This is the first collection of essays in which European and American philosophers explicitly think out their respective contributions and identities as environmental thinkers in the analytic and continental traditions. The American/European, as well as Analytic/Continental collaboration here bears fruit helpful for further theorizing and research. The essays group around three well-defined areas of questioning all focusing on the amelioration/management of environmentally, historically and traditionally diminished landscapes. The first part deals with differences between New World and the Old World perspectives (...) on nature and landscape restoration in general, the second focuses on the meaning of ecological restoration of cultural landscapes, and the third on the meaning of the wolf and of wildness. It does so in a way that the strengths of each philosophical school—continental and analytic—comes to the fore in order to supplement the other’s approach. This text is open to educated readers across all disciplines, particularly those interested in restoration/adaptation ecology, the cultural construction of place and landscape, the ongoing conversation about wilderness, the challenges posed to global environmental change. The text may also be a gold mine for doctoral students looking for dissertation projects in environmental philosophy that are inclusive of continental and analytic traditions. This text is rich in innovative approaches to the questions they raise that are reasonably well thought out. The fact that the essays in each section really do resonate with one another directly is also intellectually exciting and very helpful in working out the full dimensions of each question raised in the volume. (shrink)

During the past decade, we have seen the introduction of market-based mechanisms in biodiversity policy. Biodiversity markets are considered powerful tools to slow down or even stop the ongoing loss of biodiversity by internalizing costs that are traditionally externalized. This paper questions these optimistic expectations. Can we save nature by selling it? Is conservation through commodification a viable option? This paper maps both the social and ecological problems of the commodification of nature that is a necessary precondition for biodiversity markets (...) to function. (shrink)

Two protracted debates about the moral status of animals in ecological restoration projects are discussed that both testify to the troubling aspects of our inclination to think in terms of dualisms and dichotomies. These cases are more or less complementary: the first one is about the (re)introduction of species that were once pushed out of their native environment; the other one concerns the elimination or eradication of “exotic” and “alien” species that have invaded and degraded ecosystems. Both cases show the (...) detrimental impact of dualistic thinking on ecological restoration projects. In the first case, communication and cooperation between stakeholders is frustrated by the opposition of zoocentrism and ecocentrism; in the second case the opposition of nativism and cosmopolitanism appears to be a major stumbling block for consensus building and conflict management. I will argue that “gradualization”—thinking in terms of degrees instead of boundaries—can offer a way out of this black-and-white thinking and can open up space for negotiation and deliberation among different and sometimes diverging perspectives. (shrink)

Conservation and restoration programs usually involve nostalgic claims about the past, along with calls to return to that past or recapture some aspect of it. Knowledge of history is essential for such programs, but the use of history is fraught with challenges. This essay examines the emergence, development, and use of the “ecological baseline” concept for three levels of biological organization. We argue that the baseline concept is problematic for establishing restoration targets. Yet historical knowledge—more broadly conceived to include both (...) social and ecological processes—will remain essential for conservation and restoration. (shrink)

In the early 1980s the Dutch ecologist Frans Vera began an ambitious ecological restoration experiment on a polder in the Netherlands. He introduced herds of ‘back-bred’ Heck cattle and other large herbivores and encouraged them to ‘de-domesticate’ themselves and ‘rewild’ the landscape they inhabit. His intervention has triggered a great deal of interest and controversy. It is being replicated and adapted across Europe as part of a wider interest in ‘rewilding’ in nature conservation. This innovative approach rubs up against powerful (...) and prevalent practices of environmental management. This paper examines these frictions by mapping the character and exploring the interface between different modes of nonhuman biopolitics – in this case the powerful ways in which modern humans live with and govern cattle. Focusing on the story of Heck cattle and the bovine biopolitics of their rewilding it attends in particular to the character, place and promise of monsters. It first outlines a conceptual framework for examining nonhuman biopolitics and teratology, identifying fertile tensions between the work of Haraway, Derrida and Deleuze. It then provides a typology of four prevalent modes of bovine biopolitics – namely agriculture, conservation, welfare and biosecurity – and their associated monsters. This paper identifies rewilding as a fifth mode and examines frictions at its interfaces with the other four. Developing the conceptual framework the paper examines what these frictions tell us about the understandings of life that circulate in the ontological politics of contemporary environmentalisms. In conclusion the paper critically examines the monstrous promise of rewilding, in relation to tensions between the convivial aspirations of Haraway and Deleuze. (shrink)