Restoring for cultural-ecological sustainability in Arizona and Connecticut

David Casagrande and Miguel Vasquez (2009)

Pp. 195-209, in Marcus Hall (Ed.), Restoration and History: The Search for a Usable Environmental Past, Routledge Press.

abstract

To gain insights into how ecological restoration can contribute to long-term sustainability, we compared restoration of Hopi terraced gardens in Arizona to the restoration of a wetland in New Haven, Connecticut. We define culture as the social relationships, moral guidelines, and historical trajectories of identity and practice that provide a template for continuous experimentation in how to live correctly. We use the concept of “re-naturing” to argue that both cultural and ecological processes must be included in restoration so that human and non-human systems can co-evolve and adapt to external changes with each other. Commonalities that arose from comparing our two case studies are that marginalized populations can use interpretations of their ecological and social histories to leverage political momentum for better futures; planning for long-term sustainable restoration must originate locally and will likely focus on some common resource, as opposed to private; success requires egalitarian reciprocity with external facilitators; and activities must be embedded in ritual reproduction of culture and cyclical ecological processes.