Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction
Although the essays presented in this anthology cover
a broad range of conceptual and practical issues deserving
further consideration, this epilogue focuses mainly on the
conflict between restoration ecology (RE) and the practice
of restoration and rehabilitation, as raised by Eric Higgs
in his thoughtful essay (this issue). I agree that this is one
of the most crucial issues for the success of future restoration efforts. Higgs rightly criticized the narrow positivistic
and mostly reductionistic concepts still ruling academic
education and research. As a subdiscipline of ecology he
regards RE as part of this narrow first culture of the natural sciences. But ecological and cultural restoration practices, in his opinion represent many aspects of the second,
much broader humanistic culture.
My intention is to show that this conflict could be overcome by bridging the gaps between both cultures, that is,
if RE were to be transformed into a broader holistic and
landscapes and fossil energypowered urban and agroindustrial technosphere landscapes. The self-organizing
and self-creative restoration capacities of biosphere landscapes are driven by mutually amplifying auto- and
cross-catalytic feedback loops, but the rapidly expanding
technosphere landscapes are driven by destabilizing runaway feedback loops. To prevent a global breakdown
and to ensure the sustainable future for both humankind
and nature, these positive feedbacks have to be counteracted by restraining, cultural feedbacks of environmental
planning and management, conservation, and restoration.
As the theme of this special issue alludes to, this template
should become an integral part of an urgently needed
sustainability revolution, to which the transdisciplinary
landscape restoration could contribute its important
share.
228
1
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Lowdermilk Division of
Agricultural Engineering, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa
32000, Israel
2
Address correspondence to Z. Naveh, email znave@tx.technion.ac.il
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natural biosphere landscapes (Naveh 2004a, 2004b). Moreover, the contribution of nature by regional landscape
attractiveness, achieved also by restoration, and driven by
such cross-catalytic networks is crucial for regional
upswing.
In this model the biosphere and technosphere landscapes are closely coupled with the info(rmation)sphere
by the potentials for mutually supporting and amplifying
relationships in the form of CNNs. These feedback loops
are channeled via the infosphere as a noospheric cultural
information pool playing a rapidly growing role in the
emerging information society. The autocatalytic cycles in
biosphere landscapes that are shown as negative self-stabilizing feedback loops and the positive, mutually amplifying
feedback loops indicate autopoiesis and evolution. However, in technosphere landscapes, the plus sign represents
just the opposite of self-stabilizing feedbacks. They are
mutually reinforcing destabilizing feedback loops between
unrestrained growth of human populations, their energy
and material consumption, and technological power. These
run-away cycles remove most of the restraining and regulating natural and cultural feedbacks, and are converting
within shorter and shorter time larger and larger stretches
of biosphere landscapes into vulnerable, monotonous agroindustrial steppes and human-made technological deserts
devoid of nature. Not only are biological richness and ecological stability lost but also their cultural wealth and scenic
beauty. Because the forces driving these processes are
deeply ingrained culturally, the present global environmental crisis is mainly a cultural crisis.
As shown in Figure 2 this crisis is driven by the great
intensity of human land uses and the destabilizing positive
feedback loops of our urban-industrial technosphere landscapes. Having their roots in our cultural evolution of the
noosphere, they are the result of complex historical and
cultural events, such as population and consumption
growth amplified by advanced technologies. This has led to
the industrial fossil age revolution and the modern bulldozer mentality, which has ruled most land transformation
activities in our present Total Industrial Human landscape.
Therefore, the remedies to this crisis should be sought not
only in the scientific, technical, socioeconomical, and political spheres but also in the spiritual and ethical spheres of
human consciousness, living norms, and education. They
can be restrained and counteracted only by cultural,
human-induced negative feedbacks of sustainable planning
and management, as part of the aforementioned overall
sustainability revolution, leading to a postindustrial symbiosis between human society and nature.
Restorationists can fill a vital role in reinforcing these
cultural feedbacks and their cross-catalytic networks by
broadening the spatial and conceptional restoration scales
from small, degraded islands of biosphere ecotopes to the
restoration of the integral parts of this postindustrial THL
and its natural and cultural patterns and processes. Landscapes have to be assessed and restored as the combined
ecological and cultural diversity and heterogeneity of the
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Figure 2. The evolutionary and historical relations between nature, humans, landscapes, and culture as determined by human land uses.
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