Students and faculty at YSE co-authored a recent paper outlining principles that can help make ecosystem restoration projects more equitable and effective.
Jake Wade
Contributing Reporter
Tim Tai, Staff Photographer
A new ArticleThis guide, co-authored by Yale School of the Environment students and faculty, outlines steps to improve environmental management while also recognizing historically marginalized communities.
Yale School of the Environment students and faculty looked at the historical, political, and economic aspects of environmental issues. This field is commonly referred to as political ecology. It is often overlooked in discussions about environmentalism. Based on the field, they created a list containing ten principles. They believe these principles can be applied locally and nationally as well as globally to ensure equity and efficacy in current and future ecosystem restoration projects.
Samara Brock ENV 22 (one of the paper co-authors) explained that political ecology views environmental issues through a socio-political lens. It examines environmental problems from their root causes, power dynamics, and the social and/or political relationships involved.
Brock says that the field of environmental sciences has traditionally had a strict divide between the natural and social sciences. As a result of the divide between disciplines and their understanding of natural resources, political ecology was born in the 1990s.
The co-authors are from different academic backgrounds and disciplines, which allows them to offer perspectives from their respective fields. Manon Lefvre (co-author, doctoral candidate at Yale School of the Environment, Department of Anthropology), said that the diversity of contributors proves there is a way to cross the divides in the field of environmentalism.
Eva Garen is one of the co-authors and director of Yale Environmental and Leadership Training Initiative. Lefvre assembled her team last February at a conference of the International Society of Tropical Foresters. This conference is held annually by students at YSE.
This paper highlights the importance of social sciences to environmental studies. It suggests that much of the current environmental policy is ineffective and inequitable as it fails to consider the wider context in which these issues are located.
There are long-standing inequalities of power and knowledge in the field environmental research. In this field, western overwhelmingly white researchers, policymakers, and policymakers have the right to decide how to manage landscapes around the world, especially in places where structurally disenfranchised areas, stated Lefvre.
Garen said that environmental management policies have often disregarded or ignored communities who are managing the lands they live in sustainably under the auspices for environmental protection. Garen said that this can demonize or upend local cultural practices. In many places around the world, the hierarchy of power has led to situations in which the communities living in managed landscapes have little say in how the land is managed.
The team developed policy in the local arena which favored local knowledge and practices, included participation by the most impacted groups, and ensured justice and social and environmental equity.
It was recommended that policies at the national and state levels align restorative practices and local needs and aspirations. State policies were encouraged to support restoration and empower local decision making.
The authors advocated policies that promote regenerative interventions, prioritize social and environmental benefits over financial returns and ensure fair funding. They also supported collaboration across countries.
These principles are based on a long history of literature in political ecology. The paper was based on existing work in the field that dealt with forestry conservation and management. The co-authors reviewed this literature while they were working on it. The Political Ecology Playbook aims to bring together decades of research in the field and make it more accessible and universally applicable across all levels.
It is exciting to see. [these principles]This is how forest landscape restoration works. [the paper]Garen stated that the goal is to provide a guideline for people to look at these principles in a broad way and to see how they relate to restoration.
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