Restoring ecosystems and eating them too: guidance from agroecology for sustainability

Ecological restoration evaluation has historically focused on biophysical indicators, particularly in North America, with less attention for sociocultural and economic factors, undermining efforts' long-term sustainability. Restoration projects should more regularly incorporate cultural and provisioning ecosystem services to offer local stakeholders tangible benefits (e.g. contributing to food security and sovereignty), thereby promoting participation in restoration efforts and long-term environmental stewardship. While the principles of agroecology and ecological restoration have much in common, their differences can be instructional and inspirational to each other. Rather than be an apolitical tool for land management, restoration could, like agroecology, amplify its impact through collaboration with adjacent social movements that share common goals, such as addressing the root causes of environmental degradation and promoting socioeconomic justice. The manner in which ecosystems are restored is as important as the resulting systems; as agroecology guides, projects should minimize nonrenewable inputs and reliance on socioeconomic systems at the root of the environmental degradation. We articulate agroecological restoration (AER) in a novel set of formalized principles, which take a socioecological view of environmental degradation and social disruption as inextricably interrelated issues. We offer case studies illustrating how AER can help restore both the land and our relationship to the land, thereby promoting the health and cohesion of human and ecological communities. Finally, we identify opportunities for overcoming inevitable challenges for growing an agroecological restoration framework that could amplify project impacts in the current United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.