Restoration otherwise: Towards alternative coastal ecologies

Abstract

This article considers how to rethink ecological restoration as a process tethered to ongoing formulations of racial and environmental justice. It is situated in the context of coastal Louisiana's wetland loss crisis and the state's unprecedented investment in large-scale wetland restoration projects as a technoscientific fix that comes at the expense of several small, Black and Indigenous bayou communities. Critical of approaching restoration as a practice predicated on loss and return, this article builds upon scholarship in Black and Indigenous ecologies and ethnographic fieldwork among Black coastal communities in southeast Louisiana to reimagine restoration as an intergenerational, socioecological set of practices grounded in cultivating cultural continuity and community care across time and space. Working with the Black feminist geographic concepts of the plot and the shoal, the article develops the notion alternative restorations—or restoration otherwise—around three reformulations of restoration: As a practice of cultural continuity, as a mode of cultivating self-reliance, and as a scientific practice of integrity and humility. It concludes by reflecting the ways Black ecological practices and values can shift the course of restoration science toward sustaining Black life in the era of climate change.