Michael Vincent McGinnis

Deep ecology and the foundations of restoration

Throughout the globe, degraded ecosystems are in desperate need of restoration. Restoration is based on world‐view and the human relationship with the natural world, our place, and the landscape. The question is, can society and its institutions shift from development and use of natural resources to ecological restoration of the natural world without a change in world‐view? Some world‐views lead to more destructive human behavior than others. Following Naesss ecosophical comparison of the deep and shallow ecology movements, this essay depicts the relationships between restorationist and the natural world. Contrast the anti‐restoration position of Katz/Elliot. In deep ecological restoration we can develop a realization that our community is part of the self‐producing character of all life. In deep ecological restoration, we find one important medium for the institutionalization, politicalization, and transpersonalization of a deeper understanding of what it means to be a human being with nature.

The Bioregional Quest for Community

This essay addresses the need to reformulate and reconceptualize bioregionalism. In a global economy, bioregionalism requires a new communal sensibility that can create an intimate connection between culture and the life region. Humans cannot live in a community that is interpreted, mapped or simulated by others. An interpreted and simulated community is not a home. Only those who inhabit a community and place can protect and restore it. The values of autopoiesis (self-production) and mimesis are described as ways to reconnect culture with place and the bioregion.

The Influence of Environmentalism on Attitudes Toward Local Agriculture and Urban Expansion

This article uses the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) to examine attitudes toward local agriculture and land use issues in Santa Barbara County (SBC), California. To do so, we use data collected for the Central Coast Survey in 2010. Although our study has a narrow geographic scope, it has broad implications. Our results suggest that people with stronger pro-environment views support agriculture, and prefer it over urban expansion, but are also critical of agricultures negative environmental effects. In addition, we find no significant differences between the traditionally pro-agriculture north and the traditionally pro-environment south SBC residents on key policy issues, which suggests that broad political divisions do not dictate attitudes toward rural–environment conflicts.

Watershed-based Partnerships and Coastal Ecosystem Planning

The human impacts on coastal marine ecosystems are forcing resource agencies and scientists to rethink how society protects biodiversity and aquatic habitat. An essential component of coastal marine ecosystem protection is the need to develop and implement intergovernmental partnerships and social alliances that can protect aquatic biodiversity, and in some cases, restore the coastal-marine interface. The essay focuses on a comparison of watershed-based organization and membership in California. First, the essay focuses on the need for a watershed-based approach to protect aquatic species and habitat. Second, the essay describes the emergence of a watershed approach to protect and preserve biodiversity and entire aquatic ecosystems. Third, the essay includes a comparison of southern California watershed organizations with those of the entire state. Finally, the case of the Gaviota coastal watersheds of the south coast is explored. I conclude with a general characterization of the basic principle of community building that is required if we are to restore our relationship with our precious coastal watersheds.

Re-Wilding Imagination: Mimesis and Ecological Restoration

homogeneity. I am convinced that the secrets of nature can be spontaneously portrayed in the arts, and that the arts are imperative to restore a culture’s relationship with nature. While I acknowledge that my hands, the dance of speech, my thoughts, my feet and my arms, when combined, can be the theater of a furious rebellion, I also recognize that these reaching thoughts and actions often take refuge in the body never finding community. Without a community, each of us faces the misery of the limits of the body and an isolated mind. Community can be restored by the direct human participation with nature. Restoration is a means to cultivate the animal to being human and the natural to our denatured society. My view is that community-based restoration--in the form of dance, poetry, theater, other arts, and ritual--is a means to recover a wild sensibility so that we can learn lost social and community values. By fostering restorative relationships with nature, we can create a healthier community.