Associate professor of environmental policy at the University of Minnesota. Forest governance, Restoration Social Science, South Asia, Central America, Environmental justice, urban ecosystems, NEPA, homegardens, etc.
Forrest Fleischman
rather than the uncritical celebration of financial and land area targets that seems to dominate alot of this space.
To chime in as a Minneapolitan: whistles made a huge difference (and still do, ICE is still kidnapping people here, just at a slower pace). But what really helped was the pre-existing neighborhood groups from the summer of 2020, so get yourself whistle kits and start talking to your neighbors *now*
For sure there are also places where restoration is providing great benefits, but I would like to see global restoration and carbon finance leaders more explicitly confronting the treacherous political terrain they are treading on,
I know alot of people think that this is what is happening in the carbon finance space as well.
Taken together, these point to a rather dark story, in which international promotion of restoration by ecologists and NGOs is serving not to restore ecosystems, but to reinforce the power of elites and oppressive governments, while doing little to help people or nature.
which points to the ways that restoration is mobilized as a politically useful project, with no real hope or intention to actually achieve restoration - but real success in terms of reinforcing state legitimacy.
Meanwhile, I am reading Utkarsh Roy Choudhury's new paper on river restoration in India (journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...),
