On the Ethical Significance of Ecological Restoration: Domination or Collaboration?

Ecological restoration is essential both to a sustainable human culture and to the well being of the more-than-human world. Yet some philosophers criticize enthusiasm for restoration as yet another manifestation of human domination and anthropocentric arrogance. The paper critiques this view as persistently presented by Eric Katz, and offers an alternative view of restoration’s ethical significance. Rather than seeing restoration as a unilateral human imposition on nature, restoration deserves defense as an expression of an interspecies etiquette, attentive to collaboration with the more-than-human world. But the full ethical significance of ecological restoration will not be realized without deep change in the surrounding culture