Martin Drenthen

New Visions of Nature

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Developing Nature Along Dutch Rivers: Place or Non-Place

In ecological restoration projects in the Netherlands, agricultural landscapes in floodplains are being transformed into wetland reserves (so-called ‘new nature’). Besides the fact that the support for these projects among local residents is often suboptimal, some more fundamental issues can be raised with regard to these projects. They tend to disturb (or even wipe out) the different ‘textual’ layers in the landscape (historical anthropogenic landforms and human artifacts), reduce the ‘readability’ of the land, the sense of place, thereby transforming genuine places into ‘non-places’. In contrast, some restorationists claim that they bring out deeper ‘textual’ layers, implying that humans should widen the context in which they understand themselves and deepen their sense of place. Are ecological restoration areas places or non-places, do these projects endanger or rather enhance our sense of place, or do they escape this typology?

Nature Restoration: Avoiding Technological Fixes, Dealing with Moral Conflicts

Today, preservation conflicts often no longer deal with the question whether nature needs to be preserved, but with how one needs to go about pr eserving it. In this new type of conflict, preservationists see themselves pitted against loca l inhabitants who contest the preservation goals for a given area. In such instances, preserva tionists tend to defend their position by withdrawing into a technical discourse about biodiv ersity preservation. By presenting the case of heathland restoration in the Low Countries, we w ant to examine how preservationists might reformulate their position so as to highlight the m oral concern at the heart of their practice. In order to do so, we will use a broadly hermeneutical approach to ethics which focusses on stories and narratives as expressions of moral self -understanding in need of interpretation and elaboration. As such, our paper is an example of wh at a Rolstonian ‘ethics of storied residence’ might look like in practice.

NIMBY and the Ethics of the Particular

In their interesting and thought provoking paper, Feldman and Turner define the NIMBY position as revolving around concrete decisions and choices. A typical NIMBY activist does not so much argue against wind farms per se, but would prefer not to build them altogether rather than having them in his or her own backyard. According to the authors, a minimal requirement for a NIMBY claim is therefore that it expresses ‘preference ranking’, although they point out that a NIMBY position also has to ‘involve something above and beyond the mere expression of preference’. Nevertheless, their primary conceptualisation of NIMBY claims is to treat them as defending alternative ranking of choices and expressing alternative preferences. By choosing this perspective, the authors tend to underestimate the fact that, more often than not, issues raised by NIMBY protesters do not merely concern concrete decisions, but also revolve around place meanings and world views. The reason why NIMBY activists so often meet with hostility from policy makers is because they engage themselves with matters that usually are considered to be inappropriate subjects in political debates. Dominant political discourse within liberal democracy requires political citizens to reason either in terms of the ‘common good’ or in terms of personal preferences that can be weighted against other preferences. Personally, I argue that many NIMBY activists do neither. Many NIMBY activists do not so much as give voice to personal preferences or to alternative visions of the common good, but rather try to reframe the debate by starting from a radically different approach to the meaning of a place. Central to many NIMBY protests are concern of a (for lack of a better word) metaphysical nature, although many of these concerns remain implicit most the time, precisely because they are considered inappropriate. Feldman and Turner claim that it is possible to interpret many NIMBY claims as expressions of ‘geographical partiality’ and as ‘giving voice to the fact that she cares more for the care of this particular place than about others’. They rightfully argue that this type of partiality is not in itself a form of selfishness, although ‘partiality toward places and concern for one’s self interest often intertwine’. Yet, the very framing of the NIMBY stance as expression of personal partiality fails to recognise a more radical element at stake in NIMBY protests which often remains implicit in

The return of the wild in the Anthropocene. Wolf resurgence in the Netherlands

Abstract In most rewilding projects, humans are still the agents in control: it is us who decide to no longer want to fully control nature. Spontaneous rewilding changes the nature of this game. Once we are confronted with species that have their own agency, that cannot fully be controlled, and that behave in ways that we do not always like, then it proves hard to co-exist and tolerate nature’s autonomy. Nowhere is this more clearly visible than with the resurging wolf, whose return to parts of western Europe challenges our existing ideas about ourselves and our place in the landscape.

Ecocentrism as anthropocentrism

‘Is it true that God is everywhere?’ a little girl asked her mother; ‘I find that indecent!’—a hint to philosophers! One should have more respect for the bashfulness with which nature has hidden be...

Old World and New World Perspectives in Environmental Philosophy

This is the first collection of essays in which European and American philosophers explicitly think out their respective contributions and identities as environmental thinkers in the analytic and continental traditions. The American/European, as well as Analytic/Continental collaboration here bears fruit helpful for further theorizing and research. The essays group around three well-defined areas of questioning all focusing on the amelioration/management of environmentally, historically and traditionally diminished landscapes. The first part deals with differences between New World and the Old World perspectives on nature and landscape restoration in general, the second focuses on the meaning of ecological restoration of cultural landscapes, and the third on the meaning of the wolf and of wildness. It does so in a way that the strengths of each philosophical school—continental and analytic—comes to the fore in order to supplement the other’s approach. This text is open to educated readers across all disciplines, particularly those interested in restoration/adaptation ecology, the cultural construction of place and landscape, the ongoing conversation about wilderness, the challenges posed to global environmental change. The text may also be a gold mine for doctoral students looking for dissertation projects in environmental philosophy that are inclusive of continental and analytic traditions. This text is rich in innovative approaches to the questions they raise that are reasonably well thought out. The fact that the essays in each section really do resonate with one another directly is also intellectually exciting and very helpful in working out the full dimensions of each question raised in the volume.

The Wolf Is Coming! Emplacing a Predator That Is Not (Yet) There

In this chapter, Martin Drenthen discusses debates about the possible return of the wolf to parts of Europe where they were absent for over 150 years. He argues that the return of wolves challenges perceived notions, not only about what nature is, but also about human’s place within nature. Drenthen discusses various perspectives towards the newly arriving wolves, that all imply not just an image of what a wolf actually is, but also a view about the landscape and human’s proper place in it. He finds that all parties appear to have difficulty emplacing the wolf. Wolves challenge the idea of many wolf opponents that wolves are essentially inhabitants of the wild that intrude human land. Returning wolves do not care about a neat division between cultural landscapes and wild land, and in doing so undermine the very foundation of a worldview in which the domestication of nature is seen as essential for being human. The world view of many wolf lovers is equally challenged by wolves, however. Many regard wolves as victims of modern society and the human desire to subdue nature, but deem possible a relationship of peaceful coexistence with wolves as long as humans can control their aggression towards the natural world. The resurgence of the wolves, however, forces us to reconsider what it means to be part of an ecological network in which predators exist as well, and reveals that a particular kind of love for wolves can only exist in abstractum. Finally, the return of the wolf also challenges the dominant approach of nature managers and professional wolf experts who, in an effort to ease societal tensions surrounding the resurgence of the wolf, take the wolf as an essentially normal animal that can be managed rationally. But in doing so, wolf managers display an obsession with order in nature that contrasts with the very meaning that the wolf as a wild animal seems to have.

Ethics of Place und Heimatschutz

In einer Welt, die sich unter dem Einfluss der Globalisierung immer schneller verandert, erleben wir ein weltweit wachsendes Interesse am Regionalen und Heimatlichen. Teilweise kann diese Tendenz als sentimentaler Ruckzug aus der globalisierten Welt in die relative Sicherheit der eigenen kulturellen Hintergrunde interpretiert werden. Der ›neue Regionalismus‹ geht jedoch uber eine solche Suche nach Refugien hinaus.

The wolf and the animal lover

For Aristotle a true friendship can only exist between free human beings, because true friendship is based on a shared understanding of the good. Yet today, some animal philosophers argue that friendships can exist between humans and animals, maybe not in Aristotle’s sense of the word but in another way, that appreciates how animals are different from us humans, yet also share a certain commonality. Usually, these reflections on human-animal friendship concern human relations with domestic animals, notably pets. But can we befriend wild predators, those animals that by their very nature can be dangerous to us? In this paper, I examine what it might mean to befriend a wild animal, and more specifically whether it would be possible to become friends with wild wolves. I will argue that any friendly relation with wild animals will consists of a paradoxical combination of benevolent involvement and loving detachment.