Is There Anything 'Good' about Everglades Restoration?

摘要

The large-scale attempt to restore Florida's Everglades is often presented as a model for future ecological restoration efforts. Aimed at repairing ecological degradation caused by past flood control and public water supply projects, Everglades restoration is characterized by government agencies as evidence of a paradigm shift in resource management practice. While past engineering and resource management efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District (and its predecessor agencies) led to a partly drained and channelized Everglades that decimated wildlife populations, these agencies today promote "ecological restoration" to re-establish ecological processes that were degraded by their previous actions. We assess this Everglades restoration effort, codified in the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, in relation to Eric Higgs' concept of "good restoration." Ecological restoration should, in this conception, be oriented toward a process that promotes a stronger sense of community among humans and non-humans and that prioritizes ecological renewal. Toward that goal, it should emphasize direct public involvement in both project design and implementation as means of promoting healing relations and atonement for past degrading practices. Our assessment of Everglades restoration plans and activities suggests that the effort does not meet the good restoration criteria of "focal practice" and "wild design," which emphasize participatory process aimed at a "re-wilding" of the landscape. We suggest that Everglades restoration is more in line with forms of technological restoration that warrant the label