Environmental philosophy has expanded and diversified greatly since its beginning. Yet applied philosophies, environmental philosophy and environmental ethics have not engaged descriptive ethics in the way that biomedical ethics has. I will suggest that the failure to has meant that environmental philosophy has had limited impact on environmental practices
such as restoration ecology. In this thesis I will attempt to reposition philosophy's ethical
spotlight upon what I feel to be the most ethically relevant features of the practice of restoration
ecology, and to facilitate this, I develop a case-study. A history of the Musqueam Watershed
restoration project and its participants' objectives and their operating policies will be given,
followed by an ethical analysis of the project. I will argue on several counts that getting
restoration right involves more than paying careful attention to the finished product, as philosophers Elliot and Katz have suggested. Getting restoration right involves placing practice within a broad social and political context where process becomes as crucial as
outcome. This will require an examination of the way in which interested stakeholders nature, as well as an examination of the democratic structure and mandate of the Musqueam
Watershed Committee. I will argue that restoration projects ought to be conducted in a manner
that exploits the inherent participatory potential of restoration ecology. Finally, I will argue the inclusion of ecosystems within the human socio-political context, and thus suggest replacement of the Wilderness Paradigm, or the Hyperreal Paradigm with a Garden Paradigm
for human relations with nature, in the hope that in this way we will restore ourselves to nature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8285 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Thompson, Alison Kathleen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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