-sibly 30 to 50 million people world-wide. Tuberculosis,yellow fever, malaria, influenza, polio, pneumonia andnumerous other diseases served as a natural force thatconstrained life expectancy. Europe during the MiddleAges lost 25% of its population to the bubonic plague.These diseases once served as a powerful natural con-trol on population growth, since many of them particu-larly struck the young with a vengeance, cutting shortthe opportunity to procreate. With the advance of sani-tation, vaccines, antibiotics, and surgery, most of theseproblems were resolved with remarkable success.

Advances in medicine are expected to continue intothis century with innovations that were once rele-gated to science fiction, including cloned and artifi-cial organ replacements, genomic medicine, and eventhe possibility to control the rate of aging itself. Toquote two leading world demographers, ‘mortalityresearch has exposed the empirical misconceptionsand specious theories that underlie the perniciousbelief that the expectation of life cannot rise muchfurther’ (Oeppen & Vaupel 2002, p. 1031). Evendivorced of the kind of biological revolutions that arebeing touted by molecular biologists toextend life beyond our wildest dreams,the US population alone is expected toexceed 400 million by the middle of thenext century, adding the equivalent ofConnecticut’s population every year andCalifornia’s every decade (President’sCouncil 1996).

As technological innovation conspiresto sustain life, each person continues toconsume larger quantities of resources. Ina society whose tenet rests with ‘more isbetter’ one could assume that the collec-tion of more and more stuff is limitless.The very familiar cliche ‘shop until youdrop,’ may soon take on global signifi-cance when applied to the biosphere, par-ticularly if the projected world popu-lations of 7 to 15 billion inhabitantsbecomes economically empowered in thiscentury. However, with the more is betterprinciple one may ask, when is enough?Is there a point of material satiation? A

growing number of mid-developed countries in theworld are poised to emulate US consumption patterns.In China bicycles are being replaced by cars. India hasover 100 million middle-class citizens with loomingbuying power. E. O. Wilson, a leading authority on bio-diversity, recently stated, ‘For every person in theworld to reach present U.S. levels of consumption withexisting technology would require four more planetearths (Wilson 2002, p. 23). The ecological footprintfrom each planetary resident expands as our limitedland mass struggles to accommodate these growingdemands, leaving behind the bucolic settings that oncedotted our landscape (Fig. 1). Early pioneers of theNew World arrived to the Americas thinking the landwas an Eden of limitless bounty, and at that time, inrelation to human populations, it was.

By the close of the twentieth century nowhere onearth held claim of not being influenced by humanactivity. Pollution has extended its reach into remoteregions of the world. Pesticides and other toxic materi-als used in agriculture and industry are transportingchemicals, known as organochlorine compounds, tothe most frigid uninhabitable polar regions on earth.This is done by a process of atmospheric uptake thatcan carry these chemicals over great distances. Oncevaporized these compounds can travel intercontinen-tally to be later deposited by means of rain and snow(Blais et al. 1998). Even where the most laudableefforts are now underfoot to create or expand marineand terrestrial sanctuaries, human influences cast theirsignal from a distance (Grossman 2004). A coherentfingerprint of climate change impacts across natural

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Fig. 1. The forest and farms marked the scene of Washington, DC, encoun-tered when landscape painter George Beck arrived in America in 1795 (Miller

2002) (Public domain)

Leigh: Ecological crisis and community-based restoration

systems was recently established by Parmesan andYohe. Their finding has documented a significantnorthward species range shift averaging 6.1 km for 279species with a mean advancement in spring events by2.3 days per decade (Parmesan & Yohe 2003). Thisfinding confers increased confidence in the Interna-tional Panel for Climate Change assessment that cli-mate will affect living systems.

Similarly, efforts to identify biodiversity hot spotsthroughout the world in order to define conservationpriorities for sustaining the most species at the leastcost (Myers et al. 2000), an otherwise logical approachfor preservation, hinges on the assumption that bio-logical communities are reasonably area bound,stable, and cohesive. However, according to currentthinking on global warming theory, increased globaltemperatures will likely act on the two master vari-ables of life on earth, temperature and precipitation,with the potential likelihood of radically reconfiguringspecies’ distributions. Adding to this reconfiguration,at least within the marine environment, is evidencethat the oceans are warming. To quote a leadingoceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmos-pheric Administration, S Levitus, ‘Our results demon-strate that a large part of the world ocean has exhibitedcoherent changes of the ocean heat content during thepast 50 years... the whole-Earth system has gone into arelatively warm state’ (Levitus et al. 2000, p. 2226).

Greenhouse skeptics always pointed to the modestincrease in atmospheric warming, given the levels ofgreenhouse gases, in that warming should be twice thecurrent level, and climate modelers always counteredthat the ocean must be soaking up the heat, but no-onereally knew. Now their claim appears to be fortified,but one lingering question remains: How long can theocean serve as a heat sink for the atmosphere? Asrecently as 11650 yr ago, a change in average temper-ature as great as 10°C may have occurred within anarrow window of 20 yr (Taylor 1999). Natural systemtransformations, even without anthropogenic forcing,are notoriously non-linear. One of the most toweringconundrums in global environmental assessments isthat one knows one has a sustainable system only afterthe fact (Costanza 1996). In other words, optimum lev-els of environmental exploitation are often a functionof trial and error as sustainability often defies predic-tion. The predicament is exacerbated when gyrationsin natural variability mask the effects of overexploita-tion. Fisheries ecologist J. Magnuson refers to this asthe invisible present, where ecosystem changes areinitially slow and imperceptible and occur over timescales that exceed most research windows; a situationthat preconditions us toward a greater probability forserious environmental misjudgements and surprises(Magnuson 1990).

For global warming such masking looms large, par-ticularly when faced with likely irreversibilities andpotentially sizable consequences. You do not need adepth of knowledge in ecology to know that majorshifts in temperature, salinity, precipitation, ocean cir-culation, etc., can swiftly and radically alter bioticzones, and reconfigure the food source for all specieson Earth. There is, one presumes, a critical mass ofbiota needed for sustaining planetary geophysiology.The average adult lungs harbor about 600 millionalveoli. From a microcosmic view, it may seem like aninfinite resource, but remove large masses of lung tis-sue and degeneration will follow, often abruptly. Asone of the world’s leading ecotoxicologists once con-veyed, ‘there is little doubt that practices tolerated onearth, such as population growth, overexploitation ofecological capital, and massive destruction of habitatsand species, could not be tolerated in Biosphere 2(human constructed terrarium) even for a short time’(Cairns 1996, p. 15). The stability of the biosphere isillusionary as its equilibrium is periodically inter-rupted with punctuated events that we are beginningonly now to discern (Sagan & Margulis 1989). As oneof the world’s prominent climate scientists recentlystated about abrupt climate change, ‘....it is clear thatEarth’s climate system has proven itself to be anangry beast. When nudged, it is capable of a violentresponse’ (Broecker 2003, p. 1522). Natural climatetransition is generally episodic and denoted by rapidphase transformation (Sirocko 2003). From chaos andcontrol theory, and from physiology, perturbations ofa system that is close to instability can lead to oscilla-tions, chaotic change, or failure (Bak & Chen 1991,Hansen 2005).

The ability of our species to transform the biospherehas reached unprecedented heights as the probabilityof reaching a critical mass approaches a statistical cer-tainty. Humanity faces fundamental questions aboutthe sustenance of nature and society as it approachescritical crossroads in this century. As one authority onsociobiology stated, ‘The human species is, in a word,an environmental abnormality. It is possible that intelli-gence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained tobe a fatal combination for the biosphere’ (Wilson 1993,p. 25). Therefore, a reassessment of some of the path-ways that connect social behavior with environmentaltransformations is needed. To a neutral observer onemay ask, how did we, as a species with crowning intel-ligence, come to this precipice? Why, as a species with aunique capacity for foresight, creativity, and inventive-ness, are we drifting dangerously close to destabilizingour planet and what remedies are available to counterthese seemingly irrevocable trends? We appear to beon an relentless path of environmental degenerationwithout a sense of consequence for planetary survival.

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As the editors of Scientific American recently statedabout events leading to the Columbia space shuttledisaster that has analogous connections to our plight,‘Events... showed that the space agency still had notlearned how to listen to the cautions of its own person-nel’ (Rennie et al. 2003, p. 10). ‘Ruin is the destinationtoward which all men rush...’ commented G Hardin inone of his landmark papers (Hardin 1968, p. 1244) or asHarvard’s authority on biodiversity asked, ‘is humanitysuicidal?’ (Wilson 1993, p. 24)

ECOPSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMANCONDITION

Ecopsychology is a new discipline that integrates thescience of psychology with ecology, in that it bringsmainstream psychological theory into the foregroundfor better understanding our relation with the environ-ment. Its central tenet is the recognition that humanhealth is intrinsically connected to the health of theplanet and that both are mutually inclusive of theother. Ecopsychology draws upon the ecological sci-ences to reexamine the human psyche as an integralpart of the web of nature. This new science adds depthto our analysis for better understanding our destructivepropensities and for recognizing that constraining thescramble for profits or enacting more laws and regula-tions are not the only tools for promoting environmen-tal conservation. Rather, a deeper probing into ourdestructive environmental attitudes toward nature isalso a critical consideration for fostering a healthierand more sustainable relationship with our landscape,for, as one scientist stated, ‘...sustainability is a particu-lar relationship of the human species with the entirebiosphere’ (Cairns 2000, p. 1).

A central starting point for understanding ourdestructive environmental behavior is to first under-stand our social psychology. Freud once addressed theissue of communal pathology by stating, ‘If the devel-opment of civilization has such a far-reaching similar-ity to the development of the individual... may we notbe justified in reaching the diagnosis that some civi-lizations, or some epochs of civilization, possibly thewhole of mankind, have become neurotic’ (Freud 1961,p. 91). K Lorenz, ethnologist and authority on aggres-sion, complemented these views by conveying thatintra-specific selection bred into man a measure ofaggression for which in the social order of today hefinds no adequate outlet (Lorenz 1963). One of the cen-tral observations of human history is that of aggressionand murder, directed toward other races, nations, reli-gions, social groups, clans. Psychiatrist RD Laing rein-forces such claims by stating, ‘In the last fifty years, wehuman beings have slaughtered, by our own hands,

one hundred million of our species’ (Laing 1967, p. 76).Therefore, our environmental maleficence may be buta logical extension from this historical record of violentsocial pathology.

Such dour assessments of the human condition crossmany fields and time periods but cluster around a cen-tral archetypical theme, that something is not quiteright with the human species. The centerpiece for mostromantic themes is marked by humanity’s alienation,division, and duality from God, his fellow man, andhim/herself. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Blake’s Book ofUrizen, or Godwin’s Caleb Williams represent thePromethean imperfections of a species gone awry.Even Shelley’s familiar Gothic story of Frankensteinmetaphorically captures the central duality of our anti-thetical halves of a single being, wherein the monsterand creator are one. Although religious, mythological,and romantic literature is littered with stories ofhumanity’s fall from grace, an early passage fromPlato’s cosmology eloquently captures this repeatingmotif, ‘The motions akin to the divine part in us are thethoughts and revolutions of the universe; these, there-fore, every man should follow, and correcting thosecircuits in the head that were deranged at birth, bylearning to know the harmonies and revolutions of theworld...’ (MacDonald 1952, p. 354).

This claim is strikingly complementary to more mod-ern scientific insights where neurologist P Maclean,foremost expert on limbic brain physiology, advancedthe idea that our nervous system has evolved threesuperimposed brain structures characterized by reptil-ian, paleomammalian, and neomammalian lines ofdevelopment (MacLean 1973). Each brain having itsown chemistry and distinct function; each desynchro-nized with the other to produce a condition of schizo-physiology, his coined term (MacLean 1958). In asense, we have three conjoined brains in psychophysi-ological dissonance where anatomy outpaced function.It suggests that the transduction of consciousness isfractured through the prism of a divided physiology. DMorris and K Lorenz reinforced this dichotomy byasserting that our pathological condition has a phylo-genetic basis pre-wired and programmed into our cen-tral nervous system (Lorenz 1963, Morris 1967). AsMacLean states, the lower reptilian brain lacks theneural machinery for learning to cope with new situa-tions with a distinct propensity toward repeating pat-terns of behaviors (MacLean 1964). Such insights giveFreud’s view of man’s seemingly inescapable compul-sion to repetition special meaning (Freud 1959), anobservation vigorously reinforced by Hegel’s maxim,‘What experience and history teach us is this... thatpeople and governments have never learned anythingfrom history, or acted on principles deduced from it’(Hegel 1956, p. 6).

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However, if humans are under the tight control of aneural program that prevents them from extricatingthemselves from fixed patterns of behavior, with aprewired tendency to clan with only family or tribe,then how can a global environmental commitmentever be realized? Or as one biologist recently stated,‘Compelling evidence shows that all culture islearned. But its invention and transmission are biasedby innate properties of the sensory system and brain’(Cairns 1998, p. 7). Does the neural software operat-ing in humankind in the past 200,000 years preclude‘hive’ first efforts to commit to the commons, particu-larly when environmental impacts may be decadesinto the future (e.g. global warming)? As one of theleading authorities of modern behaviorism, BF Skin-ner, once stated related to voluntary behavior, ‘...it isnever a future consequence which is effective. Achange in practice is made because similar changeshave had certain consequences in the past’ (Skinner1956, p. 428). ‘Operant learning is difficult when rein-forcement lies far into the future or punishing conse-quences are unclear, uncertain, or remote’. Clearly,the context for defining sanity in our time hasreached planetary dimensions. The question for thehuman species is whether humanity will master andovercome this instinctual propensity toward aggres-sion and repeating self-destruction as so well docu-mented by Freud, Laing, and Lorenz.

However, our species may yet be redeemed from thisPromethean fire. We may have the capacity to tran-scend our destructive propensities. As the fledglingscience of psychobiology advances, prospects for map-ping the very origin and meaning of human values,from which all ethical pronouncements and principlesare derived, may one day be realized. The interiorpsyche of humankind might soon be investigated andneurophysiologically mapped for realizing Freud’sdream for grounding psychology to physiology (Restak1991). Contrary to long-held beliefs, the structure ofthe human brain is not fixed, but plastic. The extent ofour neuroplasticity is a focal point of intense research;nevertheless, evidence over the past two decadesreveal reasons for optimism (Holloway 2003). Psy-chobiology is in the earliest phase of deducing themechanisms that guide and explain human behavior.In this dawn are intimations science may be poised tohelp us actualize the brain’s potential for bridging thephylogenetic rift between old and new brain, emotionand reason, instinct and intellect, for addressing oursocial and environmental ills.

Prominent social theorists such as Spengler, Vico,Marx, Teggart, and Spencer have exalted impressivesocial theorems, but they were divorced of psychobio-logical principles that are only now coming to light. Towhat extent does brain circuitry, encoded by the

genes, preordain the direction of social developmentand environmental values? How can we alter humanbehavior to promote a more constructive and enlight-ened relationship with ourselves and our environment?In other words, the underpinnings of improved ethicsin environmental politics may rest on the psychic life ofthe planet’s inhabitants who have nurtured a broaderview of self. A leading physicist of the last centurysummarizes this theme best:

A human being is part of a whole, called by us theuniverse, a part limited in time and space. He experi-ences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as somethingseparate from the rest, a kind of al delusion of his con-sciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us.Restricting us to our personal desires and to affectionfor a few persons nearest us. Our task must be toembrace all living creatures and the whole of nature inits beauty. ‘Albert Einstein (Calaprice 2000, p. 316)’

The transition of consciousness toward a more com-prehensive identification of self with the environmentmay be the bedrock of a needed social transformationas we enter, to quote A Koestler, ‘the age of climax’(Koestler 1967, p. 313).

ECOPSYCHOLOGY PRINCIPLES

Although ecopsychology is an emerging science,attempts to systematically identify psychological prin-ciples to explain our relationship with the naturalworld are being explored along several centralthemes: environmental autism, denial, consumeraddiction, narcissism, amnesia and dissociation, toname a few. Ecoautism represents a psychopatho-logical metaphor where the human species hasbecome autistic in relation to the natural world (Berry1988, Roszak 1992, Metzner 1999). We have theknowledge of our impact on the environment butchoose to ignore it, a species in denial. Autism, aform of child psychosis, is characterized by a sensoryshut down in which a child fails to respond emotion-ally to the presence of his/her mother and does notappropriately respond to gesture, voice, or touch,often lacking empathy for others. These characteris-tics are being paralleled to our industrial culture thatreflects a form of autism to our natural surroundingsin that humanity appears to be detached from thescale at which we are modifying our global environ-ment (Turner et al. 1990).

A second theme is our technological addiction anddependencies across the entire range of consumerproducts. Our addiction, marked by psychologicaldependencies, like all addictions, is slow and imper-ceptible. It proceeds like a progressive disease thatbegins to alter our psychological processes along a

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path of aimless compulsions marked by, not unlikealcoholism, early denial. Eventually, the addictionleads to depraved changes in attitude, behavior, andlife-style, culminating in a breakdown. We perceivethe pollution and degradation of the land, water, air,and ocean, but are powerless to stop it. A third psycho-logical model is narcissism, a personality disordercharacterized by a severe inflation of the self.Extended to ecopsychology, this characteristic corre-sponds to environmental chauvanism, the crown ofcreation complex, marked by a sense of biologicalsupremacy and dominance over all forms of life. On acollective scale, such lack of personal fulfillment leadsto an alienation from nature and anthropocentric arro-gance that is ultimately destructive to both the individ-ual, society, and the environment. The final diagnosticanalogy is that humanity is suffering from a collectiveamnesia, in that we have forgotten our former close-ness with the Earth. Plato’s insights on the origin ofknowledge conveyed the concept of universal ideasand truths lost at birth, but which through philosophycan be recalled (Jowett 1937). If this is extended tohumanity’s interdependent relationship with the envi-ronment, it seems we have forgotten what was oncenatural for indigenous cultures as their constantdependancy on nature was an ineluctable truth, dailyreinforced.

Changes in technology and modes of productionhave fundamentally altered the relationship betweenpeople and natural ecosystems. When people weresustained by hunting and gathering the availabilityand distribution of plant and animal foods limitedhuman population abundance and distribution;hunter-gatherer culture was tightly integrated intofood webs. The dependence of humans on naturalstocks of plants and animals declined with the adventof agriculture, which allowed people to concentratein areas with high agricultural productivity, areaswhere soils were fertile and rainfall abundant. Nolonger was the spatial distribution of people limitedby the availability of prey. Augmentation of rainfallwith irrigation and the addition of fertilizers to nat-ural stocks of nutrients further reduced the spatialdependence of human population centers on thebiotic and abiotic properties of ecosystems. Further-more, the advent of extensive transportation net-works and the development of food-preservationtechnologies during the industrial revolution ex-tended the habitable area for humans by allowingpopulation of areas remote from agriculture. As aresult, human constraints on food sources were liber-ated and human migration occurred swiftly across allcontinents. All these trends progressively decoupledthe closeness humans had to their environment forsustenance.

COMMUNITY-BASED RESTORATION AS ANINSTRUMENT FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Community-based restoration is a novel, grassrootsapproach that actively engages local communities inecological restoration of habitats. The practice bringscommunities together, promotes a conservation ethic,and develops a sense of place. By this action, humanityreconnects with the environment, often in meaningfulways, to heal a segment of an impaired earth. The exer-cise fosters an emotional commitment to a particularpart of a landscape or seascape, that often, inadver-tently, fosters a sense of ownership of the commons. Itdoes something more than ‘passive’ environmental ac-tivities such as hiking, wildlife viewing, or environmen-tal preservation, as it presents each participant with anenvironmental problem along with an active on-the-ground restoration solution, a solution for which eachvolunteer is a part, often with tangible results.

In a time of increasing despair over the scope andscale of human impacts on the environment and ashabitats are degraded or contract by the minute,restoration offers a means to positively shift the envi-ronmental ledger back in favor of natural systems. Itprovides local empowerment through which peoplefrom diverse backgrounds can come together andchannel their environmental commitments to posi-tively influence a part, however small, of an ecosystem.These acts serve as a powerful social statement to therest of the community, if not the world, that a portion ofits citizenry can make a difference, even if it is the lastremnants of nature that is being restored; that theycan, by their efforts, hard work, and sacrifice, demon-strate to others that a small group of dedicated peopleare meeting their obligations to future generations,other species, and entire ecosystems by redeemingboth nature and humanity by restoring places ofbeauty and ecological importance.

Restoration, community-inspired, offers reciprocityand redemption to give back to nature for what naturehas given to us and for what we have taken from it. Itoffers the average citizen not only insight on howhumans impact their immediate landscape, but thelarger biotic community as a whole, an insight that per-haps can be viewed as more valuable than the ecolog-ical restoration itself. The environmental crisis and itsconnections to pollution, overdevelopment, popula-tion, consumption, and scarcity are strikingly realizedby community volunteers when the parcel of theirrestored landscape is shown to be affected by theseforces. Global environmental change is often too elu-sive to grasp, yet, like an odorless poison, too profoundto ignore. Those that gently tend to a portion of arenewed Earth are given, often unknowingly, a gratu-itous grace. Nature, under this healing paradigm, is no

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longer possessed but nurtured, no longer rendereddysfunctional, but reborn.

Community-based restoration serves as an instru-ment for social change by promoting a deeply commit-ted constituency, a constituency which is critical foraddressing environmental problems at all geographi-cal scales. A sense of kinship often permeates the kindof bonding commonly observed by community-basedparticipants. An intuitive kindred, an extended familymind-set, emerges among restoration participantsmarked by a special psychological dimension, an emo-tional dimension, that these shared acts to improve theenvironment engenders. Environmental stewardshipcomes by igniting the passion of those that live in thecommunity to choose environmental sustainability.Community-based restoration is a powerful modalityfor sparking and sustaining this passion because as itmediates a new relationship with the natural worldand transforms individual values into social values ithelps forge collective purposes, and, even more impor-tantly, helps define, direct, and shape public morality.

At the moment, this inspirational, even spiritual,restoration generally entails small-scale projects andtherefore to an outside observer may represent onlysymbolic or ceremonial acts to improve natural sys-tems. Also, because restoration is a new science, it isstill challenging to achieve full functional returns tonatural systems, but this deficit is a benefit that furtherreinforces the need for humanity to tread lightly on afallen Earth. For these, and many other factors, helpexpand a constituency for valuing intact natural sys-tems even more and serve as a foundation for funda-mental changes in behavior necessary if we ever hopeto achieve environmental sustainability. For the act ofrestoration beckons us, by the act to change a systemback to a more self-sustaining ecology, to insightfullygrasp the complexities of these hierarchical and heter-archical systems. It allows average citizens to fullygrasp the challenges entailed to heroically resurrect afallen system. More so, restoration not only attempts toreverse history, it allows us to time travel back to a pre-vious period in our ecological past in a fierce effort torecapture a part of our lost Eden.

Currently, there are thousands of community-basedrestoration projects occurring in North America everyyear. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis-tration facilitates several hundred projects annually.1

For coastal and marine habitats, the ones my agencyundertakes, restoration actions may include tidalmarshes, wetlands, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrassbeds, or kelp forests, to name a few. These habitatsprovide homes for marine mammals, foraging andnursery grounds for fish and shellfish, and nesting and

migration corridors for birds. They also provide otherservices such as protection from wind, waves, andflooding, as well as benefits from tourism, commercial,and recreational industries. For example, the upperLittle Salmon River in New Meadows, Idaho, flowsthrough privately owned land for about 10 miles.Removal of streamside vegetation, channelization, andthe increased presence of livestock during the pastcentury have drastically altered natural processes.Where trees and shrubs once lined the river now crum-bling cuts in the riverbanks commonly dot the land-scape from changes in water flow patterns caused byhuman alterations of the landscape. Natural gravelsthat once served the riverbeds as spawning groundsfor salmon are generally covered over from excessivesedimentation. Without riverside vegetation watertemperatures soar during intense summer days, plac-ing severe stresses on native species.

In the spring of 2004, a community-based restorationinitiative mobilized numerous citizens to revegetate ariverbank along the Little Salmon River. Thousands ofshrubs and trees were planted by committed volun-teers, sometimes planting over 1 000 units in a day.Over the past five years in the southwest region of thestate over 1 000 volunteers planted 258 100 plants.2

Sometimes volunteers are used for the simple plantingof trees and vegetation, other times they may beenlisted to use a variety of equipment to expediteplanting. For example, opportunities to employ volun-teers for riparian revegetation using a waterjet stingerthat uses a high pressure water forced technique withspecially designed nozzles to efficiently bore holes for

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1See www.nmfs.noaa.gov/habitat/restoration 2See http://www.mountainvisions.com

Fig. 2. Volunteers are sometimes enlisted to use equipmentfor facilitating planting along riverbanks. In this initiativea waterjet stinger is being employed (Kent Werlin) (By

permission of photographer Kent Werlin)

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planting dormant, non-rooted cuttings, is now a stan-dard practice (Fig. 2). This method is limited to speciesthat easily sprout from hardwood cuttings, such as wil-lows, but this variety of species are very effective forachieving streambank stabilization and bufferingriverbanks that in turn produce a more natural setting.

Through the work of Mary Dudley, volunteer coordi-nator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game,along with Federal sponsorship from the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration, we are see-ing the profound impact of meaningful volunteerrestoration opportunities on the citizens of Idaho. Since1990, Mary has provided a link between conservation-minded Idaho citizens of all ages and backgrounds,resulting in ecologically functional wetland and ripar-ian restoration. Each volunteer who works with Marygoes home with a deeper understanding of the impor-tance of wetlands and riparian areas as fish andwildlife habitat. All participants benefit from theopportunity to return to a site to witness ecologicalrecovery. Each volunteer gains a sense of empower-ment related to his or her own impact on problems andlandscapes that seem initially overwhelming. Maryand her program are contributing to the formation oflifelong watershed stewards who believe they canmake a difference. A landowner who participated inone of Mary’s restoration projects wrote, ‘By educatingthe public about these environmental issues, and withthe hands-on approach to activate that knowledge, anindividual becomes better equipped and informed tomake decisions as he/she develops a personal stake inaffecting the environment. My husband and I believethat continued support for these areas of riparianrestoration not only enhances the environment, butalso plays an important role in educating the commu-nity’ (pers. comm. from a landowner contained in asubmitted community-based project application).

In tandem with community engagement as a socialtransforming agent is J Goodall’s global initiate titled‘roots and shoots.’ This is an international network foryoung people and their mentors committed to makinga positive impact on communities and their environ-ment by identifying problems and initiating actions.Currently there are over 3 000 roots and shoots groupsacross 68 countries. Each group selects hands-on pro-jects for improving the environment, the well-being ofanimals, and the human community. The core messageis that every individual matters and can make a differ-ence. Metaphorically, roots spread underground andmake a firm foundation. Shoots seem small and weak,but to reach the light they can break through brickwalls. The ‘roots’ are the people engaged in specificactions for attempting, often with young volunteers(‘shoots’), to penetrate the walls (problems thathumanity has inflicted on the planet). One example, on

Saturday, April 8, 2000, Salisbury State UniversityRoots and Shoots initiated an effort to clean up theNanticoke River, which empties into the ChesapeakeBay, by removing waste that once dotted this river.3

Another entry on the roster for community empower-ment as a method for social transformation is Dr. Wan-gari Maathai, an African woman from Kenya. The Nor-wegian Nobel Committee recently awarded her the2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustain-able development, democracy, and peace. She pio-neered the Green Belt Movement, which has champi-oned environmental sustainability for her countrythrough the simple act of planting trees. Its vision hasbeen to create a society principled on self-determina-tion, justice, equity, poverty reduction, environmentalconservation, and restoration. Tree-planting, a form ofrestoration, serves as the instrument for not only eco-logical enhancements, but also political and socialtransformations. Today, the Green Belt Movement hasover 600 community networks across Kenya that carefor 6 000 tree nurseries. This has resulted in the trans-formation of many landscapes by fortifying biodiver-sity through the protection and restoration of habitats,as well as the coalescence of a powerful political con-stituency.4

Perhaps what constitutes the real story is the trans-formation of Kenyans’ attitudes toward the environ-ment as a result of this movement. Increased aware-ness of the impacts of ecological decline has increasedalong with public interest in defending the environ-ment, including the protection of forests, public parks,and open space. The simple act of tree-planting pro-vided a starting point for other initiatives, includingcivic and environmental education, capacity buildingand advocacy. Through this exercise the public’sunderstanding and insight that the environment is nota luxury, but rather intrinsic to the foundation of alleconomic development and prosperity, has emerged asa reinforcing theme, a theme that is starting to spreadto neighboring nations. A Pan-African Green Belt Net-work was recently formed involving trained represen-tatives from 15 African countries. As a result, severaltree-planting initiatives have been established in Eastand Central Africa.5

As far back as 1982, biologist W Odum skillfullyapplied principles outlined by economist A Kahn(Kahn 1966) by transferring his premise of the ‘tyrannyof small decisions’ as it related to market economics toenvironmental science. Odum postulated that manyimportant impacts on the environment occurred from aseries of small decisions that were made by small

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3See http://www.janegoodall.org4See http://www.wangarimaathai.com5See Footnote 4

Leigh: Ecological crisis and community-based restoration

groups of individuals resulting in big effects. Theselarge effects were not a forethought, as decisions werenever consciously made with cumulative impacts inmind. As a result, large environmental problems wereoften foisted upon us unwittingly (Odum 1982). Forexample, over half the coastal wetlands of the north-eastern US were destroyed not by any explicit decree,but by the lack of attention to small unit changes inextensive wetland conversions that occurred within anarrow window of twenty years, 1950 to 1970 (Odum1982).

There are many other examples in the history ofenvironmental science of how we similarly stumbledinto large-scale problems (e.g. stratosphere ozonedepletion, amphibian declines, global warming, etc.).Just as regional, national, and global environmentalproblems are highly vulnerable to the tyranny of smalldecisions, the reassembly and protection of small eco-logical units can potentiate the reverse effect. Thecumulative benefits of small decisions and activitiescan progressively add to the environmental ledger forcountering the degeneration of an ecosystem. In asense, community-based restoration works like theconcept of reversed engineering, as small ecologicalunits dotted throughout the environmental landscapeare additively nourishing more and more componentsof the ecosystem toward broad-scale functionality andhealth.

Community-based restoration has become a thera-peutic catalyst of exceptional power for allowing us toparticipate, once more, with the rest of the living king-dom in our effort to recapture the ‘garden.’ It helps ussee the world in organismic terms rather than mecha-nistic ones, interacting fields rather than isolated parts,an extended ecological community in which we are apart, rather than isolated, competing, separate entitiesunrelated to the whole. It attempts, often unknowingly,to address the split in society and nature by groundingour relation with nature with the corresponding depthsof our human psyche. It elicits what M Thomashowdefined as, ‘bringing the biosphere home’, by insertingthe perceptual connections between our local andglobal environment (Thomashow 2002, p. 16). Com-munity-based restoration is a powerful instrument tosystematically address many of our destructive tenden-cies, and, in this exercise, to culturally transform soci-ety toward a saner, healthier relationship with theenvironment. It is both a treatment for our ecopatho-logical condition as well as an indicator of our ecopsy-chological health. Based on the scale and scope of cur-rent human forces acting on the environment, a drasticand immediate revision of our behavior is needed toconstrain human impacts. Given the rate of environ-mental degradation, we need a sea change in ourthinking.

In preindustrial society, comprising hunters andgatherers, we were left with few alternatives but todirectly interact with the environment for daily suste-nance. Through that daily interaction co-dependencywas an ineluctable truth, repeatedly reinforced byhumanity’s vulnerabilities to natural systems (e.g.floods, droughts, crop failures). Such a dependencyoften translated emotional feelings into dreams andmythological narratives, a necessary precondition forart and religious belief. The late scholar of mythology,J Campbell, once stated about the first evidence of artfound in North American, French, and Spanish cavesdating back to 40,000 years BC, ‘One finds the mysterydimension of man’s residence in the universe opensthrough the iconography of animal messengers’(Campbell 1951, p. 99). This was a time when predatorand prey were integrated into a single shamic dance ofhunt and hunted, the local landscape the theater,plants and animals the actors, as so well portrayed inthese moving silhouettes. It was a time when our spe-cies reinforced daily our dependence on nature byenlivening myths through ritualistic dance.

At the center stage of the emergence of our environ-mental movement is a change in values, one that de-rives from a growing appreciation of our dependenceon nature (Taylor 1986). By the process of physicallymodifying the environment, community-based restora-tion allows us to regain our relationship with the Earth(Schroeder 2000). It addresses the alienation betweenus and the natural world by inviting its citizenry backinto the forest to heal the landscape, to commune withnature, and awaken our senses to the wilderness fromwhich our ancestors emerged as the most dominant en-vironmental force. It activates our primal intelligencein which our instinctive wisdom resides and which ourindustrial world represses. Like an alchemist of oldwho struggles to transmute lead into gold, the restora-tionists are themselves transmuted.

We read, with considerable detachment, about envi-ronmental impacts from a wide range of human activi-ties, but often fail to directly experience these effects.Ecologists, since E Odum laid down the foundation ofecological principles forty years ago, have alwaysemphasized the complexity of ecosystems by informingus about the labyrinth of interacting parts (Odum 1971).However, reading about these complex interactions haslimited value. Community-based restoration allows theaverage citizen, by the immersion of all five senses,to experience this complexity first hand. Nature’s voiceis heard when every sensory modality is activated. Agrowing view among social scientists is that we canbest understand, value, and respect nature by havinga direct relationship with these systems (Sheldrake1991, Roszak 1992, Metzner 1999), for how can amarriage be successful if we rarely see our partner?

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Somehow the hunt for groceries at our local conve-nience store shelters us, like the Elois in Wells’ timemachine, from experiencing where the food, fresh air,and water is coming from. As F Turner conveyed that,even when inside a forest, if asked, ‘where is nature,’most answer ‘out there,’ nature is still perceived as ‘outthere,’ rather than ‘here’ (Turner 1985, p. 46). We havean inherent sense of separation from our environmentwith few windows to the natural world but for, say, gar-dening. For many of us, as Turner points out, garden-ing is the last remnant of interaction with nature as weputter about in our flower beds and shift a plant here tothere and observe the results (Turner 1985). Otherwisewe are, to quote biologist R Sheldrake, ‘…essentiallyalien to the larger living community; we need to sub-ject it to ourselves lest we are subjected to it’ (Shel-drake 1991, p. 205). Or as one modern philosopherconveyed, ‘You didn’t come into this world. You cameout of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not astranger here’ (Watts 1966, p. 8). The environment isnot an externality as claimed by economists, it is thesystem in which we are an intrinsic part; like a cell in abody, we are inseparably connected across a chain of3.2 billion years in co-evolutionary time. If, as ecopsy-chologist T Roszak suggests, the ‘…repression of theecological unconscious is the deepest root of the collu-sive madness in industrial society’ (Roszak 1992,p. 320), then community-based restoration is our man-dala toward our reunification. Gaia gains access to usthrough the door of active restoration.

There has been a conspicuous oversight by environ-mentalists to fully appreciate the ecological, political,social, and psychological value of restoration. To quoteW Jordan, ‘One after the other, for better part of a cen-tury, environmentalists of various persuasions havewalked past this (ecological restoration) work, failingto recognize its value either as a conservation strategyor as a context for negotiating the relationship betweenour own species and the rest of nature’ (Jordon 2000,p. 24). Environmentalists have tended to fail to fullyrecognize the efficacy of restoration as a legitimate toolfor adding to the environmental balance sheet. This ispartly understandable as restoration ecology is anemerging science and, not unlike any new science, hashad many early challenges. Space exploration, com-puter, and medical technology are only a few examplesof how basic science and engineering start out in theinitial experimental stage often marked by high costsand failure rates.

Regulation is and will continue to be an essentialforce in environmental policy, but non-regulatory toolsthat rely on positive reinforcement are a fresh force forpromoting the new paradigm that use incentives ratherthan sanctions to reverse course. Community-basedrestoration is an emerging model for addressing the

unfinished business of environmental protection bygoing beyond statutory authorities. It also addressesthe need to move to an innovative approach of envi-ronmental governance called for by national commis-sions as far back as 1971 that suggested, ‘the U.S.statutory and regulatory regime is woefully inade-quate, cumbersome, and sometimes even contradic-tory with respect to environmental policy.’ For exam-ple the World Resource Institute stated that we need tomove to a new paradigm for environmental action sothat sustainable development can become a culturalnorm (Underwood 1992). The foundation of such anorm was suggested over 25 yeaars ago by K Bouldingwhen he stated, ‘‘A very important dynamic in thebuilding up of community is what I have called the‘sacrifice trap.’ Once people are coerced, or even bet-ter, persuaded, into making sacrifices, their identitybecomes bound up with the community organizationfor which the sacrifices were made’’ (Hardin & Braden1977, p. 288).

IN CONCLUSION

Community-based restoration is addressing environ-mental governance by infusing an eco-ethic into theAmerican culture. The central idea of what J Dewitttermed ‘civic environmentalism’ is animating localcommunities to organize and task themselves with pro-tecting and restoring their own jurisdictions without be-ing forced to do so by central agencies (Dewitt 1994).Community-based restoration is civic environmental-ism at its highest aspirations, a preemptive bottom-upapproach for achieving environmental sustainability. Asecond generation of environmental sustenance isemerging, predicated on collaboration, integration, andlocal empowerment that transcends traditional com-mand and control models, often beset with conflict,confrontation, and litigation. It is a proactive, notreactive, approach and it prides itself on positivereinforcement, the most effective force to operationallychange behavior (Skinner 1953). To quote acclaimedgeneticist D Suzuki, ‘Just as the key to a species’survival in the natural world is its ability to adapt tolocal habitats, so the key to human survival will proba-bly be the local community. If we can create vibrant, in-creasingly autonomous and self-reliant local groupingsof people that emphasize sharing, cooperation, and liv-ing lightly on the Earth, we can avoid the fate warnedof by Rachel Carson and the world scientists and re-store the sacred balance of life’ (Suzuki 1998, p. 8).

Restoration alone cannot keep pace with the magni-tude of environmental destruction as the rate of dam-age often exceeds the rate of repair. No amount ofecosystem restoration will offset such seismic shifts in

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planetary metabolism poised to descend upon us some-time in this century from human impacts. Community-based restoration is not a panacea for solving theworld’s environmental problems. However, socialtransformations are the solution and they often beginsmall, with great potential to exponentially amplifythroughout a culture, particularly if they emerge at anoptimum time in history. We are reminded of a Ms.Rosa Parks, who in 1955 refused to give up her seat on abus in Montgomery, Alabama. From that simple solemnact the social impetus for civil rights was set irrevocablyinto motion. Or in 1930 when Ghandi marched over200 km from his commune in Ahmedabad to Dandi, acity on the Indian ocean, and defied British law bymaking his own salt from the sea; thousands of Indiansfollowed and were also imprisoned. The governmentof a free India was eventually realized in 1947.

R Carson sparked an environmental movement in1962 through her publication of Silent Spring, whichindicted industry for its irresponsible employment ofpesticides to control insects that she predicted wouldone day create a dying world in which springtimewould not bring forth new life. Her findings and force-ful statements had an enormous impact that generatedfierce concern and eventual legislation. J Wamsley,director of the Arrawong Earth Sanctuary in southernAustralia, an organization like our Nature Conser-vancy, started out over thirty years ago as a one-manoperation buying and restoring swamps in southernAustralia for as little as 40 cents an acre. His large landmass is today referred to as the ‘Little Jurassic Park’ fora wide range of plant and animal species. Australianzoos have donated rare platypus’ to his range, a rangenow the size of the state of Maine. About 50 000 visitorspassed through his sanctuary in 2001 (Daily & Ellison2002). As cultural anthropologist M Mead once stated,‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful commit-ted citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the onlything that ever has’ (pers. comm. with the MargaretMead Institute for Intercultural Studies, 2005).

Modern sociological, anthropological, and psycho-logical theory show that self-interest is not the solehuman driver. Human nature is far more complex anddiversified than this and often reveals a wide range ofinstinctual constructive impulses toward altruism, gre-gariousness, and sacrifice, the very forces the act ofcommunity-based restoration invigorates. The humandichotomy, as Freud so well articulated, has not only adrive for self-destruction and annihilation, but thepursuit of pleasure, rejuvenation, and balance (Freud1959). Conservation organizations recognize that ourbiological resources are declining at an acceleratingrate. Habitat conservation appears to have proceededalong a reactive path of constant crisis management.Restoration, community-inspired, offers a proactive

means to alter future trajectories not only by the phys-ical modifications of an ecosystem, but by renewing uspsychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. No othermovement in Western civilization has prepared us forthe environmental problems we must now confront inthis century. Everything is at stake.

The recovery motif is on the rise because environ-mental decline prevails at all scales. Restoration hasspawned a recovery narrative, suggesting that we arenot only coexistent partners with the non-humanworld, but can act as potential healers toward animpaired Earth, replete with diagnosis and treatment.It signals a truce by the cessation of violence commit-ted toward nature, replaced with purposeful construc-tive engagement. This emergent movement opens apath toward atonement, reconciliation, and ecopsycho-logical health signifying, in a sense, a positive psycho-logical mutation that reveals a compelling new storyfor global survival. We are beginning, though in thesmallest incremental steps, to turn the tide for dealingwith the monstrosity of human impacts on the entireworld’s biota by giving back to natural systems ratherthan taking. The start can begin by declaring ‘Restora-tion Day’ as a central focus for institutionalizing anannual celebration, for ritualizing the gift, for declaringa treaty with the natural world, and offering a stage forcultural-nature renewal on which new mythologiescan be weaved. If, as literary writer J Joyce oncestated, ‘History is a nightmare from which I am tryingto awake’ (Joyce 1916, p. 28), then let us awaken tobegin a new dream for the Earth.

The mark of a dynamic culture is possessing thecapacity to reinvent our myths, for the stories of todayare inadequate for meeting the survival demands oftomorrow. But how do we change our myths? Whatmodel do we use to integrate us with nature, for releas-ing cultural forms and motifs that capture a new para-digm for ecopsychological health? We need to bewisely active in nature for the hope that this form ofengagement, like that found in community-basedrestoration, will place a stamp on the smallest parcelon Earth to influence the future health of the bio-sphere. Restorationists are starting the process of try-ing to recover the original ‘garden’ by actively enteringinto it to heal a depleted Earth. New kinds of stories,ways of thinking, and ethics are required for thetwenty-first century. The conservation movement inthe early twentieth century attempted to sustain bothnature and humanity by saving places of pristinebeauty. Restoration in the twenty-first century isrestoring our connection with our planet. Community-based restoration offers a powerful story for redeemingour fallen Earth by human labor, by allowing our alien-ated citizens to step back into the forest and putter inthe garden once more.

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Acknowledgements. I am indebted to Prof J Cairns whosestimulating correspondence inadvertently formed the basis ofmany of the themes presented here. I am also indebted to thelate J Campbell, renowned scholar of mythology, whose sem-inars I attended on world mythology greatly expanded myunderstanding of the collective unconscious. I deeply appre-ciate the guidance and insights from climate expert R Etkinsthroughout my career with NOAA.Disclaimer: The contents of this manuscript represent theopinions of the author and not necessarily that of the USFederal Government or Employing Agency.

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Editorial responsibility: Mary C. Batson (Managing Editor), Oldendorf/Luhe, Germany

Submitted: February 12, 2005; Accepted: February 14, 2005Proofs received from author(s): April 1, 2005Published on the web: April 4, 2005