Volume 32, Issue 2, Summer 2010
John Basl
Pages 135-147
Restitutive Restoration
New Motivations for Ecological Restoration
Our environmental wrongdoings result in a moral debt that requires restitution. One component of restitution is reparative and another is remediative. The remediative component requires that we remediate our characters in ways that alter or eliminate the character traits that tend to lead, in their expression, to environmental wrongdoing. Restitutive restoration is a way of engaging in ecological restoration that helps to meet the remediative requirement that accompanies environmental wrongdoing. This account of restoration provides a new motivation and justification for engaging in restorative practices in addition to the standard pragmatist justification and motivations.