Regional Cultures of Conservation
The Center is engaged in developing a nuanced understanding of the failure to reach a relationship of long-term mutual well-being between humans and nature. Understanding this failure requires detailed, place-based critiques. The interactions between humans and nature are situated in landscapes that interact with other landscapes. The recent process of globalization only complicates the scale, extent, and origin of the natural and social process that produce wild and humanized landscapes. Thinking in terms of concrete places is central to our practical approach to ethics, philosophy and public policy. Typically, our regionally focused research is on land-use, development pressures and environmental planning.
We also explore how the concept of ecological and democratic citizenship might engender a civic vision of humans and nature thriving together. This regional and local focus keeps us close to practical civic contexts. History, geography, evolution, ecology, and globalization are all part of a dynamic web of interactions that have yet to be adequately explored. Lacking adequate conceptual understanding, individuals and communities often fail to appreciate their social and moral responsibilities to both natural and cultural landscapes. The projects associated with Region Cultures of Conservation comprise our effort to grasp these interactions and define our plural responsibilities.