Towards Increased Community-Engaged Ecological Restoration: A Review of Current Practice and Future Directions

In recent years there has been a growing critique of the dominance of technical approaches to ecological restoration, and a recognition of the importance of the social considerations required for restoration to be successful in the long term. In light of this, our paper offers a review of community engagement in the ecological restoration literature. We identify factors, that if ignored, run the risk of undermining the long-term sustainability of restoration projects. We then identify social strategies for dealing with these factors. Undermining factors have been summarized into three key ones: power dynamics, ignoring and/or generating negative livelihood impacts associated with restoration activities, and untested assumptions about local communities. Seven core strategies were identified to deal with these issues. Two of these examples include engaging in active community participation, and supporting landscape dependent livelihoods. These seven strategies tend to recognize, work with and support locally evolving social-ecological systems. Our findings suggest that restoration practitioners need to be intentionally aware of and challenge the pervasive ideology of social-ecological dualism that dominates modern thinking and western scientific approaches and undermines the long-term sustainability of many ecological restoration projects.