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/...),
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*