Abstract:
Climate change, growing population and consumption all threaten natural environments, wellbeing of ecosystems and biodiversity. Ecological restoration promises an answer to environmental degradation and offers to restore damaged ecosystems to their former glory, undoing past wrongs. Some environmental philosophers have challenged this assumption. According to the sceptics, ecological restoration leads to ‘artificial’ or ‘fake’ nature.
In this seminar I will look at ecological restoration through the lens of philosophy, showing the complexities and issues the concept has with views on the ethical implications of ecological restoration. Can we restore previously natural areas and, if we can, should we? Is restoration a form of hubris or human chauvinism, our ambition to control the uncontrollable? Or is there more to restoration that meets the eye, that we are not only restoring a natural area but restoring our relationship with nature?
Speaker Bio:
Linnea Luuppala is a Doctoral Candidate in Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Her PhD research focuses on the philosophical analysis of ecological restoration. Her research interests focus on environmental philosophy, climate change and applied ethics. She completed her Master of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki in 2015 and the title of her thesis was “Ecological Restoration: Conceptual Analysis and Ethical Implications”. She has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Reading. Linnea also works at Imperial College London at the Energy Futures Lab as an Executive Assistant.